With one more day remaining in the XX modern Winter Olympics, I would like to express my opinion as to why these series of sport are lackluster:
-The outcome of many Winter games is influenced by who performs the prettiest. -The world’s most popular sports are not included.
Particular to the Winter games, I don’t like watching a competition in which a performance is judged on prettiness. We’re not talking about an athlete completing a set distance in the fastest time or moving a certain object the most reps. We’re talking about artistic performances adjudicated by interpretive opinions of human judges. I wasn’t around over two thousand years ago, but the ancient Greek Olympics had nothing to do with prettiness. I’m sure if we thawed out some Greek Olympian from ice and showed him (only men competed in the main events back then) today’s games, he would fall over laughing at the bastardization of sport. Besides, back then there was only one winner and no such thing as second or third. You win for your city-state or go home a failure. That’s sport.
The other thing that renders the modern Olympics as lackluster is that the Olympics do not include the world’s most popular sport(s). Right now, the majority of Europeans don’t care nearly as much about the Olympics as they do of the upcoming World Cup. The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. Where is soccer in the Olympics? Not there. The absence of baseball, American football and cricket is also noticeable, and I’m sure it’s because the international federations overseeing that sport don’t want their prominence weakened by inclusion in some lesser event. I would never consider waking up in the middle of the night to watch the snowboarding mogul but you better believe I’ll be setting the alarm for any U.S. Men’s World Cup game that kicks off in the early AM. My point is that the Olympics don’t have the world’s most popular and biggest sporting events and so its position as the chief international sporting competition is…well, not.
That is all.
Paul covered this…
Paul covered this topic pretty thoroughly on his blog, too: “Olympic Sports That Suck“, and “I Hate Ice Dancing” 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Some big sports
Ski jumping, even though it is scored with a system that includes points for style, is a hugely popular sport in much of northern Europe. Ice hockey, alpine skiing, and cross-county skiing are also very popular.
Golf is not included in ANY olympics, nor is cricket or auto racing ( hey, at least the winner isn’t based on the prettiest paint job or most graceful turns).
It was so frustrating to watch
Maybe it’s the way football and NASCAR are broadcast on FOX, but I was constantly yelling at the TV looking for more info. I wanted some ex-bobsledder to be interviewing a team before they got out of the sled. I wanted a mic on Ohno during the relay race (one of the really only interesting events, besides curling.) I was begging for someone with a telestrator to take over and give us some information, for crying out loud. Why wasn’t Bode Miller, for all his failures, mic’d so we could hear his first reactions when he straddled that last gate? Now, that would be worth watching.
And I wanted to strangle myself everytime I heard Bob Costas introduce another Olympic Moment.
You know FOX would never stand to broadcast such drivel. I’m not sure but NBC has this contract now for a few more Olympics, so we’re stuck with it unless they get some fresh blood over there at Universal.
And it makes me worried now for how NBC is going to go about broadcasting the NFL’s new Sunday Night Football come September. Featuring, you guessed it, more Bob Costas. Great. It’ll make us wish for more Dan Dierdorf.
Cheers.
NBC has made some bad moves
Recently, NBC has made some bad moves regarding its sports programming. Case in point: their contract for broadcasting the NHL. The NHL has been the lowlight of North American sports broadcasting, in terms of household viewership, but for some reason NBC decided it was worthwhile to invest in the exclusive rights to show the games…on Saturday afternoons!
Compared to other things on TV, like the cable channel that shows the local radar and has the monotonous voice droning out the latest barometer reading, nobody is watching the NHL. I love hockey and I can admit that it’s not a great sport to see on TV.
Second, their Sunday night football coverage is going to be bad. I’ve already heard/seen glimpses of their plan, and it looks like they’re going to fall into the trap of showing more of themselves than the game. I hate it when this happens. Show me the game and get your obnoxious announcers (Tony Kornheiser??!?!) out of the way.
Sorry to disagree with you on this one point, Tim, but I actually like Bob Costas in the booth as a play by play.
NBC Sports and the NHL
Turns out that Game 3 of the NHL Stanley Cup playoff finals, as broadcast by NBC tomorrow night, is predicted to be the lowest-rated prime-time network broadcast in the history of television. Also, apparently I was one of 22 people (sarcasm) that watched Game 2. I read where more people watched a rained-out baseball game on ESPN that wasn’t even played than watched the hockey game on OLN.
Also, to follow up on a statement made earlier, the NHL is carrying exclusive rights to the NHL broadcasts without paying for those rights. Even so, there are still production costs. I wonder which makes more profit, NBC broadcasting one NHL playoff game or NBC’s parent company GE selling 100 light bulbs?
OLN versus ESPN
I wonder how many bars and such just have ESPN on constantly, and therefore give ESPN ratings no matter what? I bet a million people watch the game.
My $.02 Weed
Dentists offices…
They should carry hockey 24×7 for dentist’s offices. That way, people can lie back in the chair and never feel that bad about the state of their own dental work.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Dude…
Don’t diss Curling! Now that’s a sport!
But seriously, just to play devil’s advocate, both soccer and baseball are played in the Summer Olympics.
And American football isn’t played because most of the rest of the world thinks it’s totally lame. 😉
— Ben
Curling
I love it! USA Curling, baby! Only thing I watched with interest, other than hockey.
I felt that the Olympic men’s hockey play was much more enjoyable than the NHL playoffs. The game time was much shorter without the long breaks between faceoffs. Also, that goalie from Finland was rockin’.
For the purposes of those readers who happen to be market research analysts from NBC Sports scouring the net for consumer response, I just wanted you to know that I flipped to other channels during the period breaks. And get yourself a new color man.
Since I obviously didn’t do any research to check if soccer and baseball were actually included in the summer Olympics, let me amend my earlier rant to justify the larger point — that the winners of Olympic soccer and Olympic baseball don’t even register on the international scale.
Russian and American Curling Women
When I was home with sick child, I did tune into curling. The women’s match between Russia and the US. And there were some hot chicks on both teams.
It was funny, because the camera would stay on the face of the Russian blonde who was “shooting” the puck for about 5 minutes, then would abrubtly switch to see where the puck landed.
I apologize for not knowing any of the technical terms, but since I was home with sick child, I watched without sound. Makes for a better viewing experience.
Also, the Olympics are rapidly becoming a European affair. I wouldn’t be surprised to see America start to shun the thing altogether.
My $.02 Weed
Baseball
Baseball is out…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161893,00.html
I wasn’t dissing
Frankly the curling was enthralling, almost the best sport to watch the last two weeks. I had to talk myself out of going to the local curling club’s open house this past week, that’s how cool I thought it was. Maybe after the post-Olympics fair-weather curling folks get off the sheets, I’ll find some time to throw a few stones.
And Sam, I hear you about Costas, it will nice to see (hear?) him again in a play-by-play situation unlike the follow-the-bouncing-ball role he’s forced to fill at the Olympics.
It’d be fun though if Costas and Jim Nantz over at CBS could have a contest for the most overwrought, run-on sentences. Not that I don’t enjoy them, but it’d be funny listening to them one-up each other during a broadcast.
And here’s one other option for improving the Olympics coverage – offer a second digital audio channel with live commentary brought to you by the people from the Daily Show. Tell me that wouldn’t rock.
Why I Don’t Like The Summer Olympics
Here we are two and a half years later and I’m still harboring the exact sentiments regarding the sport-less nature of most events in the Summer Olympics.
-Speedwalking? -Who rides a horse prettier? -Did our swimmers dance in unison?
I was almost expecting the IOC to start handing out medals for best fashion as worn by teams entering the stadium during the opening ceremony. At a party last night we started turning the televised ceremony into an event by guessing how many athletes were represented by countries we’ve never even knew existed. The safe guess was ‘3’ and the athletes were usually for some ridiculous event like ‘shooting’.
Everyone was also pretty dull on many of the games being…not sports…excuses for more air time for advertisers to buy. How many different kinds of wrestling and fighting events are there? What gives? I came up with a solution. Take all the wrestlers and boxers and martial fighters and march them through the opening ceremony rigmarole, with the march leading them right into a cage in the center of the stadium. Close the cage doors. Put a gold medal in the middle. Whoever is left holding the gold medal wins. Call the event ‘Cage Match’. That’s sport.
Part of my problem with the Summer Olympics is that, again, many of the sports aren’t indicative of a tier-one convergence of global supremacy recognition. Take soccer. Olympic soccer isn’t something nations turn to to reference their dominance in the sport. Same thing with other legitimate sports such as basketball, tennis and cycling. Remove these and the other ridiculous ‘sports’ from the Summer Olympics and give me all swimming, all track-and-field and Cage Match. Then I would start to regard the Summer Olympics as special again.
I spent…
I spent most of the day today out on a hot salt flat drinking huge amounts of liquids to stay hydrated, and repeatedly racing a tiny airplane around pylons. He who was fastest, won, and in a series of heats an eventual winner was determined.
Is pylon racing a sport?
If it is, I want a spot on the 2012 Summer Olympic team, dangit.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Practice
You might want to improve on the 8 out of 11 (with 2 no-shows) finish before you dream of Olympic glory 😉
In the words of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, “I Keed, I Keed”
Sam & I agree that if the human isn’t the main energy source of the event it’s not a sport (so no NASCAR/airplane racing/shooting/etc).
Also, if it’s determined by a judge on aethetics, it’s not a sport. It might be hard, exciting, even popular, but it’s not a sport.
My $.02 Weed
Criteria
Thank you, Weed. You have created the impetus for making a list of criteria for what is and isn’t sport. Examples in parenthesis.
**what IS sport** -if it’s hard to score (hockey) -if humans are the main energy source (track and field) -if a peak form of physical fitness is required (soccer) -if the final scoring is based on time, distance, and/or weight constraints (cycling) -if more than a precise, finite movement is involved (football) -if judges don’t have a major impact on the outcome (Cage Match)
**what ISN’T sport** -if it’s easy to score (basketball) -if humans aren’t the main energy source (car racing) -if physical fitness isn’t required (poker) -if the scoring involves aesthetic interpretation (gymnastics) -if based on a singular, precision movement (golf) -if judges have a major impact on the outcome (figure skating)
Again, I’m not writing that some of the games aren’t difficult and challenging, nor am I writing that I don’t admire those who work hard to get great, but I just don’t consider them worthy of my time to follow.
Additions?
Sam
I’m With You On All But One
Don’t agree with the “Easy-To-Score” definition. That loses tennis-like sports as well. And the definition by itself is relativistic…by comparison to soccer, hockey is easy to score. Especially when they loosened the rules after the strike.
Otherwise you’re on. I love golf, I play golf, golf is hard, but golf is not a sport. If golf is a sport, then darts is a sport.
My $.02 Weed
Easy To Score
Weed, good point. What I mean by ‘easy to score’ is that I don’t consider contests a sport in which, by the end of the contest, a lot of scoring has happened. This makes the entirety of the game kind of moot, and only the final moments attractive. This is no more true than in basketball, when at the end of the game you look at your opponent and say, ‘My team scored 50 times and your team scored 50 times’. That ease of scoring results in a snore-fest in which only the final minute matters.
But like you wrote, relativity is important. Lacrosse used to be a really high scoring deal, when games took place over the course of days, with people dying. So scoring makes sense then in the scope of duration of play. Overall, teams combining for 100 times in 60 minutes just makes the activity not a sport, but a boring, high-scoring exercise. And while others may enjoy I’m not a fan.