What The Hell Happened To...

...the Olympics?

Before I get to that, let me just say, wow, was I wrong about the Pacquiao/Cotto fight. I didn't see it, but i know who won and I saw pictures of Cotto after the fight, he looked like a guy who needs a new face. I won't make that mistake again. I'm picking Pacquiao to destroy Floyd Mayweather Jr., and the fight isn't even scheduled yet.

Anyway, when I was a kid, I remember the Olympics being kind of a big deal (people knew them, they were very important, they had many leather bound books and their apartment smelled of rich mahogany). Even as recently as 1996 I remember being at least moderately excited about the summer Olympics. Now? Apparently they're having some Olympics in Vancouver soon. I'm sure you'll start seeing unbearable commercials for them while you're trying to watch The Office. I'll watch the hockey when it's on, but even that's ruined because it interrupts the actual hockey season, so I'm already annoyed. I know Olympic hockey is better than the NHL in some ways, and I only get to see local teams, but I'd still rather watch the Rangers vs. Devils game than Norway vs. Switzerland. Also, they have women's hockey now. No, just, just no. The rest of it? I couldn't be less interested. So, what the hell happened to the Olympics?

By the way, while some of the things I'll talk about apply to both Olympiads, I'll mostly just be picking on the winter Olympics today, but the summer games suck too, trust me. In fact, the summer games are even worse because A) No hockey and B) there's actually other stuff to do during the summer and it just reminds you of how unwatchable they are (although the winter Olympics have a similar problem and we'll get to that).

For starters, I think the Olympics do a bad job of appealing to real sports fans. Nothing epitomizes this better than the opening ceremonies. There's nothing real sports fans hate more than unnecessarily long pre-game nonsense before the actual game starts. I was so excited when the weather cancelled whatever stupid mini-concert was supposed to happen before game 1 of the world series, only to find out they were just going to do it before game 2. Sing the anthem (or anthems, if you're watching hockey, reason number 39 hockey is awesome), introduce the teams, then everyone shut up and let's play.

The Olympics start the whole two-week event with an opening ceremony that usually isn't even followed by sports. This is like going through all the hassle of getting married without following it with any of the fun of getting divorced. Did you see the opening ceremonies in China two years ago? What a mess. I'd rather watch a 10-hour American Idol marathon then sit through that. The thing where they bring the teams out in sort of a parade, I have no issue with that, I said introducing the teams is cool. But the rest of it? No thank you.

Also, the Olympics has a lot of crappy sports. You heard me. Let's look at some of the winter sports we've got coming our way (I've already covered women's hockey, seriously, just stop. Women's rugby starting in the 2016 summer games? Totally different story, I'm completely on board. I'm a puzzle).

Skiing. Not the cross-country skiing. If you want to run a marathon on skis, it's your funeral, I won't complain. I'm talking about any of the downhill skiing. You know what would be a better name for those competitions? Gravity. Why not take the mountain out and just have a skydiving competition (come to think of it, I might actually watch that).

Biathlon. This is where people ski around for a while, and every now and then they stop to shoot at targets, with rifles. This actually sounds exciting at first, but watch it sometime, it's like they've intentionally taken out anything that might be fun. I can think of so many things they could do with this event that would make it, quite possibly, the best sport ever. Instead of shooting at stupid targets, what if the athletes were shooting at, I don't know, bears? Instead of using rifles, why not crossbows? What if we got the people drunk first? What if the bears were drunk too? So much untapped potential.

Also, did you know they added snowboarding to the Olympics? More gravity based heroics. Plus, this is basically just skateboarding for people who live in cold places. Also, as I understand it, snowboarders get to strap their feet to the board. I've never been snowboarding, but I skateboarded some when I was a kid, and I would have been a lot better at it if I'd just tied myself to the board the whole time.

I could go on and on about the sports. And I'm not even complaining about figure skating, which actually goes under the not appealing to real sports fans category more than the crappy sports category. The point is, I think it may be time to streamline a little. I know, that would make athletes sad when their sport goes bye bye. By that logic, the NFL should have 2600 teams so everyone can play football. Life's hard, get a helmet.

Poor locations are a problem too. Vancouver isn't too bad. But the last summer games were in China. How are you supposed to get an audience in America when everything good happens at 4 in the morning? The 2002 winter games were in Salt Lake City. Listen, I'm not going to Utah unless I get kidnapped by mormons, I don't care how hot people keep telling me the women are. The 2016 games were just awarded to Brazil. Good luck with that. Bad locations suck all the excitement out of the event.

My last complaint is a small one, but I think it's important. The winter Olympics happen right in the middle of the TV season. Do you really want people watching your TV show and thinking about how much they'd rather be watching a new episode of 30 Rock? Probably not. This just reminds people of how boring your show is.

I have a confession, I'm honestly not sure where I was going with all this. I wanted to do my usual Friday sports thing (posted on Thursday this week because I'm going to a wedding tomorrow), and I know the Olympics are coming up, but I really don't know how to wrap this one up. Usually, I finish up with a big solution to the problem. I really don't know if this one is salvageable. Would less sports make the product better, or just easier to ignore? Would less silly opening ceremonies help? Would it be better if every winter Olympics was held in either Toronto, Calgary or Edmonton? (OK, that one I know, yes, yes it would).

The truth is, I don't know if the Olympics is fixable. But maybe it doesn't need fixing. Not everything needs to be entertaining and marketable. Sometimes, you just get a bunch of people together, and they do stuff, and you figure out who the best is at everything, and then you give out medals. If people want to watch, fine. If they don't, OK. Most things on TV are done for the rest of us, for our entertainment, but that's not what the Olympics is, the Olympics is for the athletes first.

You might have noticed I left out the often voiced complaint that we have too many professionals in the Olympics now. Long before I made a goofy list of complaints about the Olympics, the games complained about themselves. They said "hey, our thing isn't entertaining enough, not enough people watch, let's have some more pro athletes, the best in the world."

So, my message to the IOC wouldn't be a demand for less sports or better locations, it would be this. Stop trying to be something you were never supposed to be, and I'll stop calling you stupid.