Olympics Coverage

I've been spending essentially every free minute of my time watching the Olympics recently which goes to explain my lack of posting. So here is a post about the Olympics

• I'm glad Michael Phelps got his 8 golds but I am also glad he is finished for a few reasons. First, so that NBC will just stop saying his name. And two, Most of his races were boring to watch because he was just so much better than everyone else (the two big exceptions being the 4X100 freestyle relay and the 100M butterfly which were two of the most exciting moments so far).
  
• In keeping with the media saturation this bullet will also be about Mr. Phelps. Yes, Michael Phelps is great swimmer, probably the best ever. But he isn't a good interview so I don't know why NBC insists on repeatedly having extended interviews with him, and his coach, and his mom. How about showing some other sports NBC, huh? No, you'd rather spend another 40 minutes talking to Michale Phelps's dry cleaner... ok.
• In the rare cases NBC shows a sport that isn't all that popular in the US you know the US is going to win (because why else would they show it?) Women's rowing eights on tape in prime time... hmm... I wonder if we are going to win this. Thankfully though, NBC has a ton of other channels showing Olympic coverage so if you want drama watch the sports on those channels.
  
• The Chinese gymnasts aren't over 16 (and won't be by the end of the year). They are clearly cheating and I think the IOC is ignoring the issue until after the games are over. Once they are out of China and the repressive government, I think they may investigate a bit more (or at least I hope they do as there is plenty of evidence out there)
• Some of the gymnastic judging has seem suspect at times but it is nothing compared to how bad the boxing judging has been. There are five judges and they have two buttons in front of them, one for each fighter, and three of them have to register a scoring punch within one second of each other for the punch to count. It is at least open scoring (i.e. you know the score during the fight and so do the fighters and the audience, as there booing and cheering attest to) but that doesn't change the fact that the judges miss a lot of scoring punches and sometimes even score phantom blows (maybe they hit the wrong button who knows). But because it is so hard to score a point, whenever someone takes a lead into the last round all they do is run away and hold. It is not boxing at all really... it is more like a game of tag with headgear.
• I love the super slow motion replay, the expressions the athletes make and the way their flesh bounces around, it always makes me laugh. It goes to show that even incredible physical specimens can still look ridiculous when photographing them at a hundred frames a second.
  

Even with the sometimes annoying coverage by NBC and the judging controversy, I am still enjoying the Olympics as I always do... otherwise I'd feel bad about watching so much of it.