Love to the Olympics die off. Never watch it but spousal unit is addicted to it as well as a lot of sports.
When I was younger, I enjoyed the Olympics. I particularly remembered being in the Navy and watching Franz Klammer do that incredible downhill run in the 1976 Winter Olympics. The last one I really remember watching in any kind of depth was the 1980 Winter Olympics. I was never into the Summer Olympics at all, it just never appealed to me.
Since the early 90s, my television watching began to dwindle to the point that around the millennium, I was watching no television at all. I watch very very little since then, probably about an hour a week right now, and that’s all on one show because my wife wants to watch it, and I want to spend a little relaxed time with her. (She likes Downton Abbey)
And, oh yeah… I do watch three hours of football during football season a week. So I still watch a little bit, I guess.
With the Olympics, I think what really, absolutely killed it for me was allowing professionals to compete. As an American, the Eastern block used to kill me, because their athletes WERE largely professional, especially the hockey players. But when they changed the rules, and sports like basketball and hockey allowed professional athletes to participate, it completely changed the nature of the games for me. I think that is when I completely stopped watching.
Now, after not having watched it, it’s interesting what hits me as I walk by a television with the Olympics on. It is completely and totally, 100% marketed towards women. I don’t have a problem with women competitors, because they compete just as hard against each other as men do. But it hits me somehow wrong, kind of in the same way that it hits me wrong when I hear the commercial with an announcer talking about some WNBA player who is the most phenomenally talented female basketball player, and the guy announcing it is screaming at the top of his lungs “SHE DUNKED IT! SHE’S THE FIRST FEMALE BASKETBALL PLAYER TO DUNK IN A GAME!”
Every time I hear that commercial on the radio, it still makes me roll my eyes. It is the epitome of what I find wrong but that kind of thing. It isn’t about the talent or the performance. It’s all about what kind of anatomy the person has.