We're not in Athens
By TED FOX
Fox Sports ... Almost
The Olympics ain't what they used to be.
The events haven't changed that much, although snowboarding has caught some major air and been elevated from X-Game to Olympic game status.
A lot of the same countries are still there, albeit the Soviet Union isn't the world hockey power anymore because, well, there's no more Soviet Union.
Most people, myself included, still don't understand where, when, or why the biathalon came to be or what those people yell at the other people who sweep the ice during curling.
And yet it all used to be so cool.
Cheering for your home country, watching so many different people come together to compete, or wondering out loud how fast those lugers were really going were the most entertaining ways to spend two weeks in the winter.
But that's changed over the years.
There was the Tonya Harding debacle, which made a hockey crosscheck look positively noble by comparison.
There was scandal in Salt Lake City about the means used to bring the Games there in this Olympic year of 2002.
Which sports feature amateurs and which pro has escaped most of us, save that if it's winter, then you better believe the NHL All-Stars are there.
Miracle, schmiracle. If we're going to lose, we're going to lose with Rangers and Stars, not Wolverines and Spartans. Maybe we'll even trash some hotel rooms to boot.
At least the guys in the skeleton seem to be amateurs. The only problem is I don't what in the heck the skeleton is.
Of course, it's not just the Winter Olympics. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, which were entirely tape delayed on NBC, "doping scandal" got more airtime than all the countries' national anthems put together.
And this just in: the Dream Team was cool. In 1992.
The rest of the world had started to talk some smack about our country's basketball prowess, so we decided to show them what was up.
Show them what was up we did. Up, down, sideways, and back again. The scores have been more lopsided than a Bills' Super Bowl loss. On Dream Team 978, Vince Carter jumped (not just dunked, but jumped) over a seven foot-plus center from France.
Without a doubt, the world now knows the United States can field the best team around.
But do you even care anymore?
I'd much rather watch Chris Thomas, Ryan Humphrey, or Matt Carroll go win a gold medal in the true amateur spirit that we used to associate with these games. The scores might be a little closer, but after a 116-111 quadruple overtime win versus Georgetown this weekend, I think they're tough enough to handle it.
Now I'm not saying that amateurs don't still make up the majority of Olympic athletes. As far as I can tell, they do. Even if they didn't, I don't know if you could make much of a living as a professional luger, so you can't begrudge athletes from less "prime-time" sports from trying to support themselves.
But that "prime-time" attitude has taken over. If there's money to be made or national prestige to be gained, you better believe all countries, not just the United States, will line up their highest paid professionals in the sporting world's version of the arms race.
Call me crazy, but Chris Chelios beating his Red Wings teammate Dominik Hasek isn't the stuff of legends.
Of course, I could have it all wrong. I used to watch the Olympics and for two weeks care about the athletes whose sports I wouldn't think about again for four more years.
Maybe it's good some of us don't know exactly what the skeleton is. We can just marvel at the people who throw themselves headfirst on what looks to be a seat cushion with runners to go flying down an ice track at an insane speed.
Why? Because they love the friggin' skeleton.
Maybe getting a little older makes you forget what you liked about the Olympics in the first place: sitting there with mom and dad, watching split times in some alpine skiing event you didn't even understand.
Maybe it makes you forget you still cheered, anyway.
Or maybe now we're just too busy to care about anything but the "money sports": Super Bowl halftime shows presented by E-Trade or Team Nike instead of Team USA.
I really hope it's not that last one.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily those of The Observer. Contact Ted Fox at tfox@nd.edu.
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, February 12, 2002
