The Olympics

I've watched no more than 30 minutes total of the Winter Olympics and I don't think I'm alone in my apathy. Everywhere you turn there are commentaries or articles on the low ratings and lack of interest in these Olympics. Peter McEntegart just posted 10 ways to improve the Olympics of which this was my favorite:

4. Make up more events that Americans can win. It seems that we're awfully good in anything involving a snowboard. Let's just apply the same techniques the Nordic countries have used for years: Create a new sport by combining old ones. OK, so cross-country skiing can be paired with both ski jumping (Nordic combined) and shooting (biathlon)? Fine. How about Snowball, in which competitors must snowboard and then throw a baseball? Try to beat us in that, Sven.

I still think my suggestions from more than two weeks ago would greatly improve the ratings:

The Winter Olympics starts in a week. Does anyone really care? I'd have more interest if they included sports like drunken skiing and ice rugby. They could easily change the Biathlon so that instead of taking a rifle shot at a target - the skiers take a shot of booze that symbolizes the host country (what is a good booze for Italy?). I bet the new event would get better ratings than the real Biathlon

I didn't comment on the Bryant Gumble flap because I didn't think he was too far off base. As a reminder, Gumble ran into trouble when he said the following:

"So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. And try to blot out all logic when announcers and sports writers pretend to care about the luge, the skeleton, the biathlon and all those other events they don't understand and totally ignore for all but three weeks every four years. Face it, these Olympics are little more than a marketing plan to fill space and sell time during the dreary days of February."

I've never been to a GOP Convention but I do know that this administration has had two black Secretaries of State and I also remember who opposed Clarence Thomas when he was nominated by the Republicans to sit on the Supreme Court. So like most times when sports commentators try to bring politics into the picture - this was a mistake. However, Gumble wasn't far off base in his other observations. The Winter Olympics has become a marketing vehicle with sports nobody cares about.

Many people (OK hockey enthusiasts) argue that hockey players are the best conditioned athletes in the world. That's all fine and dandy but that's just one sport and as far as the women's hockey teams - I can't get the fact that the US women's team trained against some of the top boys high school programs in the US and lost every game they played. So if the fact is that I can see better hockey at the boys state championship level than by watching the women's Olympic games - don't try and sell me on the best athletes in the world crap. (This argument may not make sense to you but it does to me and to Darren Daulton.)

Here's my suggestion to make Bryant Gumble happy and to raise the ratings on future Winter Olympics. Take boxing and wrestling out of the summer Olympics and put them into the winter Olympics. Who says boxing and wrestling are summer sports? These are indoor events that could easily be moved to the winter and the athletes from these sports would be mega stars during the winter Olympics.

Of course one other thing most people fail to mention is that the 2010 Winter Olympics will be in Vancouver and the fact that most events will be "live" will certainly boost the ratings.