These Olympics need CPR

It has been a quarter of a century since the first Olympic games I could remember as a child in 1996 in Atlanta. I thought it was awesome that countries from around the world came to Georgia, just a couple states away, to compete in sports.

Now in 2021, with the Olympic games underway in Tokyo, I am struggling to find reasons to get excited about them.

Maybe it is just me but I am betting that a good number of you reading this are feeling apathetic to these games too.

A number of factors contribute to the apathy. One is that it takes place on the other side of the planet. Another is how the games are shown. NBC has been airing the Olympics since as long as I can remember. While ESPN, CBS and FOX value showing sports in real time, NBC keeps opting to show replays of the games. As a sports fan in 2021, that is a dealbreaker. Every event is talked about on social media throughout the day yet NBC wants us to wait till primetime to watch what happened 12 hours ago. Thanks for playing but I’ll pass.

The Olympics should be wall-to-wall coverage of jumping from event to event and medal stand to medal stand. Instead, it becomes a monsoon of human interest stories such as how a kid from New York overcame adversity to finish fifth in the pole vault. Some people like the human interest angle but few of them are sports fans who watch other events consistently. That is why the Olympics tend to be viewed by women more than men as the boys would rather stick to just video of the events.

Another problem the Olympics has is history. Besides a few names, most of us will struggle to name who won what the last time the games were held. Events like gymnastics, swimming and track only get attention during the Olympics. It is hard to stay invested in those sports when you parachute in for two weeks only to abandon them for four years.

The issue the Olympics have had in recent years is the price. Brazil hosted the games in 2016 and committed all the money and resources it had into constructing venues for the games to be held. Now, those venues sit idle as the money the nation spent to host the games are long gone with little to no return on investment.

Japan spent a great deal of money to host these games only to have COVID-19 delay them. Now, they don’t even have fans in the venues they built because of an increase in COVID cases. Teams have had players test positive causing athletes who spent years perfecting their event to sit out the moment they had been waiting for.

One solution is maybe it is time for the Olympics to be hosted by a region and not a city anymore. That way events can be spread out between existing stadiums as opposed to a single location. The World Cup in international soccer pulls this off well.

With COVID being an issue, I do feel the games should have been canceled or broken up. Basketball events could have been played in one country, gymnastics another etc. That way if COVID was an issue it would just hurt one event as opposed to the entire games. Heck, fans may have been able to see some of the games in person too.

For those of us who are just watching from Greene County here is my advice. Pick two or three events to really follow. Pick an event you are familiar with like basketball and another be an event you do not know much about. Dive into them regardless who is playing. If it’s Jamaica versus Vietnam, still give it a chance. In the Winter Olympics I watch hockey and curling and soak up as much as I can in those games.

Enjoy the games and remember, college football is just a few weeks away.