Doyel: I can't watch
This isn't about whether the Olympics should be in China. They shouldn't be. Holding the Olympics in Beijing is not so different from the disgrace of putting them in 1936 Berlin. Where's the IOC going to stick the next Olympic Games? Afghanistan?
No, you can't time travel and change the venue. The Games are there and whether you think they should be is now irrelevant. The Games themselves, however, aren't extraneous. In fact, these Games have already provided some of the best television drama since the O.J. trial. Or at least since Roger Clemens' DNA was discussed on Capitol Hill.
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| Just getting to Beijing makes Dara Torres one of sports' biggest -- and best -- stories. (AP) |
What would you Olympic bashers rather watch? Reruns of Battlestar Galactica? Another college football player get arrested? The Brett Favre Channel? The dissection of an Aaron Rodgers pass? Preseason football (let's see which third-string punter is going to get cut)?
There are 9,035 MLB games. You can miss one to watch a little Olympic tennis. Tiger's leg is in a cast, so golf if dead to most people. The sports scene is currently so slow, Manny Ramirez could outrun it.
Meanwhile these Michael Phelps Olympics have been tremendous. They're the Phel-ympics. Indeed, how bad could the Olympics be when we get to watch the occasionally arrogant French talk bilingual smack before a swim race and then lose?
Dara Torres is built like Jerome Bettis. She's not The Bus, she's The Submarine. Assuming she's clean -- and maybe I'm horribly naïve, but I think she is -- the fact 41-year-old AquaDara is even competing is one of the best stories in all of sports.
Boxing has been fun. Tennis has been entertaining. The baseball has been interesting. I'll take synchronized diving over fourth-quarter exhibition football any day of the week. The soccer has been fabulous and the American women are on a slow march to gold. In their last game, they scored the fastest goal in women's Olympic soccer history.
Admittedly the gymnastics still make me uncomfortable. Watching young girls beat the hell out of their bodies is awkward at best (and I feel the same way about young boys playing football at too early an age). Beach volleyball is unbelievably boring.
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Almost all of the other events are fascinating. The basketball games have been blowouts, but all of the mega-egos (particularly Ko-Me Bryant) have blended into a solid unit. That wasn't the case in the last Olympics. Plus we've gotten to see Dwyane Wade reemerge from his various surgeries and injuries as one of the top seven or eight players in the sport.
While NBC has done a little too much sucking of Phelps' toes -- Cris Collinsworth giving Phelps' mom a high-five is a bit over the top; I mean, who does Collinsworth think Phelps is, Brett Favre? -- the broadcasts have gone smoothly. Though if I see one more ad for the Lipstick Jungle, I might lose it.
Doyel complains the schedule is too convoluted and it's difficult to find events on the tele. The schedule is all over the Internet and I don't want to hear complaints about tape-delayed broadcasts. The Games are in freaking China. There's a 12-hour time difference. Not every broadcast is going to fall live, neatly into our spoiled American laps.
By far the best thing about the Olympics is Phelps. Phelps isn't the greatest individual Olympic athlete. There are better American performers, like Bruce Jenner, Wilma Rudolph, Bob Beamon, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Michael Johnson, Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe or Carl Lewis, among many others. Still, Phelps' accomplishments are already historic and he still has several races left.
