Carrying a torch for korfball?

Could korfball become an Olympic sport? Don’t bet against it.

You’ve probably never heard of korfball, which sounds like a game for muppets or Alf. (Actually, it’s a team sport played by men and women that loosely resembles basketball.) As surprising at it may sound to Americans, the activity has been officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a “sport.” But it’s not included in the Summer Games -- yet.

After all, in 2000, trampoline and synchronized platform diving were welcomed into the Olympic clubhouse. So the day may come when a band of gritty Dutchmen or Belgians (they are the perennial powerhouses) makes it to korfball heaven by winning an Olympic medal.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once admitted he couldn’t define pornography but said he recognized it when he saw it. The International Olympic Committee takes this idea to the next level with sports. They not only can’t define it, they also have trouble even if they see it. About the only thing to sharpen their collective vision is the potential for huge television ratings, say critics.

While ancient Olympics held steady at roughly 14 events for more than a thousand years, the modern Olympics have been expanding at a rapid pace, particularly in the last few decades. At the Montreal Games in 1976, there were 198 medal events, but today, thanks to recent newcomers such as mountain biking and the women’s hammer throw, there are around 300.

“It bothers me to see more and more of these frivolous, made-for-TV sports,” said Phillip Henson, the track and field director for the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta and a professor at Indiana University’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. “One of the reasons beach volleyball got into the Olympics was a visiting IOC member saw a beach volleyball game on ESPN and said, ‘Well, that’s what the Americans are watching.’ ”

The result, critics charge, is the once vaunted Olympic Games are in danger of becoming a bloated, ridiculous multibillion-dollar worldwide circus with an ever-growing roster of offbeat, obscure and downright silly events.

“The Games are beginning to groan under their own weight,” said Greg Anderson, an associate professor of classics at Wright University in Dayton, Ohio, who has studied the ancient and modern Games. “The excessive commercialization, the athletes pandering to the cameras, it’s gotten very easy to become cynical.”

Or satirical. An unsuccessful petition drive was launched on the website www.pokerinathens.org, demanding Olympic inclusion of poker. (Hey, maybe Ben Affleck could win a gold medal!)

The website argued that the card game “demands the focus of the archer, the endurance of a decathlete and the skill of a gymnast.... Our athletes train like other athletes, save for a slightly higher intake of nicotine, whiskey and corndogs.”

During Olympic history, far more sports have been added than subtracted, but it sometimes does happen. For instance, pelota, a game similar to jai lai played in Barcelona, didn’t catch on. But meaningful cutbacks are unlikely with so much money at stake and no firm definition of what a sport is.

With the Olympic Games back in their ancestral home, comparisons are inevitable. So, just what would the ancients make of today’s spectacle? Apparently, they would have been as much a spectacle to us as we would have been to them, according to historians. A sport called pankration called for combatants to beat each other until one surrendered or died, which they sometimes did in the arena. Meanwhile, everyone was naked. Even the trainers. They’d have been lucky to get their games on pay-per-view today.

Here’s a brief look at notable Olympic arrivals, departures and some that are on the bubble.

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Sports relegated to the dustbin of Olympic history:

* Tug of war (1900-1920): Once a mainstay of the Games, the schoolyard favorite was ejected for reasons not entirely clear today. The sport was magnificently simple -- the first team to pull the other 6 feet won the contest. International supporters -- of which there are surprisingly many, mostly in Europe -- still want it back in the Games. But short of a tug of war squad barging in on the rhythmic gymnastics ribbon competition and dragging the athletes out the side door, it’s unlikely there would be enough international goodwill to resurrect it.

* Live pigeon shooting (1900): When the guns fell silent and the last feather had floated back to Earth, Leon de Lunden brought glory, distinction and a gold medal to his native Belgium for blowing away 21 pigeons. As Olympic historian David Wallechinsky wrote, “This disgusting event marked the only time in Olympic history when animals were killed on purpose.” Rest easy, PETA, there’s no discussion about it returning.

Ancient sports relegated to the dustbin of Olympic history in their own time

* Mule-cart event (years unknown): This was a bald attempt to capitalize on the enormous popularity of the chariot race. There were a few notable changes: Instead of a team of sleek and gleaming stallions and a chariot, there was a single, probably smelly, mule and an ordinary cart. It lasted about a century before the Greeks, who gave the world the genius of Aristotle and Socrates not to mention the Trojan Horse, figured out it wasn’t up to Olympic standards.

* Nero’s big idea (approximately AD 65): If four horses in a chariot race are good, then 10 are even better, reasoned the fiddling Roman emperor. And so 10-horse chariot racing became an official Olympic sport with Nero driving his team. “He wasn’t any good at driving it of course,” said Anderson. “He fell out [of the chariot] long before the finish line, but was awarded first place nonetheless.” The event was absent from the subsequent Olympics.

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Longtime sport feeling the heat

* Modern pentathlon: It’s hard to believe people from the 21st century would have trouble embracing an event based upon the skills of a battlefield messenger in the Napoleonic Wars. Despite pressure to drop it, the event manages to hang on -- thanks in large part to the legacy of its creator, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics.

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Recent addition feeling the heat

* Baseball: Intensive American lobbying landed this game into the Olympics in 1992. But outside of North America, Japan and island nations of the Caribbean, the game is largely ignored, even disliked. Moreover, there’s a move to eject other big pro sports as well, such as basketball, tennis and soccer, which all enjoy their own more prestigious championships. “If the Olympic gold medal is the most important achievement in that sport, then it belongs in the Olympics,” argues Henson, who admits to being a track and field purist. “If not, it doesn’t need to be there.” But the rest of the world delights in watching America failing to qualify.

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New sports this Olympics:

* Women’s wrestling: -- For the first time in Olympic history, women will compete in freestyle wrestling. Unlike Greco-Roman, where participants can use only their arms and upper bodies to attack, freestyle allows wrestlers to use their legs and permits holding opponents above or below the waist. It’s perhaps worth noting that Tanya “Sluggo” Harding is not on the U.S. women’s team.

* Women’s sabre: Olympic expansion, in part, is because of egalitarian efforts to allow the sexes to compete in the same events. Finally, women are getting their due with the sabre, one of the three major fencing events (epee and foil are the others). Coverage would probably be regulated to 3 in the morning if not for the fact that American Sada Jacobson is ranked No. 1.

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Sports begging to join the Olympic club

(Have all been recognized as “sports” by IOC but not yet included in the Games.)

* Ballroom dancing (a.k.a. dancesport): Like figure skating without the ice or Dick Button, but similar snazzy costumes.

* Bridge: Not building one -- the card game.

* Bowling: At least it involves some heavy lifting.