Today, I watched surfing, and canoeing, and skeet shooting, and a few other sports.
I liked them; they were fun. I want to see more.
These new HD feeds with the new camera tech featured by modern Olympics are a revelation. I could actually see these sports. I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and not being able to figure out what was going on during these events, if they were even televised at all.
Now, though- I can see the action, and understand the sport, and I can generally appreciate what I see so much more.
It’s fun, and I find myself wishing that I knew more about the athletes and the stories that drive them.
Honestly- that would be very nice, I think. Can we do this? Really, it would be to everyone’s benefit. Part of the problem the Olympics have had in retaining an audience in recent years has been the reluctance on the part of NBC to care about the many thousands of athletes that aren’t a part of the “major” sports, like gymnastics.
The appeal of gymnastics over the other sports was obvious, once: it was easy to watch on those old TVs. Lots of open action, no water getting in the way of the picture, easy camera angles, easy abilities to quickly zoom in on the athlete’s faces, etc. Gym couldn’t be better made for TV, and, perhaps not coincidentally, so are the rest of the primetime sports.
But now, though- what about the rest of them? Track and Field beyond running, for example. Or anything water based. And I’m not just talking Olympics- how about the other years, too? It would give people a much needed breather from the usual stuff.
Hearing my parents talk, it seems NBC primetime is going to be the Simone Biles show. And I’m not disparaging her here, but what about everyone else? Like the dozens of men who ran the triathlon. Each one of them is every bit the athlete that Biles is, and surely there must be some stories there that are being untold. I can’t believe there wouldn’t be.
Maybe this is a moot point these days, but man, would some changes be nice in the way our media treats sports. I mean I really, really don’t like the NFL, or baseball, except for those rare moments when it becomes interesting to people who aren’t really fans of that stuff.
Football is honestly boring to me. It’s an incredibly menotenous sport, I think. Rugby is so much more fun to watch. Baseball is boring, and too long.
Canoeing- that shit is intense as hell, lol. It’s awesome. I would watch more of that, were it available. Surfing is awesome. It’s the perfect sport to zone out and just chill to. Archery is fun. Equestrian I don’t understand, but I’m learning, and that is always a gift. Badminton is just plain fun.
Gawd, I fucking dread going back to the same old boring, stupid shit after the Olympics are over. Two more years of an athletic drought before the next one. It fucking sucks.
When I was a kid, I was branded a sports-hater by pretty much everyone I knew because I didn’t like watching football or baseball on TV. It got to the point where I thought that they must in fact be right, and I started hating sports in general.
They were wrong, of course. Idiots. Christ, yet another example of how dumb and self defeating so much of the culture is that surrounds me.
For a dramatization of this, see the baseball scene in Wizard of Loneliness.
And you know- this- this problem I’ve just described here, might be at least part of the reason that this country has such a problem with obesity and inactivity. People, like me at that young age, sometimes equate physical activity with sports, which basically means “football”. Add to this the problem that gym teachers seems to believe this themselves, and you can see how a sedentary populace might develop itself.
PE classes in this country have little to nothing to do with actual physical education, and almost everything to do with teaching kids how to play sports. The end result of this of course is a public that is fat and sedentary, since 99% of the public stops sports by their mid 20’s. It’s dumb, so dumb.
Instead of teaching kids how to play basketball, how about teaching them how to burn calories? Or do “Physical Education” teachers not know that stuff?
Well, perhaps my experiences in P.E. don’t match everyone’s. But I’m sure it matches those of many.
But, back to the Olympics- it’s canoeing / kayaking is every bit as exciting to watch with modern tech as anything done in the gyms. Why not focus on those athletes more next time?
Or the other thousands of them that barely rate a mention in the primetime coverage?
Oh, I know why they aren’t mentioned. It’s because some people think they’re “boring”. Well, you know why people think that? It’s because they don’t know their stories, because nobody asks them their stories.
Next time, try asking.