As best I can tell, the latest Philadelphia-marketing mega-ploy comes complete with two talking points. The first: Our fair city has the goods to host the Summer Olympics in 2016. The second: If you disagree, you're a dime-a-dozen, no-"can-do-spirit"-havin', row-house naysayer whose only purpose in life is to keep Philadelphia from reaching its full potential.

Well stamp my forehead "Liberty" and tattoo "E Pluribus Unum" on my back because as much as Philadelphia probably could pull it off, it shouldn't. In fact, it tops the list of things Philadelphia should never do. Not in 2016. Not in 2312. Not ever.

The boosters, led by Constitution Center honcho Joe Torsella, can beam up all the PowerPoints they want about how even just pursuing the Games would bring a much-needed civic renewal, a resuscitated infrastructure and international publicity the likes of which we haven't garnered since May 13, 1985. They can top the presentation off with a chronology of successful large-scale events we've hosted, and a nifty map proving the Delaware Valley already has a lot of the facilities needed to host the world's grandest sports jamboree.

They'd get no argument here. But that doesn't mean they should marginalize the very logical argument that their best intentions would likely turn the nation's fifth-largest city into a glorified Trenton, rather than a global municipality.

As it stands today, the boosters have embarked on the tried-and-true method of getting Philly acceptance. They've started polling the people and giving pom-poms to the city's so-called influential set (I think you can still see the Benergy decals if you look closely). And the influentials, namely the Inquirer and Philly Mag, are already telling the world They Got Spirit! Yeah!

Now, before they get any more carried away than they already are, the influentials may need a brief history lesson not available in the revisionist "Philly 2016" textbook. Montreal hosted the 1976 summer games and, six Rocky installments later, they're still paying off the $2 billion debt. Four years later, the Soviet Union laid out some 118 million rubles more than they brought in from the Games. I'm not sure what a ruble was worth back then, but 118 million of them sounds pretty heavy, yo.

Fast-forward to 2004, when Greece basically repaved and redeveloped an entire nation in anticipation of the Athens games. A year and a half later, few people could tell you who won the men's 110-meter hurdles (China's Liu Xiang), but any Greek could confirm they'll be paying off his gold medal for quite some time.

Sure, the yea-sayers will retort, the Games can be a costly endeavor; but what about Los Angeles and Atlanta, two cities that reaped massive benefits from playing host to the athletic world? Not to mention the global notoriety that being on that stage offers a city. As in, Philly can be the next Barcelona!

Well, those cities didn't bring in nearly as much money as they promised during the rally-the-people phase of their operation. Nor have Montreal, Moscow and Athens become anything they weren't before the Olympics. (Except poorer.) And London, which just won the 2012 Games, is talking about a nationwide tax to help fund the run-up to competition. That doesn't bode well for a city that takes out 30-year loans to pay for a hot dog, bag of chips and a Pepsi. Especially one with a sometimes-deserved inferiority complex.

While it'd be easy to harp on the economics of it for, oh, another 215 words, finances aren't the sole concern.

Every four years, the Olympics lose just a little more relevance. Just the other night, NBC pre-empted Winter Olympics coverage to show NASCAR qualifying. The way attention spans—and armies—move today, nobody can predict whether anybody outside of Philadelphia would even care about the competition in 10 years. (I venture to say not all that many Philadelphians knew what NASCAR qualifying meant in 1996, let alone could imagine a national network airing it over the Olympics.)

Yet there we'd be, hawking dime-a-dozen replica medals outside PATCO stations hoping to squirrel away some coin to offset the looming tax bill. Maybe we'd even hold a parade for the Penn-lab-created human-animal hybrid who won javelin gold for its hometown. (If javelin's still an event.) But at the end of the 17 days, our entire city would be Camden's Admiral Wilson Boulevard—scrubbed nice and clean for the visitors but left to degrade after the glitter faded.

Are we that desperate for attention and a world-class-city atta boy that we're willing to mortgage our futures for a tournament of second-tier sports that'll be relegated to the fourth or fifth tier by the time Stallone wheels the flame down Broad Street?

Buy into the Olympics-marketing conspiracy and you'll find out soon enough.