'84 Olympic Team vs. '04 Olympics

[Lwood]

I was watching a tape today that had footage of the '84 Olympic team. I noticed on this particular tape that the teams were not jump serving very often and it got me thinking - which is always scary. Would the '84 team win the gold in '04? Would it make a difference if they played side-out scoring or rally scoring? Tell me what you think sports fans.

[doctordubya]

If you could take the '84 team straight into the '04 Olympics, with no adaptation to the way the game is played nowadays, they definitely would not win the gold. My guess is that they would not make it out of their pool.

The men's international game is very different nowadays - back in '84 the big strengths of the USA Men were excellent ball control and their swing hitter system, which gave them a fantastic side-out game that enabled them to wear sides down even if they initially went behind. Put them into a game in 2004 and their reception would struggle against modern jump serving (which is consistently faster than even the best jump servers could manage 20 years ago), whilst most of their own float services would just be a free side-out to today's opponents. The whole idea of siding-out to wear opponents down is now obsolete anyway under the rally point system - but with the way the game has changed I think the '84 team would still lose if they could play under side-out scoring today.

On the other hand, if you could take the players on the '84 squad into the 2004 Olympics with 4 years of preparation playing the modern game, I think they would have a very, very good chance of winning gold. Players like Kiraly, Buck, Dvorak and Powers were world-class... Beal would never admit it, of course, but I bet he'd rather be taking those guys to Athens than his current squad.