IT is often said that politics and sport shouldn't mix.

Those who want to play might stand a better chance if those who regulate got out of the way – but chance would be a fine thing.

The country is gearing up for the Olympics and apparently excitement is building (although you certainly wouldn't know it from the ticket sales for the football at Hampden).

It currently seems we hear more from the politicians and administrators than from the athletes.

Rows over not enough security staff, rows over missile launchers on multi-storey flats, and even rows over just who can sell overpriced chips to the massed punters.

Is there any chance of some sport taking place or should we just change the pronunciation of Olympic rowing to rhyme with bowing, then we would be guaranteed at least one gold medal?

North of the Border it's no better, where the big sporting characters this summer have been Craig White, Duff and Phelps, Charles Green, Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster with a late subs appearance by David Longmuir.

None of whom have kicked a ball the length of a pitch themselves but who all know the colour of a fifty pound note.

Warnings have been issued that, unless the administrators' view is accepted over a certain clubs future, the game in Scotland will die. I haven't heard so much nonsense about football coming out of anyone's mouth – other than Mark Lawrenson's on the BBC.

Football, and sport, is about the hundreds of thousands who play it, in parks, on public pitches and who run in the streets and get together with their friends in the knowledge they will probably never earn a living from it or be considered a great, no matter how much they dream.

What kid ever dreamed of becoming chief executive of the SPL? When it becomes about money and politics that's when it becomes complicated and risk becomes a factor.

With each passing year major events get bigger, more complex, with greater budgets and an army of staff organising elements that bear little resemblance to sport.

For all that they are bigger, costlier and forever chasing the spectacular, are they actually any better?

Will London's Olympics really be any better than in an era when the event was simpler?

Was Euro 2012 really any better than a World Cup tournament back in the 1970s?

Hopefully, when the first starting gun is fired in London, those behind the scenes will stay there and keep quiet and the sportsmen and women will be allowed to be the star attractions.

Like I said, chance would be a fine thing.