Vancouver 2010: Why I Hate the Olympics

When I was a kid, I used to love the Olympics. Exotic locations, weird sports, and events that happened at the oddest times of the day. It made me feel like Scotty had beamed me down somewhere along with Captain Kirk and Sulu. 

The Olympics took me out of my little world in Lynnwood, WA and dropped me off in a world as foreign to me as the Star Wars Cantina. And I loved it.

The other thing that made me love the Olympics was that there were always a handful of local heroes to root for. No matter where you lived in the US there was always an Olympian to cheer for.

Top Olympic skater Rosalynn Sumners went to the high school down the street and Granite Curling Club in my hometown represented the US one year after winning the national championships.

The combination of oddball sports and limited commercial possibilities made local hobbyists just as likely to excel on the world stage as anyone else in the country. 

But that was before 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when Peter Ueberroth showed everyone that there was gold in them darn hills, and pretty much everything involved in the Olympics could be sold at a price. 

That was before the Winter Olympics became the the Winter X Games and the Summer Olympics became a showcase for the NBA and beach volleyball gear. 

Now the Olympics as a show is so edited and formatted that I can't tell the difference between the goings on in Vancouver from the events on Survivor or the Biggest Loser. 

The supposed stars are so hyped that I'm as sick of them as I am of Lady Gaga by the time I actually see them perform. In fact, I'd rather see Lady Gaga than the Winter Olympics at this point. 

Most importantly NBC who carries the Olympics drains all the fun out of the games for someone like me. Because instead of allowing me to discover some new sports hero, they tell me I should be rooting for and who I should like.

And half the time, those stars don't even pan out.

Want proof? Look no further than this year's most over-hyped Winter athlete, Lindsey Vonn. In the last week she was in the news for her "controversial" Sports Illustrated cover, picked for the SI bathing suit issue and highly promoted in commercials all over the TV dial. 

Today she admitted she has a serious injury and might not even be in the games. Great. Thanks for that Sports Illustrated.

Last Olympics it was Bode Miller. He was all over the place. It was Bode Miller 24/7.

I don't think he even won a medal. 

Before that it was Apollo Ono. He won more medals in the 2006 Olympics when the hype machine got turned down than he did  in 2002 when his hipster goatee was plastered on everything that wasn't nailed down. 

The bottom line is most people enjoy sports because the story gets told on the playing field. Where someone who works hard all their life, can go up against the best, Mano a Mano,s and actually win once in a while. 

That's why the Miracle on Ice still resonates after all these years.

They weren't supposed to beat the big bad Russian hockey team. But they did, and we loved it.

But when NBC and the corporate sponsors tell us who to root for and who to like, it just seems like one more facet in life where the popular kids get special treatment and everyone else gets shut out. 

If I want to see that kind of behavior I'll just put on C-Span and watch Congress.