OLYMPIC FEVER...FEEL IT!!!!

YEAH! Olympics! Gotta love it!

The world's largest 'bird's nest'? Smog? Communism? The Republic of Congo? Giant portraits of Mao? BOB COSTAS!? IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THEN THIS!!

I don't know about you, but I dig the Olympics. I'm slightly partial to the Winter Games because...well, curling is just that good. Why curling isn't more popular in this country is beyond me.

The Olympics is an excuse to pay attention to something other then football, baseball, basketball, golf or whatever else we hear about almost daily in the United States, at least for a brief time. Variety is the spice of life, isn't it?

I mean seriously, no one's more pumped up about the 2008 college football season then me. However, what, if anything, do you think is going to be said or reported about the upcoming season between now and 'opening day' that will be of any relevance whatsoever? Like I need to hear more about how great the SEC is because their training camps feature balloon animals or some such horseshit.

Back to Beijing...the availability of nearly continuous live sporting events for two weeks straight trumps at least 75% of 'main stream' U.S. sports. Don't get me wrong, I'm not picking the men's badminton final over say, the Rose Bowl.

Consider though that even the first weekend of the men's NCAA basketball tournament features a fraction of the actual competition that you can see over the first two days of the Beijing Olympics.

You get to see a Duke vs. Coppin State, a #1 vs. #16 match-up four times every year. You only get to see Latvia take on the U.S. in beach volleyball once every four years.

Who knew Latvia had a fuckin' beach!?

(It does).

You've gotta hand it to NBC too. They don't do much right, do they? Well, not lately. I mean Notre Dame football is a disaster, isn't it? Losing to Navy?

I guess you can't really blame that on NBC's Dick Ebersol now that I think about it.

Anyway, broadcasting the Olympics is something NBC seems to have a handle on. Including all the streaming content you can view online, there will be more hours of competition available for viewing then all the previous summer Olympics combined. COMBINED!

The time change actually benefits viewers that want to take in as much Olympic competition as possible. You can view live events in the middle of the night while checking out tape-delayed coverage in prime time.

Of course, this means you'll have to stay away from ESPN and other such media outlets if you don't want to know ahead of time what happened. As far as I'm concerned, any reason to stay away from ESPN for two weeks is a good one.

I caught the opening ceremonies on DVR today. Good stuff. Who would have guessed that the Chinese would have the greatest LED technology we've ever seen on display? Boy, that was shocking.

While I thought the ceremonies were impressive, I have to say that the complete and total absence of Jackie Chan and his cohort Chris Tucker was very disappointing. You're telling me they couldn't work some of that high-quality acting from 'Shanghai Knights' into the line-up? Total bullshit!