Outkicked! :: Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Around this time every four years, I start to get this gnawing pit in my stomach. I experience a growing sense of unease every time I watch a track meet on ESPN. I’ll hear a snatch of a John Williams trumpet fanfare as I flip past a late night showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it’s like an icy finger running down my spine. Then one day it happens; I’m innocently watching Lipstick Jungle (what, you’re not?) and down in the corner of the screen is a five-ringed logo. The rough beast approaches; NBC’s run-up to their Olympic coverage has begun.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m the first person on this site to criticize mainstream broadcasting of track and field in this country. Far from it. I am however, the first person to do so using thematic elements from a Yeats poem (unless Mosher’s got a riff on here about “The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner” that I overlooked). Please believe me when I say that I look at the approaching network coverage of the Olympics with a sense of dread. I can’t remember the last time I watched the summer Games without feeling irritated, annoyed and a bit let down. It was probably back when I was ten and was easily distracted by the bright colors. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I hate watching the Olympics on NBC.
It starts with the network’s endless promotion in the coming months. If they spent a fraction of their Olympic advertising budget on supporting show development maybe we wouldn’t see excellent series like Studio 60, Friday Night Lights and Bionic Woman getting canceled. Ok, maybe not Bionic Woman (how Ron Moore choked so tremendously I’ll never know, but that show blew on an epic scale). Instead, we’re going to be treated to various and endless montages of plucky gymnasts, powerhouse sprinters, Michael Jordan, the American flag, crying plucky gymnasts, and a shirtless Michael Phelps. They’ll be accompanied by stirring orchestral scores and the ubiquitous bird shaped rainbow. You know, in case we forgot what network was showing the Olympics in the 30 seconds since they reminded us last.
Read the rest of Outkicked!
Honestly I could stomach the advertising, maybe even allow myself to be excited by it, if I knew there was a payoff at the end. But it’s like getting pumped up by the trailer for Good Luck Chuck and shelling out $11 to see Jessica Alba in various states of undress only to discover you actually paid to see two hours of Dane Cook. NBC teases you with this glittery promise of athletes and music and excitement and then bam!- they hit you with Tom Hammond looking like he escaped from the touring company of Dame Edna on Ice (look, let me apologize if there was some tragic accident that permanently fused eyeliner and blush onto Tom’s face, but if not… dude, fire your make-up artist).
Maybe it’s all of us that are to blame. Maybe the coverage is so boring and basic because people only sit up and notice track once every four years, so the producers panic and assume they need to pitch all the commentary at the lowest common denominator (tracks are round, the athletes run around them, and whoever gets to the end first wins!). I just wish they’d have the confidence to hold the viewing public to a higher standard and give us the kind of analysis and excitement that a Gus Johnson brings to a basketball game or a Collinsworth brings to the gridiron (in fairness, Collinsworth slipped a little this year, but I’m going to blame that on having to be around Tiki all the time).
And please, for the love of Barack Obama could we get through an Olympics without all the fluff pieces on an athlete overcoming great hardship to make it to the grandest of international stages? Yes, these stories are great, and yes, we all love a touching human drama, but that’s why I watch Outside the Lines. I watch the Olympics TO SEE TRACK AND FIELD. Is this too much to ask? Not to mention that they show so many of the damn personal odyssey pieces that by the end of the two weeks they’ve all blurred together in my brain and I can’t remember who overcame the horrible Flowbee incident and who persevered despite a traumatic run-in with Goofy as a youth. Here’s the thing… it takes the utmost combination of skill, dedication, sacrifice and luck to make it to the Olympics, meaning that everyone on the team is deserving of a human interest piece. So please, just stow that stuff and instead show us flights of the triple jump and every lap of the 10k.
In high school, I knew this guy that was an old-school track-head. Loved the sport. Loved to talk about it for hours on end. He’d give me ragged books by Parker and Glanville to read or old back issues of Track and Field News (I mean old too, like black-and-white cover old). Well, he always bought the BBC coverage of the Olympics on VHS after the fact. He was an academic advisor in my high school, and I remember going down to his classroom at lunch to watch those tapes with him. Holy s*!t… that’s how you broadcast a track meet. The knowledgeable commentary and sparing yet eloquent color work. The way they framed each event in terms of its history and the past performances of the individuals competing. The straightforward camera work and coverage of the rounds in each event. Now, maybe this is just me taking a rose-colored look back, remembering something as great that was merely just average, but that’s always been my lasting impression of watching the BBC coverage. That it was fantastic.
So excuse me while I sit here and stew as winter turns to spring and spring to summer. I can’t see myself looking forward to something that’s going to make me snort in derision with every tired comparison of an event to its number of laps on a high school track. Soon I’ll be scouting for local Brit pubs with satellite feeds and the promise of salvation by Auntie Beeb, because that rough beast’s hour has come and it’s slouching towards Bethlehem with an aim to be born.
Last 5 posts by stamos- Outkicked! :: The Eleven Natural Enemies of Every Runner - April 8th, 2008
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- Outkicked - The Game Be The Game - March 21st, 2008
March 7th, 2008 at 1:32 pm |
It was actually going to be Coleridge. I went with Rime of the Ancient Mariner and was working on an elaborate metaphor in which:
the Mariner = NBC
the albatross = the Olympics
the ship = track and field
the ship’s rigging = Bob Costas’ sartorial selection
the briny cook* = the decision to air features on race walking
the vengeful seas = Equatorial Guinea
which of course means
the narrator = Eric “the Eel” Moussambani
I think you can see where I was going with this.
*may or may not have actually been mentioned in the poem… but if the movies have taught me anything, it’s that on any ship worth its salt, there’s always a briny cook floating around somewhere.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pm |
It makes total sense. I’m ashamed I didn’t see it myself.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:20 pm |
I caught a live Eurosport radio broadcast of the men’s 5000m in the 04 Olympics. Best damn 13 minutes of my listening-or-watching-a-running-race life. They covered all 12.5 laps - even without a European in the running. You know, they could even pronounce all the guy’s names - like El-ee-youd Kip-cho-ghee.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:12 pm |
I’ve also had the life-altering experience of being on the other side of the pond and finding out what real track coverage was about. I got to channel surf in Luxembourg and lo and behold, there was a track meet. For an hour I watched track and field with no fluff, no up close and personals and no hype. It was just one event after another. They didn’t even bother to tell us whether what we watched was good or not - they had this strange expectation that if you were watching track you should know.
This wasn’t the European Championship or the Olympics. It was just “a meet”. Track nirvana isn’t a fairy tale. It still exists in a far off land.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:15 pm |
While living in the Detroit/Toledo area might seem to be a fate worse than death to the outsider, let me say that once every four years it’s quite worth it.
The Canadian Broadcasting Coporation is pretty much everywhere within 90 minutes of the Ambassador Bridge. I will not watch anything else for the Olympics.
Are they good? Not necessarily; I think their announcers are clearly inferior to the small amount of BBC stuff I’ve seen. Are they less jingoistic than NBC? Not at all, but in the summer games there just isn’t enough Canadian success to fill their airtime.
What makes them wonderful is sheer volume. They’r on the air about 20 hours a day during the summer games. They always show track live–I got up at 3 a.m. for Sydney’s finals. They have about two minutes of commercials per half-hour, maybe less. They stay away from human-interest stories. And they don’t want to look snotty, either; when two Canuck high jumpers made the Sydney final, CBC showed every attempt in the entire competition, even though their two men went out early.
I’m freezing my butt off, it’s cloudy for six straight months, and my local waterway is polluted beyond the ability to sustain life. But I’ve got my CBC and that all that matters!
March 7th, 2008 at 9:34 pm |
After reading through the initial and ensuing posts, once I set my Thesaurus aside and collected my thought (singular) - I thought of the perfect lament for those of us on this side of the pond Olympic coverage-wise.
So, please, if you will, sing along with me (to the tune ‘Money for Nothing’ by Dire Straits, featuring Sting)…
“I want my
I want my
I want my BBC…
I want my
I want my
I want my BBC…
Now look at them Brits that’s the way you do it
You show the track & field on the BBC
That ain’t workin, that’s the way you do it
Advertisin’ means nothin’ and the coverage is free
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain’t dumb
Maybe get a few more viewers to linger
Maybe track-wise those viewers ain’t dumb
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TVs
See the little sprinter with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
That little sprinter got his own jet airplane
That little sprinter he’s a millionaire
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchens deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TVs
I shoulda learned to run real fast
I shoulda learned to jump real high
Look at those groupies, stickin’ it in the camera
Man we could have some fun
And he’s up there, what’s that? Gruntin’ noises?
Throwin’ that spear like it’s gravity free
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Advertisin’ means nothin’ and the coverage is free
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TVs, lord
Now that ain’t workin’ thats the way you do it
You show track & field on the BBC
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Advertisin’ means nothin’ and the coverage is free
Advertisin’ means nothin’ and the coverage is free…
I want my
I want my
I want my BBC…
I want my
I want my
I want my BBC…
Yeah, amen, I own some awesome BBC footage of Viren winning the 5000 and 10,000 in ‘72 and it’s riveting…the ENTIRE races are shown sans a break…
March 7th, 2008 at 10:50 pm |
yeah, I have nothing to say to that but wow. Wow on so many levels.
March 8th, 2008 at 5:29 am |
Matt
I have spent most of the last 11 years in Europe. Just to pile on what others have said>>the coverage of track and cycling is over the top. My wife would come to dread July as I could watch the Tour de France live during the day and the repeat coverage at night. Then on the weekends I could watch several track meets.
What I have found in Germany is that every community for the most part has a track and field center. For example in Wiesbaden, Germany I would do bi-weekly track workouts where 6 year olds to 80 year olds were on the track doing an event. So the fan base starts young and therefore, the European audience demands coverage of our beloved sport.