One of the great things about Wide World of Sports was not just the different sports you got to sample, but they would also have major events on there as well. I watched championship boxing matches for free on a rainy Saturday afternoon that someone would have to do pay per view to even watch now. On the other end I discovered things like cliff diving, or that there was actually a 60 meter dash, and the guy who was best at that was not the same guy that was fastest at the 100, and usually isn't. (Except for Maurice Greene at the end of the last century. He was just the fastest guy.)
Young people will not fully understand the dearth of sports on TV then. In football you got two games on Sunday, then a Monday night. If your team didn't sell out (It happened back then) your home games would be on the radio. Baseball might be on nationally a couple times a week at best, and if you had a local big league team, you might have one fourth of their games available to watch, and the rest was on the radio. If they were playing west coast games, a kid couldn't stay up for the end, and the morning paper wouldn't have the score either, because it had to start printing before the game was over. You would have to wait for the evening paper (My town had one anyway) after school to find out how the game ended. There was no ESPN for highlights, not even George Michael's sports machine on Sunday nights. (Does anyone remember that?) The best you had for highlights was Howard Cosell's Monday halftime highlights, and "This week in Baseball" with Mel Allen on Saturday mornings.
Wide World of Sports was amazing then. A breath of fresh air.
I didn't happen to read this until Tuesday morning, but I had all these experiences while I stayed up to watch the men's figure skating short program. I don't know much, and probably still don't (like why don't they deduct points for the way their ankles wiggle when they land a jump? Gymnasts get docked if their feet don't stay planted on a landing...) but somehow Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir made me feel like I did by the end of the event.
Obviously Nathan Chen is amazing, but it was worth it to see a hopelessly out-of-contention Jason Brown close the program skating his heart out to Nina Simone's Sinnerman. It's a shame you can't win these events by just being better at everything else if you simply can't land a quad in competition. But hey, a couple of those guys fall in the long program and Brown is right back in it. Call it...
I respect greatness and love the idea of athletes training for years to represent their country. But I grew up in South Florida so for me the winter games was always just a dozen ways to die on a mountain. Which makes it exciting, but somehow I could never really get into it. Except the downhill, which I always enjoy.
But I am a total junkie for the summer games. A few years ago Joe did a column on the greatest announcer calls in sports. I still remember the 2008 men’s 100 m swimming relay, when Jason Lezak pulled it out at the end for the US, allowing Michael Phelps to win the eight gold medals. It was quite a moment…
?? Just watch/do something else. Some of us think it's fun entertainment. Some of us also like golf and bowling. Why wouldn't we get to see something we enjoy just because you don't? Betcha a nickel there's something you love that I can't stand - so I do/watch something else when it's on. It's called choice - choose something else.
I was only joking. I just think curling is on an awful lot. I just looked it up and during the times I'm most likely to turn on the Olympics (8pm weeknights), it's on every single day. Of course there are other options, but curling is always there. Clearly it is bringing in the ratings, sort of like the half pipe ski and snowboard stuff (which I also don't like that much). So a lot of people are watching it. I don't like it, so I'm just pissing and moaning.
It's like hockey where it's gonna take an hour or two for just two teams to complete a match, unlike most other sports where everyone is racing at the same time or there are multiple short heats. Lots of curling on CNBC and USA (and hockey on USA) over many days.
I tuned out the Olympics a long time ago for all the probably obvious reasons, but, Joe’s article reminds me why I did once love them. As for the WWoS, cliff diving was like catnip to me. Couldn’t get enough. And week 2, 1979? Of course I was watching the Globetrotters! Finally, my first love is baseball, but Dad’s was football, and the NFL was definitely our thing. I was wild about the All Star Game in the mid/late ‘70s (as so many were), and I wanted to feel that way about the All Pro Game. I couldn’t. 10 or 11 year old me asked why. Said Dad, “It’s watching 22 guys trying not to get hurt.”
Spectacular Bid didn't win the Triple Crown in 1979- lost in the Belmont Stakes. After two years of triple crown winners, Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in 1978, no horse would win the triple crown until American Pharoah in 2015.
If you go to Lake Placid, you can go up to the top of the ski jump and sit where these maniacs start from. It is a bracing experience. Like sitting on the edge of the roof of the Flatiron Building and wondering if you could survive a jump if you just got a good running start and Broadway were a bit more declined.
When I worked nights as a casino dealer, they had motorcycle jumping stuff on ESPN late at night sometimes, and I would always wonder how, the first time, they decided to climb off the bike in midair while the bike was doing a 180 and then climb back on. Also how many bones they broke along the way.
I'm actually an avid dirt biker myself. I, too, have no clue how they do that stuff the first time. Though, the really top level guys have foam pits where they practice and experiment. So they will jump in the air and do their flips and then land in a massive foam pit.
I am proud to say I have not watched a single second of these Olympics and don't plan to. Watching them on TV is just brutal. Too many commercials, too many "up close and personal" segments with the athletes. We were in England once during an Olympics. That was fairly pleasant to watch. They just showed the event from beginning to end.
I do, however, enjoy reading Joe's writing about them.
Peacock is the way to go if you can get it. No hype, no video packages, just commentary. Then again, I only watch curling, speed skating and short track.
The UK rights are actually fairly affordable because the British government has designated a set of particularly important sporting events, which include the Olympics, Wimbledon, and the FA Cup Final, as "reserved" – these must be made available free to air to the general public. This prevents satellite channels, of which the richest and most aggressive is Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV, from biding up the cost to levels that are unsustainable for the BBC, as they have done now for decades with the unprotected rights to Premier League football (soccer).
Within these limits, the system works well, and indeed sometimes operates rather unfairly with respect to rights already paid for. For example, when Emma Raducanu reached the final of the US Open, there was suddenly a lot of pressure to have that match shown free to air, and the rights holder, Amazon, fairly quickly yielded and sold on the rights to the final for a modest amount to a terrestrial station, Channel 4 – presumably out of consideration for long-term customer goodwill.
All true. One other thing. You watch someone like Kamila Valieva skate and even though you hate skating at any other time of the year you watch in astonishment and it brings a tear to your eye when she nails a quad. And one other thing. You watch lots of curling hoping to catch on to what it is all about because you figure, now that's something I could do. And no matter how much you watch and hear about the button, the house, the rock, sweepers, etc. you still have no clue how they score a point or how you win.
You could do it, just not at that level. I had a friend train for three years - I mean a lot of training - because he decided that was how he could make his mark, and he didn't make it. I believe Jared Allen (formerly of the NFL) tried to do it this cycle and didn't make the cut.
The thing about curling - it's a game you play when you're drinking indoors because it's just too brutal to go outside, and you're done playing hockey. Drink a couple more beers - it'll get clearer... 😁
Yeah, I've been told by someone who knows - if you go to Russia or China, or basically any really authoritarian country, you should take a burner, as you will be hacked within 2 minutes of turning it on.
Oddly, I think that’s the one event that they haven’t fully cracked the best way to shoot it for TV. It’s so hard to tell exactly when someone lands (and I don’t know what the solution is). Love watching it, but it just feels like there’s an innovation coming someday that improves the viewing experience.
love the instant expert analysis. I remember as a teen watching Wide World or some other sports compilation show and it went to rodeo. I was uninterested but my mom was curious so we kept watching.
A few bronco riders in and my mom is suddenly the foremost expert on bronco riding form, and unbelievable she was getting it right.
I was watching luge on Saturday and mocking the announcers who were saying “oh what a disappointment” because the luger had finished the run in 0.047 seconds more than the leader. And then a few guys later someone bumped a wall and I said, “well that’s it, he’s done.”
Small correction: Spectacular Bid did not win the triple crown. Seattle Slew and Affirmed accomplished the feat in each of the two years prior and then it wasn’t done again 2015 (American Pharoah).
One of the great things about Wide World of Sports was not just the different sports you got to sample, but they would also have major events on there as well. I watched championship boxing matches for free on a rainy Saturday afternoon that someone would have to do pay per view to even watch now. On the other end I discovered things like cliff diving, or that there was actually a 60 meter dash, and the guy who was best at that was not the same guy that was fastest at the 100, and usually isn't. (Except for Maurice Greene at the end of the last century. He was just the fastest guy.)
Young people will not fully understand the dearth of sports on TV then. In football you got two games on Sunday, then a Monday night. If your team didn't sell out (It happened back then) your home games would be on the radio. Baseball might be on nationally a couple times a week at best, and if you had a local big league team, you might have one fourth of their games available to watch, and the rest was on the radio. If they were playing west coast games, a kid couldn't stay up for the end, and the morning paper wouldn't have the score either, because it had to start printing before the game was over. You would have to wait for the evening paper (My town had one anyway) after school to find out how the game ended. There was no ESPN for highlights, not even George Michael's sports machine on Sunday nights. (Does anyone remember that?) The best you had for highlights was Howard Cosell's Monday halftime highlights, and "This week in Baseball" with Mel Allen on Saturday mornings.
Wide World of Sports was amazing then. A breath of fresh air.
I didn't happen to read this until Tuesday morning, but I had all these experiences while I stayed up to watch the men's figure skating short program. I don't know much, and probably still don't (like why don't they deduct points for the way their ankles wiggle when they land a jump? Gymnasts get docked if their feet don't stay planted on a landing...) but somehow Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir made me feel like I did by the end of the event.
Obviously Nathan Chen is amazing, but it was worth it to see a hopelessly out-of-contention Jason Brown close the program skating his heart out to Nina Simone's Sinnerman. It's a shame you can't win these events by just being better at everything else if you simply can't land a quad in competition. But hey, a couple of those guys fall in the long program and Brown is right back in it. Call it...
...the Brown Ultimatum.
(I'll see myself out...)
So nice to see a positive article on the Olympics. Most of the people online just write about how they think it sucks.
I respect greatness and love the idea of athletes training for years to represent their country. But I grew up in South Florida so for me the winter games was always just a dozen ways to die on a mountain. Which makes it exciting, but somehow I could never really get into it. Except the downhill, which I always enjoy.
But I am a total junkie for the summer games. A few years ago Joe did a column on the greatest announcer calls in sports. I still remember the 2008 men’s 100 m swimming relay, when Jason Lezak pulled it out at the end for the US, allowing Michael Phelps to win the eight gold medals. It was quite a moment…
My favorite is cross country skiing. Those people are working in that event.
Also, I humbly request that NBC and every other network please get f--king curling off the TV.
?? Just watch/do something else. Some of us think it's fun entertainment. Some of us also like golf and bowling. Why wouldn't we get to see something we enjoy just because you don't? Betcha a nickel there's something you love that I can't stand - so I do/watch something else when it's on. It's called choice - choose something else.
I was only joking. I just think curling is on an awful lot. I just looked it up and during the times I'm most likely to turn on the Olympics (8pm weeknights), it's on every single day. Of course there are other options, but curling is always there. Clearly it is bringing in the ratings, sort of like the half pipe ski and snowboard stuff (which I also don't like that much). So a lot of people are watching it. I don't like it, so I'm just pissing and moaning.
It's like hockey where it's gonna take an hour or two for just two teams to complete a match, unlike most other sports where everyone is racing at the same time or there are multiple short heats. Lots of curling on CNBC and USA (and hockey on USA) over many days.
I tuned out the Olympics a long time ago for all the probably obvious reasons, but, Joe’s article reminds me why I did once love them. As for the WWoS, cliff diving was like catnip to me. Couldn’t get enough. And week 2, 1979? Of course I was watching the Globetrotters! Finally, my first love is baseball, but Dad’s was football, and the NFL was definitely our thing. I was wild about the All Star Game in the mid/late ‘70s (as so many were), and I wanted to feel that way about the All Pro Game. I couldn’t. 10 or 11 year old me asked why. Said Dad, “It’s watching 22 guys trying not to get hurt.”
Spectacular Bid didn't win the Triple Crown in 1979- lost in the Belmont Stakes. After two years of triple crown winners, Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in 1978, no horse would win the triple crown until American Pharoah in 2015.
If you go to Lake Placid, you can go up to the top of the ski jump and sit where these maniacs start from. It is a bracing experience. Like sitting on the edge of the roof of the Flatiron Building and wondering if you could survive a jump if you just got a good running start and Broadway were a bit more declined.
Ski jumping is one of those things where you wonder how somebody does it the first time.
When I worked nights as a casino dealer, they had motorcycle jumping stuff on ESPN late at night sometimes, and I would always wonder how, the first time, they decided to climb off the bike in midair while the bike was doing a 180 and then climb back on. Also how many bones they broke along the way.
I'm actually an avid dirt biker myself. I, too, have no clue how they do that stuff the first time. Though, the really top level guys have foam pits where they practice and experiment. So they will jump in the air and do their flips and then land in a massive foam pit.
Here's a bicycle using a foam pit: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10156462269879742
Thought #1: "I bet ski jumping is awesome!"
Thought #2: "I would not be able to climb halfway up the tower."
I am proud to say I have not watched a single second of these Olympics and don't plan to. Watching them on TV is just brutal. Too many commercials, too many "up close and personal" segments with the athletes. We were in England once during an Olympics. That was fairly pleasant to watch. They just showed the event from beginning to end.
I do, however, enjoy reading Joe's writing about them.
Peacock is the way to go if you can get it. No hype, no video packages, just commentary. Then again, I only watch curling, speed skating and short track.
wait, england has its own feed?
Yes. It was on BBC with their own commentators. It was much better than watching it in the US with all the commercials and other stuff.
actually i looked into it, and of course you're right. just don't understand how they afford the rights.
I'm guessing the rights for other countries don't cost as much as they do for the US.
The UK rights are actually fairly affordable because the British government has designated a set of particularly important sporting events, which include the Olympics, Wimbledon, and the FA Cup Final, as "reserved" – these must be made available free to air to the general public. This prevents satellite channels, of which the richest and most aggressive is Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV, from biding up the cost to levels that are unsustainable for the BBC, as they have done now for decades with the unprotected rights to Premier League football (soccer).
Within these limits, the system works well, and indeed sometimes operates rather unfairly with respect to rights already paid for. For example, when Emma Raducanu reached the final of the US Open, there was suddenly a lot of pressure to have that match shown free to air, and the rights holder, Amazon, fairly quickly yielded and sold on the rights to the final for a modest amount to a terrestrial station, Channel 4 – presumably out of consideration for long-term customer goodwill.
You left out "I don't have the pay channels the events are on".
Well, there's that, too.
All true. One other thing. You watch someone like Kamila Valieva skate and even though you hate skating at any other time of the year you watch in astonishment and it brings a tear to your eye when she nails a quad. And one other thing. You watch lots of curling hoping to catch on to what it is all about because you figure, now that's something I could do. And no matter how much you watch and hear about the button, the house, the rock, sweepers, etc. you still have no clue how they score a point or how you win.
You could do it, just not at that level. I had a friend train for three years - I mean a lot of training - because he decided that was how he could make his mark, and he didn't make it. I believe Jared Allen (formerly of the NFL) tried to do it this cycle and didn't make the cut.
The thing about curling - it's a game you play when you're drinking indoors because it's just too brutal to go outside, and you're done playing hockey. Drink a couple more beers - it'll get clearer... 😁
Kobayashi is probably better at the hot dog eating part of the competition as well. It's like biathalon.
When he's not busy driving Keyser Söze around.
It's more than just "politics" when we think about the CCP hosting and controlling these games.
Apparently, each athlete, coach, and visitor has to download their app (for them to monitor you). Supposedly the athletes took burner phones to China.
Buuut, I do love the Olympics!
Yeah, I've been told by someone who knows - if you go to Russia or China, or basically any really authoritarian country, you should take a burner, as you will be hacked within 2 minutes of turning it on.
The Steven A. Smith of ski jumping. Awe-some
FRANZ KEILHAUSER IS THE BEST SKI JUMPER IN....
....
...
THE WORLD. YOU CAN HAVE YOUR MARCO HINGERS AND YOUR WALDREN TRONSHSKIS.
...
...
I WILL TAKE KIELHOUSER.
Oddly, I think that’s the one event that they haven’t fully cracked the best way to shoot it for TV. It’s so hard to tell exactly when someone lands (and I don’t know what the solution is). Love watching it, but it just feels like there’s an innovation coming someday that improves the viewing experience.
love the instant expert analysis. I remember as a teen watching Wide World or some other sports compilation show and it went to rodeo. I was uninterested but my mom was curious so we kept watching.
A few bronco riders in and my mom is suddenly the foremost expert on bronco riding form, and unbelievable she was getting it right.
I was watching luge on Saturday and mocking the announcers who were saying “oh what a disappointment” because the luger had finished the run in 0.047 seconds more than the leader. And then a few guys later someone bumped a wall and I said, “well that’s it, he’s done.”
But they ain't at all wrong! That's just how fine the line is at those speeds.
Oh I know ... the margin of victory is probably now finer than they could measure when I was a kid.
obviously not a born luger...
Small correction: Spectacular Bid did not win the triple crown. Seattle Slew and Affirmed accomplished the feat in each of the two years prior and then it wasn’t done again 2015 (American Pharoah).
True, only because he was injured, still ran the Belmont & came in third. He was definitely a great horse.