U.S. Men’s Olympic Team? Very simple: Paul Hamm and five others

It can be fun to be an armchair Men's Selection Committee member, but I certainly would want no part of it this year. Here's how I see the U.S. men's Olympic team shaking out: Paul Hamm is a lock, assuming his broken hand heals in time, and more than a dozen other guys are in a dogfight to survive the next few weeks.

No matter what team is eventually chosen, one event or another will get short-changed a little, at least in preliminaries. But if Paul Hamm is healthy for Beijing, I don't think the U.S. should sacrifice any big individual scores just to ensure a top-eight finish in preliminaries. The selection committee should pick a team that could potentially challenge for the gold. Forget the bronze. (Easy for me to say, I know.)

If Hamm returns but is not in peak form because of a weak right hand, the U.S. could be in trouble. And that scenario won’t reveal itself until after the trials conclude.

It appears unlikely that the trials will lock in one (let alone both) of the top two all-arounders, who must also place in the top three on three apparatus to gain that distinction. So the selection committee will have a heck of a time forming the team. More deciding factors will surely emerge in June at the trials in Philadelphia, where the pressure will be far greater than it was in Houston for the U.S. Championships. The selection process already claimed the defending Olympic champion. Who knows if anyone else will go down?

Team selection was much simpler under the old rules of 6-5-4. All-around rankings really meant something. But now, with the 6-3-3, it's a game of chance. The Men’s Selection Procedure document is 20 pages long, with all sorts of criteria to guide the committee members. Then there's the point system, which rewards event placement from first through 10th: 11 points for first; 10 for second; 9 for third; 7 (not 8) for fourth; and on down to 1 for 10th.

U.S. champion David Sender led the field with 66 points, followed by Jonathan Horton with 55. Kevin Tan, who really isn't just a rings specialist, sits third with 54. But even these points could be irrelevant if most of them are accumulated on the 'wrong' events. Oklahoma's Steve Legendre, for example, amassed 31 points on only two events — floor and vault — yet was passed over for a national team berth in favor of Tim McNeill (22), Yewki Tomita (21) and Guillermo Alvarez (19). Legendre is excellent on the events where the U.S. team is generally already deep, even though that team hasn't been officially announced.

Confusing, I know, but that's the nature of the beast. All the coaches I've spoken with agree that the highest-scoring team needs to be selected, and each has a convincing argument as to why his gymnast should be picked.

"There's nothing necessarily wrong with the process, as long as the best team is chosen," said Thom Glielmi, who coaches Sender at Stanford. "But there's always speculation as far as How would this team have done? or [How would] this athlete [have done]? ... There's no guarantee."

So who should join Paul Hamm in Beijing? You could place the names of all the others in a hat and pick a pretty good team. That's how deep the U.S. program is right now. But just as in 2004, you can count on this: When the U.S. men’s Olympic team is announced for Beijing, some very talented gymnasts will not be on it.