OK, it’s been over a week of wall-to-wall, hour-by-hour
coverage of the Winter Olympics on all 20 or so of NBC’s networks and I have
now finally come to one realization.
I personally don’t get the Winter Olympics at all.
I mean, I tried this time. I really tried hard. But I’m
missing something that I guess the rest of the globe understands.
What’s all the fuss about? Where’s the excitement in it?
There have been times _ like all of them _ over the last 11 days of the
gripping wall-to-wall, hour-by-hour coverage that I find myself totally bored
out of my wits and longing for anything to grab my attention. Like anything.
First, let’s start with the name of the area in South Korea
where this frozen display of international bad fashion is taking place. It’s
being held in Pyeongchang County. It certainly doesn’t roll off the tongue like
Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey does. Couldn’t we just rename the place “Cleveland” for a
few weeks to avoid confusion and trying to learn to spell it or even say it? I’m
not going to charm school to learn how to say Pyeongchang. I think it rhymes
with Young Chang, which sounds like an Asian rap star.
I found myself watching the figure skating _ I don’t know
which one, long form, short form, ice dancing, pairs ice dancing, team pairs ice
dancing, free fall _ the other night just waiting to see what Johnny Weir was
wearing.
Terry Gannon, the former N.C. State basketball player on Jim
Valvano’s “Survive and Advance” NCAA champs, is actually announcing the figure
skating with the over-the-top flamboyant Weir and his sidekick Tara Lupinski,
who from what I gather won some sort of medal in some form of figure skating a
while back.
Bring me back to the days of Peggy Fleming and Dorothy
Hamill, please. I’ll even take the drama of trailer queen Tonya Harding and
that big-toothed phony Nancy Kerrigan over what is going on now.
Apparently, one young lady attempted a triple something or
other the other night, which had never been done in Olympic competition. And
yeah, sure, right, Terry Gannon knew exactly what that move was. It was
definitely not the run and jump defense or the pick-and-roll offense, if you
catch my drift.
Sure, it was nice to see that American brother/sister combo from
Connecticut or Boston or Michigan (my head was spinning trying to keep up with
where they actually live) Maia and Alex Shibutani, who were dubbed with the
catchy nickname “The Shib Sibs.” But I was confused because most of the other
competitors were also Asian and the crowds were going nuts for the Koreans and
I had no idea whether they were American or Korean, but I did find out that
they were huge fans of the Korean Pop band BTS, whose big hit is entitled “DNA.”
Got all that?
So the figure skating had me losing whatever little mind I
had left. Don’t ask me who won or who lost. There was no Dick Button to ramble
about the “humanity” of another famous ice pair Tai Babilonia and Randy
Gardner, when one of those two or both got hurt in the middle of their Olympic
performance somewhere.
Let’s move on to another gripping Winter Olympic event.
There was the awesome activity called curling, which I really want to know how
it was invented in the first place. There had to be some drunks sitting around
in some frozen tundra pounding down some brewskis _ on a frozen pond, of course
_ who grabbed a frying pan filled with snow, slid it across the frozen pond and
another of the malooks grabbed a broom to sweep away the excess snow and ice
that might be a deterrent to the frying pan filled with snow.
How curling is a sport is beyond my comprehension. If I
think about it too much, my eyes will explode out of the sockets. Taking that
weighed pot (called a stone, now I know) and slide it gently across the ice
while two other people with brooms feverishly brush the ice so the stone gets
as close to the center as possible. And the ice is painted to look like an
archery board. Just thinking about the people who actually dreamed up this
mistake on ice is comical to me. And there are men’s and women’s curling and of
course, team curling, which is just as gripping.
Is anyone as excited as I am so far? We’ll continue.
We’ll move on to the International Sliding Station (kid you
not) for two more events, namely bobsled and luge.
There’s a two-man bobsled and the four-man bobsled (which
was made famous in that great Disney movie “Cool Runnings” with John Candy
about the Jamaican bobsled team). See, if you wait long enough, there is always
a reference to Disney. It just pops up. Like Oprah and Justin Bieber.
There’s actually strategy involved with the bobsled and how
they run real fast, then systematically jump into the moving contraption as it
makes its way down the ice in the International Sliding Station. It’s a sight
to behold. There are little clocks that appear at the right hand bottom of the screen,
but they keep spinning over and over like the tote board in the Jerry Lewis
Telethon.
In luge, there aren’t two-man teams. That would get too
funky. But these people run, dive on the box that is not much bigger than a
trash can lid and slide down flat on their back. Some travel feet first and
other daredevils travel head first. There’s a different name for that kind of
luge. Again, it’s just something to confuse the crap out of me.
Again, there are people who really get into these events,
but since I’m clueless, I watch for a few spins of that clock-like thing in the
corner of the screen and move on.
Well, there’s skiing as well. Now, how can anyone screw
around with the sport that is so popular as a form of recreation in the winter?
Trust me. They can.
There is Nordic Alpine and Super G (isn’t that the
weatherman on Channel 11?) and slalom and giant slalom and cross country (hey,
there’s a term I’m familiar with, but that’s running on grass, twigs and hills
in October and November). There are all these different races going on every
single day, just enough to confuse the living hell out of me.
I do remember Franz Klammer doing the downhill at the Winter
Olympics when I was a kid and Bob Beattie and Frank Gifford going bonkers as
the German was completely airborne for most of his gold-medal winning run. That
was exciting.
But the only thing I got out of the skiing was that Lindsay
Vonn is still a very pretty woman and that the gold medal winner in one of the
races sounded like she was from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
The other thing I got was that people scream unintelligible
things when the skier comes out of the opening gate. It doesn’t sound like a
genuine language, just utter yelps like when Grandma’s rocking chair rocked
back onto the family cat’s tail. I never understood the “Get in the hole”
screams at golf tournaments when the golfer is some 500 yards away from the
pin. And I don’t understand whatever it was that these ski mavens were barking
at the start of every run.
It didn’t matter what country the skier was from. The
yelling seemed to be universal and seemed to show no purpose whatsoever.
Then there’s the biathlon, where skiers cross country ski
for miles, toting a rifle along for good measure in case there’s a stray moose
on the course, then get down into the snow and shoot at targets while lying in
the snow, then get up and race more cross country skiing. Again, who dreamed up
that one? Ski for miles, then lay in the snow, shoot a rifle, get up and ski
some more. The thrill of victory and the agony of my feet.
To capitalize on the popularity of the Winter X Games, a
creation for television by ESPN years ago, the International Olympic Committee
voted to include many of those trick-based, stunt driven events like
snowboarding and half-pipe and full pipe and crack pipe and ski jumping with
tricks on the halfpipe as actual Olympic sports. Now, isn’t that special?
Ah, hockey. Now, there’s something I can relate to. However,
the National Hockey League ruled this year that they were not going to put the
league on a three-week delay to benefit the Olympics, so if you were under
contract with an NHL team, you were not allowed to participate in the Olympics.
So Team USA was comprised of a bunch of older hockey
veterans no longer talented enough to play in the NHL, some minor leaguers and
some college players. It wasn’t like the days of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice”
team, which was meticulously selected from the college ranks. This was a
conglomeration of misfits thrown together with USA across their sweaters. The
team didn’t stand a chance and they were eliminated early.
In recent years, each of the top teams featured the NHL
stars, so there was some national pride going on with the United States,
Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, you have it. This year, it was more of an “eh.”
On the women’s side, there was Team USA battling Team Canada
for the gold medal, a game that went into overtime and eventually the shootout.
Perhaps that was the most dramatic moment of the games.
And then there was the coverage of these events from a
broadcasting point of view. Long gone are the days of the immortal Jim McKay,
who always had us captivated with his “Up Close and Personal” features on the
athletes, both American and foreign, and those little vignettes really made you
have more of an interest and created rooting flavor.
Now, we have Mike Tirico, who stands there looking
completely out of place and definitely creepy. And what’s with the set, when he’s
sitting behind what is supposed to be some sort of desk, but it’s actually
carved out to look like an ice sculpture? What brilliant NBC mind thought up
that design? I’d take Bob Costas and his pink eye anytime.
I have to say that I was impressed with the announcing
skills of former US ski champ Bode Miller, who while he was competing sounded
like he was Jeff Spicoli’s long lost brother from “Fast Times at Ridgemont
High.” Back then, Miller was looking to catch some bitchin’ hills and make some
frosty moves around the awesome pilons. Now as a mature responsible announcer,
Miller sounds professional and true, even speaking bluntly about the powdery
conditions of the courses. Miller stood out in my eyes.
But when we had Chris Schenkel and Dick Button doing the
figure skating for ABC back then, they captured the drama and the essence and
importance of the Olympics. NBC has Weir wearing hats that Carol Channing
disposed of from the set of “Hello, Dolly,” and Weir and Lipinski practically
cheering and saying, “You go, girlfriend.” Ugh!
So I tried this year. I really tried. As you can see with
the verbal rant, I certainly watched enough to come away with these
observations. I just didn’t have to like it. Because basically, I have no idea
what in the world I was watching in the first place.
Here’s the best news of all. The first spring training
baseball games are scheduled for Friday. Adrian Gonzalez says that he’s healthy
and ready to have a big year for the Mets. Yankee fans are predicting 80 homers
each for Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and about 75 homers for Gary Sanchez
(who still cannot speak English for some reason) and 50 homers for Greg Bird.
Baseball is a sport that I
understand. The stuff from Pyeongchang? Not so much.
The college basketball season is winding its way down to the
last few regular season games. Believe it or not, the postseason tournaments
will tip off in two weeks and March Madness is only three weeks away from
beginning. The season has flown by.
When the season began, I truly believed that Seton Hall was
a team that could make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. I was predicting that
they were an Elite Eight team and could perhaps head to the Final Four with a
little luck. They were talented and had enough good senior leadership and
talent to do it.
But now, for some reason, the Pirates are floundering again.
They were teetering on the possibility of not even making the NCAAs, but I
think they’ve rebounded with two wins over DePaul and Providence to secure
their place in March Madness.
Can they make a run at the Big East title? They did so two
years ago when they shocked Villanova in the championship game of 2016, so it’s
not out of the realm of possibility.
However, something happened with this team to make things
turn sour as bad as they did. They have
a 19-9 record overall and an 8-7 record in the Big East after defeating
Providence Thursday in a game that started Wednesday night and ended Thursday
due to unsafe floor conditions caused by the condensation in the Dunkin’ Donuts
Center after Wednesday’s unseasonably warm temperatures.
It’s really hard to put a finger on what transpired with the
Pirates. It’s not a team with riddled with dissention like when they collapsed
in 2015. This team generally gets along well and plays well together. So their
poor play is a mystery.
The Pirates need their senior leaders like Desi Rodriguez,
Angel Delgado and Khadeem Carrington to step up and play like four-year college
basketball veterans. With the ever-changing world of college basketball teams,
kids transferring from school to school in rapid fashion, the Pirates should
have an advantage by having three kids who have played together for four years
with more than 110 games of experience together.
There aren’t a lot of college
teams that can lay claim to that fact.
So the Pirates need to have
those three make the final weeks of their collegiate careers memorable or they
would have to be considered a major failure. Could it be rectified in time? Of
course. All they need to do is look at what they did two years ago, when they
shocked the world and won the Big East championship. It can happen again _ but
they better get their acts in gear right now before the Big East Tournament
tips off at Madison Square Garden beginning March 3.
You can read more of my work at www.hudsonreporter.com and www.theobserver.com