Well, the Olympics have arrived. Its that time, every four years where all the kids who were picked on growing up, get together and play irrelevant “sports.” Okay, don’t get me wrong, these people are clearly the very best at what they do. I think it would be awesome to be able to look in the mirror and say, “I am the baddest mother f’er to do what I do.” In reality, I know, and accept I will never be the best at anything. That being sad…
I think the Olympics are lame. LAME! The Olympics consist of over 300 events, 10,000 participants, from over 205 nations. My largest complaint is the choice of events. For whatever reason, the Association of Summer Olympic Federations has failed to update the events to match the modern world. I don’t care who the best Badminton player is, I really don’t expect anyone outside the border of China to care either. Not to mention Handball, Ping-Pong, Fencing, Diving, Equestrian, Canoeing, Cricket, Archery, and everything else.
The problem I have with those “sports” is the fact that any limp-wristed sally can participate. The original Olympics held in Olympia consisted of only the gnarliest of dudes. Boxing, which we still have in the modern games, consisted of two huge guys pounding each others skulls, bare-knuckled, until one was either knocked unconscious, or admitted defeat. In the modern games boxers wear full pads, including big, soft, pillow-like gloves, and a head completely entombed in pounds of padding. One thing’s for sure, you will not see a knock-out in the modern Olympics.
Just in case bare-knuckle boxing wasn’t tough enough for you, they also had Pankration. Pankration was a combination of Boxing and Wrestling. The only moves outlawed in Pankration were gouging an opponents eyes or nose with your fingernails. Besides those two rules, literally everything you can think of was allowed. Can you imagine the thousands of ways to inflict pain on your opponent other than sticking a fingernail in the eye or nose? I can think up a few…
Not to mention the original Olympics were done in complete nudity, that in itself puts a contestant at a far higher risk.
Besides the severe displays of homosexuality I have seen in the last couple days, do you know how much money it costs to put on an event of this magnitude? The Beijing numbers aren’t in yet, but if you look back at Greece, you will see the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens cost an estimated 7.2 BILLION dollars. Emphasis on Billions, and not Millions. In case you still don’t get it, that’s nine 0′s, $7,200,000,000. 1.5 Billion dollars were spent on Security alone. Can you imagine what could be done with $7.2 billion? You could give $1 billion to each of the seven continents (although I don’t know how much use Antarctica would have for $1 billion) to improve their quality of life, and still have $200 million for the games.
I am confident that I am not the only one who feels this way. This is proven in television viewership numbers. During the 2002 Olympics, American Idol consistently drew 10 million more nightly viewers than the Olympics. NBC had to provide “make-good ad’s”, which basically means, “yeah we screwed you by taking millions upon millions of your ad dollars and having our event beat by the 5th season of a talent show, so we’ll cut you a deal on a future ad.” General Motors, one of the biggest advertisers in the Olympics, is “disappointed in the viewership to date.”
But get this, during those same winter Olympics, Olympic skating aired side-by-side with Fox’s reality TV show, Skating With Celebrities. Guess who had higher viewership ratings? The canceled-after-one-season “reality” show.
The Olympics are supposed to drum up connotations of the true American (or any other nation) badass. Someone who’ll walk up to you in a bar, punch you in the mouth, and walk out with your girlfriend. Turning on the 24/7 coverage of the Olympics, I am severely dissapointed.
Okay, I gotta go, womens water polo is on next…
August 13th, 2008 at 11:13 am
first off, let me say that boxing in the olympics is way better than American championship boxing. you might not see a knock out, but unlike in american boxing, you dont get points for knockdowns, also they pack 15 rounds of fighting into those 4 olympic rounds.
GO AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 13th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Haha, this is hilarious because it is all the same things I have been saying since the Olympics started this year. I feel like I should have just picked some really obscure sport and gone to the Olympics for it. Then for the rest of my life I could have said that I got a gold medal. I could have just not mentioned it was for handball or canoeing.
There are a few good sports in the Olympics but they are vastly outnumbered. I think they should cut the Olympics down to around ten badass events and cut out all the rest. I think synchronized diving can probably go. I really don’t care how similar you look to your boyfriend when you jump in the water.
If synchronized diving gets to be an event I say we bring back tug-o-war (which once was an Olympic event). What is a more obvious example of sheer strength and determination than that?
All that being said I do feel some satisfaction watching Michael Phelps basically dominate every country and world record that exists. But then again its a lot like gymnastics and the majority of the other events: after these Olympics are over no one is going to give a shit about what you do until four years from now when we have the next Olympic games.