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2016 GAMES | There are valid reasons to be skeptical, but landing Olympics would likely bring out the best in Chicago

Pretty much all Chicagoans -- whether city dweller or a suburbanite -- know the drill. When people ask where we're from and we tell them, the usual response begins, "Oh, I love Chicago. . . ."

They'll cite a good restaurant, a day at Wrigley Field, a run along the lakefront or some business deal consummated at McCormick Place. But it's really about the energy that pulsates here. Even lifelong residents can feel it. It's what displaced Chicagoans miss most when they leave -- that sense that something is always happening and, as a Windy City resident, you are somehow part of it.

If Chicago's Olympic bid organizers get their way and win the right to host the 2016 Summer Games, that something will be really big.

People ask me, as one of the reporters covering Chicago's efforts to land the Games, if I want the hometown to win. Well, if nothing else, the Olympics is one hellacious party -- and who doesn't love a good party? But parties, if one's not careful, can also bring hellacious hangovers.

Mayor Daley and others like to cite polls that show overwhelming local support for a Chicago Olympics. My own sense, however, is that many folks are worried about that double Alka-Seltzer morning after -- when the Olympics roll their rings to the next town and leave us to clean up the financial equivalent of empty beer bottles and greasy pizza boxes.

Daley promises that won't happen -- revenues from the Games will cover the party costs, organizers say. But the devil's in the details, and the details are in Chicago's master game plan, its bid book. That bid book is secret. Chicago 2016 officials cite competitive reasons: They don't want those rascals from, say, Rio, stealing Chicago's ideas.

Which leaves us with our suspicions. Who gets the sack of cash -- the contracts and the jobs -- and who will end up holding the bag of bills? When Patrick Ryan, the chair of Chicago 2016, revealed over the weekend that he had lined up an insurance company willing to provide a policy to cover $500 million in potential cost overruns, it was an "ah-ha!" moment among the press corps. We naturally assumed it was Ryan's own insurance corporation, Aon Corp. He said it wasn't but refused to reveal who would sell the policy.

United States Olympic Committee board chairman Peter Ueberroth raised some hackles when he told reporters in Washington that only a "blithering idiot" of a city wouldn't have a surplus of cash at the end of the Games.

Who doesn't expect some scandal if Chicago wins the bid? Big projects bring out the worst in some people.

But it will also bring out the best in others.

The Olympics fire the creative spirit. I know this sounds like a slogan (Chicago's is "Stir the Soul"), but staging a Games demands and attracts incredibly talented people to what, at its idealistic core, is a celebration of human potential. The athletes themselves are amazingly driven people -- they devote their lives, usually in anonymity, to sports that, for the most part, won't make them rich or famous.

And those who'll never stand on a podium give it their all, too -- inventive types who'll design venues and stage ceremonies, as well as those who calculate traffic patterns and figure out how to feed thousands of people at a time. Every one of us, I hope, would feel an obligation to step it up in welcoming people here from around the world.

Do I want an Olympics here?

If Chicago gets the Games, when I go through that "Where are you from?" routine after 2016 and the response "Your Olympics were just great," I want to nod my head and say, without reservation, "Yes, they really were awesome, weren't they?"