Everybody wants to get a sport into the Olympics, but the line is long and slow-moving. The IOC hasn’t even put women’s ski jumping in the Olympics, preferring to leave a couple of ski jump ramps idle for a few days rather than admit that girls can jump, too. If you’re getting in the line now — attention, MMA fans — you’re not getting in the Games anytime soon. The Summer Games are too big, and they’ll eventually run out of permutations of ice and snow for the Winter Games. (But wouldn’t you love to see “snowboard combined,” with halfpipe determining the starting order for snowboardcross?)

And that’s why something like the Combat Games makes sense on many levels in addition to getting some extra use out of some Beijing venues. The Combat Games will have the Olympic sports of boxing, wrestling, judo and taekwondo, along with several other forms of martial arts. One drawback is that the program is focused a little too heavily on Asian sports — grappling, which actually could get into the Games as another discipline of wrestling, isn’t listed. But the concept is good.

They’re also looking at the Mind Games (chess and … something else) and the Beach Games. Not bad.

USA TODAY colleague Jeff Zillgitt and I used to talk about inventing the Pub Games. Darts is a rising sport, and pool could use a boost.

Maybe the line has to be drawn somewhere, but it’s hard to argue with the idea of giving existing Olympic sports another good stage alongside smaller sports that deserve a chance to be seen. Just work on the mascots.