Olympic Mania

Sport was always a big deal in my house when I was growing up. We played it, we watched it, we talked about it. My poor mom had to join in or get left out…and she almost always joined in. Sure my brother and I played football, basketball, and track in school but we played it all in our front yard—baseball to badminton to volleyball to football, horseshoes, and bocce ball. I had my own goal post set up so I could practice kicking field goals for football. For a while we even set up our own pole vault pit in a dirt lot next to our house. It had burlap sacks filled with sawdust for a mat, a wooden cross bar lashed into place, and saplings for poles. It was a rough business because we really didn’t have a box to stabilize the pole as we tried to vault. It wasn’t uncommon for the pole to slide and to end up on you back on the rocky lot. It also wasn’t uncommon to overshoot the sawdust bags and hit the dirt hard. I remember how addicting it was and I also remember really getting hurt. Such was our sport mania.

As sports nuts, we watched a lot on TV. Now when I was a kid, TV was a pair of rabbit ears and the three networks…and that was it. And sometimes the interference “snow” made watching difficult. So we consumed whatever sport the networks served up. We were regular watchers of Wide World of Sports (“Spanning the globe to bring a constant variety of sports…:”, which aired on the weekends and showed everything from gymnastics to ski jumping to Indy car racing…and we watched it all and got into it all.

The Olympics were always an especially big deal because not only was it two weeks of sports; it also involved national pride. We got a good dose of American pride from my dad and it always played out during the Olympics. Remember also that I was a kid during the Cold War—you know when the great democracies were aligned against the Communists (don’t get me started on the fact that it was really about control of capital, labor, natural resources and ultimately profit). So the Olympics were a chance to compete against those stinkin’ commies without actually shooting anyone. It seemed really important then.

Even after I went to college, I remained an Olympics fanatic. I remember being totally into the 1984 Winter Olympics. Back then we didn’t have TVs in our dorm rooms; there was one TV lounge in the basement of the dorm that everyone used. I spent two weeks in that TV lounge watching all the events I could. It lead to the only D I ever got on an exam…in Biological Sciences. I still pulled a B in the class. I was a nerd—it took a long time to develop the cool I am now.

2012 may be the first Olympic year I can remember where I didn’t have cable TV to watch every televised minute possible. A few years back we gave up cable and have since consumed most of our media from the internet. I am a bit of a cycling fanatic too and I have managed to watch most of the big races and grand tours on the internet for free. NBC did not make that possible with these olympics. Sure every event is streamed live on the internet, but you can only consume that content if you already have a cable subscription. If I had a friggin’ cable subscription I wouldn’t care about watching on the internet!

I have found some sites on the internet that stream live coverage broadcast from other countries, including England. Of course that means that they are up and running when I would like to be down and sleeping. That has limited my Olympics viewing. For the most part, I have been OK with that. That is until I visited my dad last week. He has cable and we watched the Olympics during my entire visit. I returned home bitten by the Olympic bug and jonsing for that continuous coverage. Fortunately, my dad also reminded me that I should be able to get the local network channels on my fancy, non-cable-enhanced TV with some good old-fashioned rabbit ears.

Yesterday I finally went to Target and got a $16 pair of rabbit ears (I splurged and got the more expensive ones because the $10 set looked a little shaky.) And now we have one channel—NBC—covering the Olympics. It’s not continuous coverage for sure, but it’ll do.

And guess what? My kids are completely and utterly sucked into the Olympics now. They are obsessed. And I love it. There are lots of cynics out there who can rightly say that the Olympics are just an extension of Western imperialism and their results reflect the consequences of the spread of capitalism, colonialism, and the resulting under-development. In other words, rich and developed countries win most of the medals because they have the resources to support national sports programs. While that is true, I still believe in the ideal that sport can bring out the best in people and international sport played out on the Olympic stage can bring people together, bridge cultural and even political differences, and create connections that counter the divisions perpetuated by nationality, class, ethnicity, and religion. Plus I am just a total sucker for the drama of human competition, struggle, and achievement. To me there is something very good about seeing someone overcome by the joy of their achievement. I’m not so much concerned about nationalities and political battles for economic dominion anymore so I can and do enjoy any athlete’s success. I hope my kids eventually get that too.

So for one more glorious week we’ll sit glued to the TV to watch sports we won’t see again for another four years like equestrian, rowing, gymnastics, diving, swimming, and track and field. And maybe my kids will find a sport they’d like to try and find that they love. And maybe my kids will fall in love with the idea that working hard and trying can bring great rewards.