London Summer Olympics 2012: Do You Honestly Like Water Polo?

I hate the Olympics and I’m not a communist.

Once every four years the best soccer players in the world get together for the World Cup. It’s the most popular sport on the planet and although it’s not nearly as big of a deal in the US, it’s a fun tournament to follow. More recently, the World Baseball Classic has started showcasing the greatest baseball players from across the world. While you might think America would dominate, the popularity of the sport in the Caribbean and the shocking talent of the Japanese league have made it a competitive and fun tournament that the Japanese have won both times. They’ll defend their title in the next Classic scheduled for 2013.

Then there is the Olympics. Rather than focusing on sports like soccer or baseball, the Olympics are all about irrelevant sports that people haven’t cared about for eons (or ever).

For example:
Boxing: Hasn’t been relevant in my lifetime (last 23+ years)
Archery: Maybe it was relevant before there were…guns! Why are there even bows anymore?
Water Polo: “Throw a 3-year-old in the pool and you get roughly the same viewing experience. Lots of splashing.”

You get the point. These sports are totally irrelevant until the Olympics come around and then society expects us to care. The bad part is that everyone buys in and starts caring. Oh and the commercials, every sponsor has to leverage the crap out of their sponsorship with all these themed commercials that are just brutal. How about this “Even The World Has An Olympic Dream” commercial. I don’t even know who it is for, yet I know it annoys me.

Do you know what the headline on (my homepage) was this morning? US Wins First Medal of London Games, an article about how America got second place in Archery. First of all, we lost. I’m not about to be happy about that. We didn’t even win. When was the last time someone was happy about losing the World Series? Secondly, who cares? It’s archery! I’ve never watched archery and neither have you.

The social convention that we are all supposed to be passionate about this is laughable. The only worthwhile Olympic moment was 32 years ago, and it was in the Winter Olympics.

This blog was originally named “Ryan’s Rants and Tommy Tirades,” and I think this qualifies as both a rant and a tirade. Oh, and please, please don’t tweet about the London Olympics, because we both know that neither of us really care.

That concludes my rant.

Expect a more intelligible post, about something more thoughtful such as President Obama telling small business owners they didn’t build it themselves, shortly.


3 thoughts on “London Summer Olympics 2012: Do You Honestly Like Water Polo?

  1. I mostly agree with you about the Olympics. I really don’t care. The only thing I really get into is the hockey in the Winter games. And even then, I’d rather see the Rangers win the Cup than the US win the gold 10 out of 10 times. I remember watching a Sweden/US game back in 2006, and at one point, Henrik Lundqvist robbed America’s Brian Gionta from scoring a goal. Gionta was playing for the Devils at that point in his NHL career. I couldn’t help but smile.

    I can’t completely hate on archery because it’s part of the Zelda video game series and those games kick ass. But yeah, I would never watch it on television.

    LOVE your reference to the greatest sports moment in US history and the greatest upset ever. That said, you should have found a clip with Al Michaels’ “Do you believe in miracles?” call. Still though, nice work.

    My only real point of contention is the World Baseball Classic. I don’t give a F**K about that. I don’t know why it exists. I don’t care much about the World Cup either but I understand why it’s popular (on a worldwide scale, but not so much in America). I’ll admit that I might have watched the France/Italy final back in 2006. So there’s that…

  2. They created the WBC because Olympic baseball was so bad. Now the Olympics have just dropped the sport. There are five sports that we really care about here: Football (not in the Olympics), Baseball (not in the Olympics), Basketball (This is the only event I’d consider watching, but we all would rather have our NBA team win than bring home the Gold, hence the apathy and bronze medal a while back), Soccer (World Cup anyone?), and of course Hockey (Winter Olympics).

    I’d rather watch you dominate Zelda archery, I’m sure you’re a pro.

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