Winter Olympics, Oh How You Bore Me

I don't consider myself a "hater". If I don't like a band, it's not because they're successful. If I despise a sports figure, it's not because of his (or her) high skill level. If I hate a chick, it's not because she is lucky enough to become impregnated repeatedly by different men.

So, when I don't like something or someone, it's due to negative traits that I perceive (which, granted, might be disagreed with by reasonable people or even incorrect objectively).

When I say I really don't like the Winter Olympics, then, I have some negative things to say about it. That is, if it is drawn out of me in conversation and/or if I feel like writing a blog and can't think of anything else to say (hey... it was a busy January, OK?).

Let me list some reasons I dislike the Winter Olympics. I don't think I'd go so far as to say I hate them. But I dislike them. Here are some reasons:

The hype. I've been hearing about how the NBC has the Winter Olympics forever. I've known that Vancouver has been the host forever. I've been preemptively bored forever. I know that NBC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the event. I still. Do. Not. Care.

The delay. I get that NBC wants to maximize revenues and I don't begrudge them that... but in the age of instant (pitch by pitch, play by play) access, if NBC expects me to wait around to watch massively delayed sports then they're insane.

Sports depending on judges for scoring. I rank, as a general proposition, sports in this order:

1. Sports with direct defense. Basketball, football, soccer, baseball, hockey.
2. Sports with scoring and indirect defense. Tennis.
3. Sports with timing and indirect competitor influence. Most track events.
4. Sports with scoring and no defense and little or no competitor influence. Most field events.
5. Sports with timing and no competitor influence. Bobsledding, parachuting (is that a sport?)
6. Water sports. I've actually never seen this. I just think I'd prefer it to the next one.
7. Sports where judges give scores. Ice dancing. Gymnastics events. Diving. 

I'm not saying this is the order of difficulty (water sports, for example, might be challenging depending on the trust level one has with one's partner(s))... I'm sure ice dancing would be fucking impossible for me. But it's boring to me and I have grave reservations about the legitimacy of it as a sporting competition.

Pre-empted NBC Thursday night shows. 30 Rock, Community, The Office... even Parks and Recreation. These four shows are about the only network comedies I watch on television. And I've lost two weeks of them thanks to the Winter Olympic Games.

Curling and gender equity. I understand why there is men's boxing and women's boxing. I get why men and women don't compete on the same hockey ice.

But curling? Why is there men's curling and women's curling? Is there some inherent advantage one sex has over the other? Will a generation of little boys (or girls) grow up feeling excluded from the myriad of curling opportunities if national teams are dominated by one sex or the other?

Curling seems like a cute little past time, and it seems no less silly than a lot of other stupid sports in the Winter Olympics, but... break down that gender wall. There's no female Indy 500 circuit (at least that I know of.)

Hemisphere discrimination. Dang. I actually had to do some research for this one. For the first time, I went to the official site of the Winter Olympics. Why? To put some numbers to something that seems ridiculously obvious:

The Winter Olympics are almost exclusively a Northern Hemisphere celebration, and the top ten medal-winning countries are almost exclusively from the Northern and Western hemispheres.

1. US: 32
2. Germany: 26
3. Norway: 19
4. Canada: 16
5. Russia: 13
6. Austria: 12
7. Korea: 10
8. France: 10
9. China: 9
10. Switzerland: 8

All Northern hemisphere... and while several of these countries are from the literal Eastern Hemisphere, Germany, Switzerland and Austria are generally considered part of "the West"... leaving Russia, Korea and China as the only "non-Western" countries in the top 10.

Bob Costas. I like him. He used to work in the ABA. He seems smart. But there's just too much of him on the broadcasts. You know how you sometimes type a word and you stare at it, and the more you stare the less "right" it looks? I feel that way about Costas. I like him, and then he keeps talking. I look at his hair, and listen to the way he pronounces words, and think about how freaking old he is (he used to work in the ABA, after all)... and I start to think he just doesn't look "right". They gotta mix it up and show a little less of him before he's lost to me forever.

Irrelevance. This happens every four years, and I guess there are athletes that play between olympiads, but I don't know them... and when I know them, they disappear for years at a time. The only athletes I have the potential to see/care about regularly are NHL players... and they play in the NHL. Who watches that?

Which, now that I think about it, makes them the perfect marquee athletes for this set of competitions.