[July 27, 2008]

Olympian plans failed? Eh, just TiVo the games

(The Beaufort Gazette, S.C. Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jul. 27--I love the Olympics. It's been an obsession since I was a kid. I have plans to spend as much time as I can in front of my television for the two weeks of games, which begin Aug. 8.

The Winter Olympics are fine, don't get me wrong. I get just as invested in the snow sports as some of the summer ones, but it's not nearly as complete of an overwhelming obsession as the Summer Games. OK, I get it, there are skates, and there are skis. But where are the rhythmic gymnastics? Where's the equestrian? Where's the badminton?

My lifelong dream was to be in the Olympics, to travel, participate and hang out for two weeks, hopping from game to game, venue to venue. The games seem like the perfect mix of college campus and sporting event. I love the stories from the athletes' village, with the footage of the Hungarian shot-putter eating breakfast beside the Israeli water polo team member. It seems like the ideal slice of diversity and culture but with muscles and bad haircuts.

Of course, I didn't do much to pursue my Olympic dream. I was quite a baseball player -- but I walked away on top, after winning a league championship at 13. (I owed more to my fans, but I needed time to spend with my comic books.) My dream ended, or it's stalled, until they make "Madden 2008" an Olympic sport.

After college, I thought journalism might take me to the games. But newspapers aren't exactly begging reporters to fly across the world to provide coverage they can get cheaper through news agencies. So unless Hilton Head Island wins the 2020 Summer Games, that won't happen either.

I guess I can always save up and just go. But we all know that doing something as a tourist isn't nearly as fun as doing it as a participant (or with a press pass). I'd spend most of my time zooming from venue to venue with the grumpy masses, standing in security checkpoint lines as I tried to find, "No, no, this is just a camera" in my Swahili-to-English dictionary.

So, realistically, television is the closest I'll get to the Olympics. And, you know, that's OK.

I had my television in 1996, the summer of the Atlanta games, also the summer I worked the worst shift in the history of professional radio, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. I twice fell asleep during a broadcast, and I received 0.0 calls of complaint. NO ONE. The owners even complimented me on my good work the next day. I could have just turned the station completely off, and our ratings wouldn't have been affected.

I watched those games on a tiny black and white television. I was awake in the morning when the bombs went off in Atlanta, setting off hours of coverage. It's surreal to be stranded in the middle of nowhere as news is actually happening with no one to share the information with. It's even more surreal when, you know, you are working at a radio station, with access to the airwaves, and you STILL have no one to share the news with.

The first Olympic games I remember are 1984, and I've watched as much as I can ever since. I even flirted with the Goodwill Games, Ted Turner's version of the Olympics, which aired in the late '80s and throughout the '90s. They weren't as good, obviously, but the spirit was the same.

I admit it -- I'm a sucker for it all. I love the cheesy, heart-string pulling mini-bios NBC produces -- the ones that are designed to make you REALLY care about Boris Szqrchlski, even if only for a moment. (His mom died when he was 3, you heartless cretin!)

I watch it all, but I particularly enjoy the obscure sports, the ones you don't see and never think of except during the games: judo, sailing, table tennis, rowing, weight lifting, archery. I love the fourth-string announcers they get on the D-level broadcasts. I think I heard Ron Burgundy doing trampoline coverage in 2000.

NBC announced earlier this month it will have 2,900 hours of coverage throughout its broadcast and Internet platforms. To put that in perspective, that's more than the total U.S. TV hours -- 2,562 -- for all previous Summer Games combined. The guys on "PTI" found that number absurd. Not me. I think it's great.

I've already had a discussion with my TiVo, and I warned it, one of us might not make it out of this thing alive.

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