The Musings of an Olympics Junky

The Musings of an Olympics Junky

Published August, 2012

            The Olympics have been underway for a week, and I confess, I have watched at least half of NBC's projected 3,500 hours of broadcast.  I'm a sports junky, and the Olympics are the epitome of sport, and I, the junky, am mainlining the event.

            I had planned to work Friday night, but the opening ceremony with the Queen, escorted by James Bond, parachuting into the stadium was too much to miss.  It is so hard to work with the TV on and me in front of it.  What writing I am doing is during commercials, late at night, or early in the morning when there are no broadcasts, but as the week has progressed, even those windows of time have closed due to modern technology that allows me to watch around the clock, or record events when fatigue demands my nightly sacrifice to the sleep gods.

            If you do the math of dividing the broadcast hours by 24, you will find a result of 145.83 days, or 4.8 months.  How can that be?  Easy, there is the broadcast channel, three cable channels, television and cell phone apps, along with live, streaming of events over the internet.  I can watch events live in HD on my phone!  I bet I can get the Olympics over the microwave or refrigerator if I try.  How did I ever think I wouldn't be watching?

            I don't really care about equestrian events, but I watch.  I like the horses, don't care much for the people, but the Royals are in the stands, so that's cool.  Who's the athlete here anyway, the horse, or the rider? 

            Every four years, I swear that I am not going to watch such sports as curling in the Winter Olympics and badminton during the summer games, but when they come on, if there are no other options, I'm watching.  I even watched soccer before the other events started, and as much as it pains me to confess, I enjoyed it.

            We all have our favorites.  Most women and a good number of men love women's gymnastics.  I don't care for it.  I prefer track-and-field because I want an objective outcome as opposed to a subjective one.  I like a clear winner, not a judged one. 

            If you've followed this column, you know that I have written about two sports more than others.  One is in the Olympics, boxing, and one once was, is no longer, but should be, baseball.

            Boxing is subjective, and the scoring is done by people who are either blind, or are selected randomly off the street and are offered ring side seats if they will come in and punch some buttons.  I often wonder if they have ever seen a fight, or are watching the same one I am.  See what I mean about subjective? 

            Would someone please explain to me why air rifle shooting with contraptions that do not even remotely resemble an air rifle, and the shooter who is covered with so much gear you think he might be a Borg from a Star Trek movie, is considered an Olympic sport, and baseball, played by at least half the world, is not?  Really?  Something I did as a kid to break windows and aggravate my parents and neighbors is an Olympic sport, but the other thing that I did all day, breaking windows and aggravating my parents into the night is not in the Olympics?

            Another sport I don't get being in the Olympics is ping-pong, oops, excuse me, table tennis.  Are there more countries in the world that see this as sport rather than baseball?  The game is nothing like we play in the garage unless you have a very large garage, and body armor.  Forest Gump should have run in the Olympics anyway.

            ESPN Sports Science did a piece on table tennis that reported that the ball, when served, arrives at the end of the table in less time than it takes to blink an eye.  To be able to see it, players stand eight feet behind the table to return serve of a tiny, plastic ball that is moving at over a hundred-miles-per-hour.

            I can hear my mother now, "Y'all stop serving that ping-pong ball at over an hundred-miles-per-hour!  You're gonna' put someone's eye out!"  This is the same ball that my dog used to crush in his jaws when we didn't get to it first, and it's going to put my eye out?

            I do believe that doing anything during my childhood, except eating vegetables, was capable of putting out an eye.  Maybe they should have a running with scissors game as part of the Olympics.  It would make as much sense as air rifle shooting with all its fancy visors and mirrors, and scoring would be clear-cut, (get it, scissors, clear-cut), but I am rambling.

            I guess if they had vegetable eating in the Olympics, I'd watch it.  I don't care what the sport is, even team handball which I had never heard of before this year, I want team USA to win, and when we don't, I hurt.  I feel it to be my patriotic duty to cheer our country in every sport, even those that do not make any sense to me.  When I make the sacrifice to watch and cheer, and not work, or stay up too late to work the next day, and get up before dawn to watch more games on four channels, my computer, and my phone, those gals, and guys, had better be winning.

            Oh, excuse me; I must stop.  The commercial is almost over.  Happy obsessive watching to all y'all.