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Tuesday, September 19
Olympics aren't only game in town
By Ray Ratto
Special to ESPN.com
The Summer Olympics are only a few weeks away, which means one thing.
We are about to get very sick of the Summer Olympics.
|  | | Sure, the Olympics have Maurice Greene. But that's not everything. |
In fact, between
the commercialization, the three coats of hype and NBC trying to force the
concept of crypt-hype down our maws, some folks will come to hate the
Olympics, and we put it to you that such a reaction is not only normal but
almost admirable.
Two brief remarks. One, this is not a case of defending the honor of
The High Lord Mouse by belittling another network product. Like every
multitentacled network, Disney/ABC has more to atone for than it can ever
manage, most recently the Philbin-O-Thon.
And no, it is not a breach of your patriotic duty to say so, either.
Our parents fought the Nazis for our right to be catatonically bored by the
Olympics, to be stultified to the point of inertia, to dream that we lived
in Liechtenstein, where the Olympics are no more interesting than the glove
compartment of your Uncle Leo's late-model Kia.
For those of you who happen to enjoy the Olympics and all it lies
about standing for, you may move on. We do not wish to change your minds.
You can cover yourselves up to your eyelids in gymnasts, shot-putters,
target-shooters and flag-waving yahoos of every variety if you see fit. We
defend your right to choose. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Power comes from
the barrel of a remote.
But while you're off wishing our guy beats that poor Belgian to talc
in the first round of the Greco-Roman quilting competition, or that all the
Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians,
Belarussians, Kazakhs, Tadzhiks, Turkmens, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were still
just Soviets you could hate indiscriminately, we agnostics will be fine.
Don't worry about us, and don't fret that we'll come into the room while
you're watching some 11-year-old stick figure on the balance beam and go,
"What? This again?"
No, we'll have baseball and the pennant races. We'll have the NFL and
the beginning of the college season. We'll have more than we know what to
do with, and we'll do great.
You see, the Olympics this time are being overkilled for us in
September, when the sporting schedule is at its most hectic. It means that
those of us who find the whole Olympic movement a model for corruption,
drug abuse and general weaselry can amuse ourselves with our own models of
corruption, drug abuse and general weaselry.
Now what could be fairer than that?
In Sydney, you'll have judges cheating boxers out of fairly-won decisions. In the rest of the sports world, we'll
have umpires and back judges turning balls into strikes and punt returns
into blocks below the waist.
You'll have broadcasters fooling us into thinking that the U.S. men's
basketball team is really getting geeked up for that quarterfinal with
Egypt. We'll have Dennis Miller and Dan Fouts arguing over the relative
strengths of Darrin Chiaverini and JaJuan Dawson.
You'll have medal winners failing drug tests. We'll have linebackers
failing marijuana tests.
You'll have sprinters blowing hamstrings. We'll have pitchers
developing blisters.
You'll have the medal counts: "Look, Brunhilda, we're still kicking
Burkina Faso's butt." We'll have the wild card race: "Now if the Marlins
wins 17 of their last 12, and the Giants all come down with cholera ..."
And we'll have two things you won't.
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Football is made for gambling, whereas the 20K walk
is not. In fact, if it weren't for gambling, football would be
cockfighting, only with slightly more graceful chickens. ” |
One: actual live events. We won't
have to wait for The History Channel to give us the results of the javelin
... unless, of course, someone has the eminent good taste to impale an
official with one.
And two: gambling. Football is made for gambling, whereas the 20K walk
is not. In fact, if it weren't for gambling, football would be
cockfighting, only with slightly more graceful chickens. We will find ways
to make Bengals-Ravens, Eagles-Saints and Titans-Open Date interesting in
ways that you could never manage with an all-Kenyan final in the
5,000-meters. It's called, "betting the gas bill," and it gives you an
endorphin rush you can't get with any Olympic sport that doesn't have Tonya
Harding in it.
So you all enjoy the Olympics. Wallow in the overwrought grace, the
hyperbolic tales, the slow motion scene of Paul Hogan falling into the
Olympic Flame, and Bud Greenspan making it all sound like Winston
Churchill after Dunkirk. We'll leave you to your amusements, and you'll
leave us to ours.
Although you can watch Kurt Warner throw for five scores against San
Francisco if you let us watch Stacy Dragila in the pole vault. When we say,
"Let a thousand flowers bloom," after all, we're not just good-time
Maoists. We really mean it.
Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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