Alex Morgan and Caitlin Clark will not go to the Olympics

But back to this sporting competition thing. It’s annoying. And the people who are tasked with winning medals can’t care about looks or audiences.

Emma Hayes is charged with changing the fortunes of the United States women’s national soccer team. To do that, she can’t bring a team to Paris that resembles the one that was eliminated from last year’s World Cup after winning just one of four matches. Alex Morgan, the American football public adores you, and you have earned that adoration. NBC would love to have your familiar face on the air. Never mind. You stay at home.

The Paris Summer Games are still four weeks away, and like all Olympics, they promise to feature transcendent performances from stars we know—Step Forward, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, and Noah Lyles—and those we’re just discovering. No Olympics play out according to a script, which is both the appeal and the beauty of it.

But it is also true that the preparation for the Games cost the American team three real draws. Hayes, the new women’s soccer coach, made the choice to move on from Morgan, a link to the glory days of the USWNT which, in Hayes’ eyes, could no longer provide that glory. Caitlin Clark, arguably the most transcendent star in women’s basketball, didn’t make the Olympic team. And Athing Mu, the elegant and fascinating reigning 800-meter gold medalist, fell during her event at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, leaving her off the team in her signature event.

The Olympics won’t succeed or fail because Alex Morgan didn’t make the soccer team or because Athing Mu tripped on a track in Oregon. But think about it this way: The last three Olympics — the Winter Games in South Korea and Beijing, the Summer Games in Tokyo — were held in Asia, making the time difference in the United States unpleasant for many viewers to watch in real time. The last two — the COVID-delayed Japanese Games in 2021 and the winter version in China the following year — were held in empty arenas, as the pandemic restricted fans.

Paris should therefore be a return to normal. But it’s a new normal. Since NBC invested to broadcast all six Olympic Games from 2022 to 2032, consumers have moved even further away from the live, single-screen viewing experience. It would help to get more people to sit on couches and turn on the TV by having more familiar characters to follow.

Which is not to say, say, that Morgan should have been on the football team or that Clark should be there in basketball. Mu’s fate, determined by the cruelty of track tryouts with no second chances, is simpler. The decisions with Morgan and Clark were made on athletic merit. There’s cruelty in that, too.

“It was a tough decision, obviously, especially given Alex’s history and track record with this team,” Hayes said on a conference call with reporters. “But I felt like I wanted to go in a different direction.”

This direction is clearly younger. Morgan, mother of a 4-year-old daughter, turns 35 next week. She is returning from a 2023 World Cup in which she started all four of the United States’ games and did not score. Hayes, a Londoner, is here not only because the Americans failed to reach the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time. She’s here because – after a bronze medal at the Tokyo Games and last year’s failures in New Zealand and Australia – the program needed a reboot.

This is the complete opposite of what the women’s basketball team was looking for. Women’s basketball players have won all seven Olympic gold medals since the 1996 Atlanta Games. This year’s roster not only includes 42-year-old point guard Diana Taurasi, seeking her sixth gold medal, but also six other members of the victorious team in Tokyo.

“Good perspective and continuity are very important things,” USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley told The Associated Press, “and that’s why we’ve been successful in the Olympics.”

The football team approach: It’s broken, so let’s fix it. The basketball team approach: It’s not broken, so what’s left to fix?

The question is whether these tactics work.

There will be plenty to watch in Paris. The unheralded Biles will return to the gymnastics competition that tortured her so much in Tokyo. Ledecky will be back in the pool at her fourth Olympics, looking to add to her seven gold medals. Lyles will preen on the track, looking for her gold in the marquee sprint races.

But the American team that will boat down the Seine for the opening ceremonies will be without some of its most recognizable faces. This might not help attract viewers. But if it ends in more medals, who cares?