Are you ready for more Nordic combined? I am! I absolutely love the Winter Olympics! The tradition! The passion! The sports invented in the last two weeks! I live for this!

The Olympics seem to be on everyone’s shit list this week, and I am not above piling on. I don’t have a problem with the events themselves. Though odd (like men’s double luge . . .ewww) and obviously foreign (Skiing and guns? That sounds bad.) I am willing to watch most of the events. (Then again, I will watch anything if you tell me it’s a sport and someone keeps score.)

That is, I would watch the events if NBC ever showed anything. For as much Olympic coverage as NBC provides (about 400 hours this year), there never seems to be any competition taking place on the old peacock. Since there are so few events at the winter games, NBC has taken to filling their four-hour prime time slot with countless commercials and a bunch of Jimmy Roberts melodrama fests. (And they wonder why nobody watches. Up next, exciting ice waltzing! Plus some Norwegian guys!)

The short supply of competition, combined with the internet (we all know what happens by lunch) has been compounded a bad programming schedule. Does NBC really think that they are fooling anyone by swapping between events like they aren’t on an eight-hour tape delay? Someone needs to tell Bob Costas that nobody believes him when he looks at the camera and tells the audience that ‘We’re heading to the alpine course, where the men’s slalom is about to get underway.’ No, Bob, you sat there, in a studio in Italy, and taped a whole series of ten-second bits ten hours ago. Right now (as in real time), some guy is switching from the tape of you to the tape for the McDonald’s commercial, and then to the skiing tape. In ten minutes, he will switch back to you, and we will be magically whisked away to speed skating (and more commercials). (Again: no wonder nobody is watching this.)

During Sunday night’s coverage, NBC shook things up a bit. Bob Costas interrupted the riveting men’s biathlon for an interview with a special guest. I was expecting a famous American winter Olympian – some figure skater or the 1980 hockey team. Someone in New York must have started panicking over the weekend, because the special guest had absolutely nothing to do with the Olympics. It was Jerome Bettis. Presumably, NBC sent the Bus all the way to Italy to announce that he will be part of NBC Sunday Night Football. This move made several things very clear.

1. Chris Collinsworth and Bob Costas are not enough to carry a football show. Collinsworth is whiny, and Costas is given to fits of nostalgia over Nadia Comaneci. The network needed a real football presence if they wanted to avoid another Olympic-sized disaster.

2. Everyone loves the Bus. Always. Everywhere. (OK, maybe not Seattle.)

3. More Americans will watch anything if it involves the word ‘football.’ I will sit and watch luge for six hours if the announcers talk about draft picks and free agency (by the way, my spell checker does not recognize the word luge).

4. Somehow, this contributes to ‘how Pittsburgh is awesome.’ I’m not sure how, but it does. (Maybe because the Bus is awesome and associated with the ‘Burgh. Maybe because NBC needed some Steelers power to boost ratings. But trust me, this somehow relates to how Pittsburgh is better than the Olympics.)

5. People like smiling winners much better than brooding losers. (I’m looking at you Bode Miller. All I see is you stinking up the course.)

I expect to see a veritable who’s who of guests this week, especially with Michelle Kwan out of the women’s figure skating competition and a profound national disinterest in the fate of the U.S. ski jumpers. And expect a lot of Jimmy Roberts – NBC is going to need to fill some more airtime when they realize that curling makes for bad prime time programming. However, it was nice to see the Bus. (Woooooo! Super Bowl! Oh, um, sorry about that.) It made me realize how much I already miss football. Now if you would excuse me, I am going to Google ‘Tanith Belbin.’

----Dr. Burgher

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