So does the Olympics coverage stink? I wouldn't know.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I think the last time I saw any Summer Olympics coverage was, well, actually I don't think I can even remember when the last time I saw Summer Olympics coverage was. I haven't watched a damn thing from Sydney. I didn't watch any of Atlanta. I didn't watch any of Barcelona (I was in Germany at the time, and the only teevee available to me was a sad black and white one that was about 10 years past the point it was 10 years past its useful lifespan. Tennis? You couldn't see the ball. The Germans on my floor tried to watch fencing, and I don't know how they could stand it. You couldn't see the foils at all. It was hellish). Anyway, before Barcelona, I didn't watch Seoul (was it Seoul in 88?), before that was LA, and I think I watched LA but, y'know, I don't have any Olympic Memories from LA so maybe I didn't watch that one either. And 80 was Moscow, and I didn't watch that one either because (1) I was nine and had other things to do, and (2) there were no Americans in it.

I've watched most of the Winter Olympics over the same span, because there's less to do in Winter besides watch teevee, and because the Winter sports are just so much more fascinating to somebody from the plains. (Technically, I'm from a hilly part of a plains state, so I did grow up with greenery and not wheat and dead tallgrass, but Oklahoma is a land of football). I got really turned off Olympic coverage on the teevee during one of the ABC years, when they would cut away from a live, exciting hockey game to show an "Up Close and Personal" of some ice skater, then show you taped compulsories, then come back to the hockey game where, in the meantime, three goals had been scored. And ABC didn't see anything wrong with this.

Now, since the whole damn thing is taped this year, they're apparently more concerned with getting "good ratings" than they are with showing actual sports, and they're ruining their ratings in the process. Maybe they don't know better than us after all.

Oddly, I have actually been to a gymnastics event - it was the NCAA regionals hosted at OU when I was there. Pretty interesting, actually, for a non-fan. OU's men's team, though favored, didn't win (shocker!) but ended winning the actual national tournament a week or two later so it was possible to forgive them. That was the same year that OU's baseball team pulled out a surprise victory at the College World Series. Rah rah, go team. It was also, however, the, um, third year in a row that OU lost to Texas, Nebraska, and OSU in football (IIRC) and I believe they replaced the coach after the end of that season. Because Oklahoma, despite the baseball and gymnastics successes, is still the land of football.

(23 sep)