Veritable flurry of distracting events obscures Winter Olympics

Tuesday, February 3, 1998

Veritable flurry of distracting events obscures Winter
Olympics

COLUMN Lack of media hype adds to American apathy regarding
games

What if there was a Winter Olympics and no one showed up?

Worse yet, what if there was a Winter Olympics and nobody
watched?

Worse still, what if there was a Winter Olympics, and most
people had no idea it was about to start?

All of a sudden, it’s time for another 17-day celebration that
will incorporate all of those wonderful Olympic ideals:
professional hockey players forsaking NHL dollars to play for their
country, biathletes trying not to put a bullet in those malicious
hecklers at Nordic events, and seemingly sane men doing huge
amounts of angel dust and throwing themselves off a ramp on the off
chance they’ll live through the landing and receive a hunk of
bronze for their effort.

Trouble is, no one really seems to care.

There’s been no Tonya Harding-esque controversies, no
inspirational Dan "Too drunk to stand" Jansen stories, nothing to
turn our attention to the Winter O-my God, this is boring-lympics,
which generally need a shot in the arm, or at least a pipe to the
knee, to get our attention.

Americans just aren’t that interested in who can combine
cross-country skiing and target shooting, unless the target happens
to be alive and shaped like Rudolph.

We want to see blood rivalries and explosive crashes.

But most importantly, we want to see Americans winning lots of
medals.

No one is interested in Finnish ski jumpers, German speed
skaters and Austrian downhill skiers wearing incredibly tight
leotards. No one wants to hear about some intrepid Minnesotan
vomiting before the eyes of the world after placing 34th in the
biathlon or a four-man bobsled team beating the odds to come in
sixth place.

Obviously, we’re not talking about a marquee event here.

The Winter Games are to the Summer Olympics what Dustin Hoffman
was to Tom Cruise in "Rain Man," and most people aren’t chomping at
the bit to watch ol’ Raymond do a solo act, because it’s pretty
damn boring.

So this begs the question, why wouldn’t the powers that be get
their toupees screwed on right and find some way to get us hyped
about the games?

This is a difficult task when all you can muster are ESPN2
promos and "Countdown to Nagano" segments at halftime of a
basketball game that no one is watching anyway.

What efforts have been tendered have been washed away by three
weeks of Super Bowls, basketball, and a President whose alleged
philandering would put most fraternity guys to shame.

Who has time for people in tight leotards throwing themselves
down a mountain wearing hunks of graphite on their feet while the
fans ring cowbells when we can watch a President immolate himself
before a nation?

The prospect of watching the games is worsened by the fact that
Nagano is 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles, so CBS will be able to
show a "made for television" Olympics.

The stuff we get to see during prime time won’t have any of the
drama of live action; it will be of the prepackaged variety,
sanitized for your pleasure.

All of the really cool stuff, like the crashes on the giant
slalom course, the fights in hockey games, and vomiting on the side
of the cross-country ski course will be excised, unless of course
it’s an American losing his lunch or flying headlong into a support
barrier.

But while we’re missing out on all of this drama, there is one
thing to be happy about – John Tesh is staying home.

Mark Shapiro is a Daily Bruin columnist and beat writer for
men’s basketball. E-mail responses to [email protected]