Toaster's Ramblings... Olympics Edition

Why is there even a basketball competition in the Summer Olympic Games? You might as well just automatically hand the United States a gold medal and move on. It’s not like hockey in the Winter Olympics where Russia, Canada and many European countries have a ton of talent. What other countries even have that level of interest on basketball? This is why American Football isn’t an Olympic sport… because the Olympic committee really doesn’t want to hand the US another gold medal.

Honestly, I am convinced that there are a lot of sports and competitions specifically designed for the Olympics. I mean, beyond high school where else do gymnastics and track & field really matter? I never hear of any proud colleges boasting of gymnastic and track accomplishments.  It’s weird because it seems there are a lot of sports that must have their own championships and tournaments but nobody really gives a crap about them unless there are gold medals involved. Suddenly everyone is all about skeet or hanging from rings or whatever.

To gauge even farther into this phenomenon, while I was eating lunch at a Q’doba today, I noticed some other patrons watching Olympic programming on the television. It was team competitive rowing. I thought to myself 'these people couldn’t possibly care less about this, except it’s the Olympics.'  Or… I do have this other theory about how Americans will watch anything if the television is on… it doesn’t matter what. It could be a 30 second loop of footage and people will automatically give their attention just because the TV is on. I say Americans in this because I seriously hope that other nationalities don’t partake in this bizarre behavior… or humanity may be too far gone.

Anyways, I know I’m in the minority here, but I find the Olympics to be boring and irritating. There’s always idiotic drama like some judge making a bad decision or an athlete screwing up and everyone making some huge embarrassing event out of it. This year I guess this Hope Solo person made some disparaging statements about a commentator. Who the hell cares? See, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could just ignore the Olympic games. I can usually ignore the World Series or the NBA finals. (The Superbowl is harder since in the USA it is the end-all-be-all sporting event that even gets otherwise sane non-football fans to watch for the commercials. The end times are upon us, people.)

I can’t ignore the Olympics. They’re on several channels, appear on the covers of every magazine and newspaper and dominate the headlines of news channels and websites. Plus, people will just automatically have it on the television where I inevitably will end up looking (yes, I am an American too). I can’t escape it. Hey, we could turn on this movie… NO! WE HAVE TO SEE WHO CAN RUN FASTEST IN A CIRCLE!

I realize that many love the Summer and Winter games and the athletes train extremely hard to be there; power to them. But I should be able to live my life without Olympic hype being crammed down my throat! I don’t shove comic books and Star Wars movies in their faces! Until Michael Phelps dominated in the 2008 games, virtually nobody in the USA gave a damn about swimming events, but now it’s this huge deal. And why the hell do I have to care about ice skating? I swear to God that if you’ve seen one ice skating routine, you’ve seen them all. After a while, I end up hoping one of them will screw up and fall just for a break from the monotony.  

What saddens me is that the whole world comes together every four years (the countries that have winter every two years in-between) for a whole bunch of sporting events, yet the World’s Fair has long since died. When the games are over, it’s back to normal… nothing is changed and nothing has been made better for the human race. At least the World’s Fair gave a spotlight to technology and ingenuity, people striving to reach that next level of advancement for society and the Earth in general. While the Olympic Games garner such hype and devotion, the spirit of the World’s Fair, the drive to better our lives and our planet, has been left to decay as fanciful memories of a bygone era. In a world seeing rising crises in over-population, global warming, water shortages, pollution, obesity and rapid fuel consumption I think we could better utilize that spirit of unity between nations in a more constructive and progressive manner.