Am I the only one who didn't know the Olympics were starting yesterday?
I remember when they were a big deal. I was at a big meeting last night and not one person mentioned that we were missing the opening ceremonies. You'd never schedule a big meeting during the Super Bowl, but there were two other meetings going on in that building and the one next door.
We just don't care that much about the winter Olympics....because we're just o.k. at them. We're like the college that isn't that good at football...and people just don't really care. At UC you'll find thousands of rabid basketball fans and dozens of rabid UC football fans. Actually there are a lot more, but they love OSU football. It's the same way in NFL & MLB cities that aren't any good...until they start winning.
The thing is - The USA is supposed to win the second most medals. That's another thing...we don't really care unless they're gold medals. We're only supposed to win five golds. That's about fourth best....fourth isn't good enough. We're supposed to get second overall in medals...that's almost good enough...but it isn't. The US will have spent millions of dollars on training and developing athletes and will end up with 5 more golds than the Murphy household.
We're front runners. Part of the deal is that unless you're a gal, you probably don't care a bunch about figure skating...and unless you're a freak, you probably don't care about every other non hockey "sport" on ice. It's kind of sad to me that my favorite sport in the winter Olympics is hockey. You'd think they'd throw basketball or wrestling in there. It's not like you have to play outdoors. We have both of those sports in the winter over here. Maybe the deal is that it has to be cold indoors if it's not outdoors....
"I liked ______ before they were popular" I've heard that a thousand times. It's like it doesn't count if you started liking some group before they were famous. "I was following the ________'s when they weren't winning any games" Really? You'd think the stadium would have been more full if all the people who liked teams when they were horrible would have shown up. "I don't like _________ because they're popular" It's not cool to like popular stuff. People want to be different....on paper.
We are front runners and we hate front runners. We're a self loathing Country.
Lets root for the good 'ol US of A
Unless there's something better on TV...
not a huge winter olympic fan but i like any kind of competition. especially when the winner is considered the best in the world. i don't know why, i guess i just think its cool to know that the guy i just watched is the best in the WORLD at sliding down a patch of ice.
ReplyDeletemaybe it was unusual but 4 years ago the usa cleaned up at the winter olympics. i'm pretty sure we were first in overall and gold medal counts. maybe i'm wrong.
Did you hear that there not allowing baseball to be a summer olympic sport because most of the world hates George W. and Americans right now and baseball is an American sport? I just heard that. I don't know the rest of the story.
ReplyDeleteOops, sorry, bad grammer- I meant "they're", not "there".:)
ReplyDeleteI did hear that. They love Castro and Kim Jong-il though...so go figure.
ReplyDeleteActually, the United States (Government, etc.) does not spend a dime training athletes. All of the money that pays for training and food and housing for th atletes at the olympic training centers (in Colorado Springs and other places) comes strictly from sponsors and jobs that the atletes have. The athletes train 8 hours a day 7 days a week at the OTC and they are required to hold a full time job of 40 hours a week on top of that that pays for food, etc. So no, we tax payers don't pay "millions" for the training of these athletes.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't trying to make this an anti tax thing. (not sure I even mentioned taxes...but then again, I don't read my blog) I'm just saying that there are millions (no quotes necessary....it's not an exageration) of dollars that are spent on training. Maybe some of those sponsors are from other countries.
ReplyDelete...but my actual point wasn't really the Olympics...I was sort of talking about the fact that we love/hate whatever is hip, popular or "in" at a particular moment...
The Olympics aren't that in right now and I thought that was kind of interesting.
just an observation from a guy who probably falls into one of those categories on occasion...