Great rants against the Olympics at Crooked Timber and Political Animal, though I’ve gotta disagree with one of the points Kevin makes :

Part of the essential ambience of watching a sporting event, I think, is seeing the whole thing, even the boring bits where nothing much is happening. When you edit a 4-hour event down to 30 minutes of pure action, it may be exciting but it just isn’t sports anymore. It’s a video game.

Now I agree that failing to show the events live in lieu of having a tape-delayed highlight reel sucks, but the brevity of the Olympics is what I find to be its greatest appeal (even if it does sometimes seem like a “video game”).

Compared to most people, I’m not a sports fan at all. Professional sports are so ubiquitous, that the concept of “sports” often turns me off. I really like some aspects of boxing and baseball, but I hate basketball and football. Having been caught in the middle of a mini-riot following a Lakers championship a few years ago sealed it for me. For all the endless talk about Shaq and Kobe, I really don’t give a shit.

But the Olympics are different. With so many sports to be covered in such a short amount of time, there isn’t time for the commercialization and celebrity worship that have ruined professional sports. The Olympics have just enough coverage to introduce a sport, briefly discuss the competitors, and show the competition. I don’t care about archery any more than I do basketball, but I loved the hour of it I saw in 2000. And by the time you get sick of the sport, they’ve moved on to something else.

Also, the Olympics really bring out the nationalist in me. When I’m watching, I want “our team” to kick ass. When someone is representing their country, you can really feel the patriotism in the air. Hell, this is probably the only two weeks every four years where people are waving the flag because they love their country, rather than hate their ideological “enemies”. Professional athletes, however, are often motivated by money and personal glory. My fellow Angelenos may have loved their hometown hero Shaq, but once he lost a championship, he caught the first plane out of town. It’s hard to feel an affinity for a team when its members are a paycheck away from stabbing their fans in the back.

So yeah, the Olympic coverage may be spotty and unpredictable, but if you keep switching between NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, and Telemundo, you’ll find something to watch. And when it’s all over, there’s nothing in the realm of professional sports that can compare to the feeling of watching an athlete standing on a pedestal, wearing a gold medal, and hearing their national anthem.