Ryan S. Lochte Will You Please Go Now!

Boys will be boys? No, more like “idiots will be idiots.”

U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is currently embroiled in an international scandal due to more than just a serious lapse in judgement. It’s an incident that’s dominated Olympics coverage and has even prompted an official apology by the USOC.

If you’ve been under a rock, this all started with a story concocted by Lochte and teammate Jimmy Feigen that seemed to fit right into the narrative we all know and shudder about when it comes to Rio. The swimmer told the tall tale of an altercation at gunpoint with fake policemen, claiming to have been robbed and traumatized along with a number of his teammates.

Only, the story quickly unraveled.

Following the back-and-forth on social media was a real treat. First, people deriding Rio and its officials for yet another example of how poorly these games were planned, put together and run. Then, stark and absolute denials from Brazilian officials. That led to people believing they “doth protest too much,” until various media outlets started pulling on threads. All of a sudden, concrete evidence that Lochte lied and that he had fled the country. More evidence, a surveillance video, and then confirmation of Lochte’s lie from his U.S. Swimming teammates.

Then, the hashtags…

Then, the memes…

Oh, the memes!

As the dust settles, it’s time to start wondering what all of this actually means. The #EmbraceDebate crowd will likely have their say about this for days (or weeks depending on how long Lochte and Brazilian officials drag this out), and the social media talking heads have already circled the proverbial toilet bowl a couple of times too many.

Simply put, Lochte is a criminal. He filed a false police report and broadcast his lie to far-flung reaches of the globe. However, he’s not much of a criminal. Filing a false report is somewhere between a serious misdemeanor and a minor felony depending on how the charges line up, and it goes too far to pretend this is anything worse than a grown man acting like the overgrown frat boy were all previously knew him to be.

Even if Brazil does everything they can do to throw the book at him (unadvisable but possible), the U.S. government would be extremely unlikely to extradite him even if he qualified under their extradition treaty with Brazil. To have a chance, Brazil would have to charge him with a felony that is also a felony under U.S. law and even then, the U.S. government can simply say no.

In short: Lochte is unlikely to face any actual legal punishment.

So, what’s next? Probably and hopefully nothing.

Lochte, 32, may be done with the Olympics altogether and even if he decides to attempt to compete in 2020, he could find sponsors unwilling to gamble on an aged swimmer that’s going to remind more people of his Rio controversy than his past swimming greatness.

All that, assuming USA Swimming even lets him compete. They could just wash their hands of him due to code of conduct violations.

Already a reality TV “star,” Lochte’s previous attempt at television failed and while this incident might actually boost his profile to the “all publicity is good publicity set,” spending the rest of his days with F-list celebrities like Flavor Flav and Vanilla Ice isn’t exactly a positive.

There is nothing left to do except for Lochte to simply disappear.

Maybe he stands up, appropriately stoic and on a podium (irony!), and apologizes to the good people of Brazil for furthering their embarrassment. Perhaps he tells his parents, sponsors, fans and teammates that he’s so sorry for providing a black eye on an otherwise stellar year for USA Swimming. Probably, the Brazilian government will accept the apology and then quietly drop the charges, not wanting to make this story any bigger than it needs to be.

And then? Nothing…

We don’t have to think of Ryan Lochte ever again after this all blows over. His reign of terror as USA Olympics’ official “bad bro” is over. This is the dude (that word used appropriately dripping with ill purpose) who attempted to make “Jeah” his catch phrase. Remember aforementioned terrible TV show, the grills, the idiotic blue hair? The ugly speedo sneakers? The somehow-more-ugly sunglasses?

Lochte is the real-world equivalent of “fetch” in internet meme culture. Stop trying to make Lochte happen. It’s not going to happen.

The point is, Lochte’s time in the spotlight—for what it ever was—is over.

It ended about as badly as one could engineer such an ending, but no one needs to hem and haw about how he gets over this. No one needs to start crafting their Tokyo redemption story leads. Networks don’t need to carry his apology press conference. In fact, any news about the end of this “saga” can be below the fold of your local sports page. If Lochte shows up on TMZ, no one needs to feed that particular beast with a click.

Look, Lochte was a great swimmer. No one can take his medals away from him, and I’m sure every American is glad that he was winning said medals for our country instead of someone else’s. In the grand scheme of things, though, Lochte will always be faintly remembered as that guy who swam with Michael Phelps—the Scotty Pippen to Phelps’ Jordan.

That’s it. That’s all.

Goodbye, Ryan Lochte we enjoyed watching you swim, but most of us were sick of you before and all of us are definitely sick of you now.

We’re going to be fine without you.