Olympics ?

The Agony of Defeat?

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa...wait a minute folks. Last time I looked, the name of this Blog was Hypocrisy, so I can't let this get away without a comment.

Last night, while I was channel surfing I came across the nightly Olympic Broadcast. There in all its glory was Women's Beach Volleyball. I don't know when this became an Olympic sport, but hey, what ever floats your boat.

About 2 hours later, before I went to bed, I surfed a few more channels, and much to my surprise, Women's Volleyball was still going strong.

I know from experience, that there are hundreds of events at the Olympics. Cycling, Rowing, Equestrian, Archery, Cross Country and many, many more. So why is it that the networks here in the States devote about 90% of their coverage to athletes that cover about 10% of their bodies in skin hugging Lycra?

In my view, the reason appears pretty simple. The game is easy to understand (no complex scoring or rules), the women have hard bodies, and they don't wear ANYTHING. What could be better for entertaining an ignorant and simplistic audience.

Don't get me wrong, they are athletes and damn good ones. But I hardly think they rate more than 30 minutes of Olympic coverage. Do women watch the men's swimming competition because they find the skills needed fascinating, or are they just ogling hard bodies?

This is as much about sports as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. This is about ratings and and dumbing things down to a target audience that has zero attention span and over active libidos.

Personally, I would love to watch the rowing championships (lettered in it in college) or the wind surfing competition, although watching a race that takes 20 minutes and is hard to understand probably won't attract too many viewers either (unless they do it in the nude).

I can't understand why anyone would be interested in this whole charade, unless you had a really big ego and a really ripped body. This isn't sport, this is a media feeding frenzy to sell Doritos and Coca-Cola.