While I was getting ready for work this morning, I flipped on the Olympic coverage being provided by MSNBC. They were showing Team Archery. Now you know I'm sports/olympics starved when I actually decided to leave it here. I'm pretty high on the Olympics right now after that super exciting swimming relay last night. Did you see it? No? Do a Google or YouTube on 4x100 free relay. Michael Phelps, the golden boy of these Olympics swam iiiight, and the brotha on the 3rd leg, Cullen Jones, held his own, but this cat named Jason Lezak got BUSY!. He made up a whole body length on the French guy that had been talkin' MUCH stuff in the last 25-30 meters. Even the TV commentator thought it was a wrap.
"It looks like Phelps run for 8 Golds will end, and the Americans will get sec....WHOA! Hold on! HERE COMES LEZAK!"
I think it was Rowdy Gaines, who was actually a very decorated gold medalist back in the 84 games. The networks are pretty good about having a former athlete in the booth to give that valuable insight and nuances that us casual observers may have missed. About 99% of the time this formula works as the networks also usually take care to get somebody who either has the starpower of a Supernova or that is so well spoken that you can't help but respect what they're saying. Some sports don't lend themselves to that, however. Case in point, this morning's archery broadcast.
I'm sure there are many technical aspects of archery that separate the Robin Hoods from the guys that lick their rubber darts in hopes that they stick to the wall. The Koreans and the Italians were downright spectacular, repeatedly hitting the bullseye from 70 meters away, but you wouldn't know just how difficult it was by hearing the commentators.
"Look at that! the Korean team's precision is incredible...they just keep getting their arrows in that inner circle."
Really? Yeah, that's what I saw too.
"You've gotta admire the Koreans. They just have the incredible ability to concentrate harder than the other teams."
I stopped ironing my clothes when 3-time Olympic Archery Gold Medalist Denise Parker uttered that one. Wow, I thought. Maybe the Koreans have special concentration...um...academies where they spend hours and hours concentrating to the hardest degree of concentrationism. They play that card game over and over again and then drink some special, from concentrate Kool-Aid that makes them have a special ability for focusing on the task at hand.
Give me a break. Were the Italians sitting over there in the other dugout (I know, i know...there probably wasn't a dugout since it's not baseball, but work with me here) engaging in the tomfoolery and hijinks that you'd expect from Peter, Bobby and Greg or maybe even Larry, Curley, and Moe while they waited for their chance to shoot arrows at the target. At any moment, you just knew that "Larry" was going to replace Curley's arrows with some thing that went limp like a spaghetti noodle when he tried to take aim at the target.
"The key to this one for the Italians is just to get more bulls-eyes than the Koreans until the end of the match."
Yeah, I fell down laughing at that one too. But not until after I was finished being confused because I had been misinformed. I mistakenly thought that the key for them was to send text messages to the Koreans while they were shooting, serving the dual purpose of figuring out where the kegs would be flowing after the match as well as slightly distracting the very focused and concentration kings from Korea. I guess there's a reason why this stuff doesn't get televised all of the time, even on one of ESPN 37 networks, and it's by no fault of those competing.
The Sklar Brothers would've had a field day with this stuff. I really wish that Cheap Seats was still on the air. This is exactly the type of material that they absolutely feast on. This might rank right up there with their coverage (Mystery Science Theater 3000 style) of the 1992 National Cheerleading Competition or the 1978 telecast of the Battle of the Network Stars. This is classic television and side-splitting laughter all at once. Check it out.
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