She enjoys skating and the various snow sports, but doesn’t much enjoy the summer events. But, winter or summer, she likes the flash and bang of the ceremonies.
Maybe she just doesn’t like much of what’s available on TV these days, and so now she has stuff to watch for the next 2 weeks.
She likes to watch the opening and closing ceremonies but not the sports. In the summer time everything else on TV is reruns so there is nothing new to watch but in the winter there are new episodes to watch.
I think Tom has it. I won’t make any sweeping generalizations, but certainly in my household my wife likes the winter games (ice dancing, figure skating…) better than real sports in the summer Olympics. I will now prepare for the inevitable abuse.
I agree with Tom and Mike. (I also agree with Janis. All the interesting sports are in the Winter games. It’s also the only time I give a crap about hockey, which theoretically makes me a bad Canadian. <_< )
At least as far as network programming, it seems as though many shows are taking hiatus during the Olympics.
Both the summer and winter games include sports that most Americans don’t care about unless they are the Olympic games. Some don’t care during the games, either. Stereotypically, women like the winter sports… like figure skating, while stereotypically, menfolk don’t care as much for the figure skating.
I can watch about an hour, total, of figure skating, though I don’t promise full attention while doing so. Curling? On TV??? Ski racing, except the part that represents “the agony of defeat”?
I heard a discussion about sports (where you know who won right at the end) and exhibitions (where you have to wait to see what the judges thought they saw).
I agree with Kevin’s take.
Eight years ago, the curling coverage was so good, so well shot, and so well commented that it became addictive for me. They even had a special late-night segment, “Curling after Dark” (geezer reference to the laid-back late night celebrity party show).
They dropped “Curling after Dark” 4 years ago and the streaming video on NBC Sports last night was not off to a good start. It’s as if the directors don’t understand sports at all. Getting the stone moving and riding with it is the unique physically challenging aspect of curling. They focused much more on the sweepers and the sitting stones. The sweepers can only work with the direction and spin the player gives it. Plus I like watching the body stretching along with their focus, so I followed the women’s competition more in 2010. The gods blessed me with having no job during the whole event (and more!)
I’ve enjoyed watching curling for many years, but the advantage here is that the sport has such a sufficient (niche) popularity that the coverage is uniformly excellent, and we get to watch world cup events every winter, instead of only once every four years. Eurosport’s German channel often invites a national competitor as expert consultant (in addition to their normal staff commentators, who are already quite good).
P.S. I prefer to study the strategic placement of the stones, rather than the decorative effects of the surrounding anatomy.
Several decades ago, NBC made a discovery. Olympic coverage drew strong ratings, but they discovered that they could draw even better ratings by pushing the actual Olympic competition to the background in favor of extended biography of the (American) athletes and reactions from the family.
Kevin’s explanation is the only one that makes sense, but if that was JJ’s intent, I don’t think he got it across properly.
May I open a can of worms? A pet peeve of mine is confusing “sport” with “athletic competition.” Sport involves some type of objective goal: first across the finish line, get the (object) in the (designated location), etc. So any competition which involves subjective scoring cannot be a sport. This includes figure skating, cheerleading, wrestling, and gymnastics (among others). These are fantastic demonstrations of talent, strength, and grace… but they are not “sports.” All sport is athletic competition, but not all athletic competitions are sport. Semantics, I know….
What about sports like car racing, where there is no athleticism required?
@ larK – The same thing could be claimed for billiards, but in either case, success at the highest level requires excellent physical condition. Formula One drivers have to withstand fairly high G-forces just to stay in position and keep the car under control, and top snooker players end up walking several kilometers during one single session of a major match (typically 8 frames), not to mention all the contortions required for each shot. In both cases, it is normal to conduct a thorough program of alternative fitness exercises, just to balance out the exertion required for the primary sport.
OK, fine, how about video game professional players? Robot warriors? Chess tournaments? If “Sport” is defined as a competition with an objective goal, and the assertion is made that all sport is athletic competition, but not all athletic competition is sport, my mind can’t help but object and fill in the missing quadrant: sport that isn’t athletic competition.
Or, for a different view, “sport” is a competition you can gamble on.
Is it called the Olympic Games or the Olympic Sports?
Athletic competitions to achieve objective goals are called “men’s sports.” Athletic competitions to look good are called “women’s sports.”
…
I feel like this comment shouldn’t go unchallenged but I’m having a hard time coming up with a civil response. Consider apologizing?
This is intended to be “funny because it’s true.” Tonya Harding believed she was given lower scores because the judges thought her costumes were tacky, which would never be an issue in objective goal-oriented sports. Showy sports that immediately come to mind include:
Women’s sports: Cheerleading, synchronized swimming.
Largely women’s sports: Gymnastics, figure skating.
Gender-equal sport: Diving.
Professional male wrestling and female mud wrestling might form a different category: All show and no sport.
If my comment drove you to incivility, then I failed my intent and I apologize.
” Athletic competitions to look good are called ‘women’s sports.'”
I either throw like a girl or some sort of thing that cannot throw. I admit it.
“I either throw like a girl or some sort of thing that cannot throw. I admit it.”
Admitting it isn’t the issue. The question is, what is the root cause of your throwing disability?
Is it caused by a lack of Y chromosomal material?
Is it caused by a lack of practice and development of throwing skills?
The conclusion offered by Mythbusters is that it is the second one. Girls throw “like a girl” because when they were young, they were told that girls shouldn’t/don’t throw things, whereas the boys’ throwing skills were encouraged and developed.
Research shows that the effect intensifies around puberty. Young women, naturally confused about their adult roles, seek to fit into predefined roles. This can be observed in the areas of athletics, wherein many girls lose interest in athletic play because that’s “for boys”. It also shows up in academics… around puberty, many girls start to hide how smart they are, and shy away from demanding academic subjects. Through the primary grades, girls consistently outperform boys in most academic areas. Then, in their teens, suddenly there’s a drop off in math, science, and technical achievement for the girls. When they made a talking Barbie, one of the things she’d say was “ooh, I hate math. It’s too hard!” or whatever it was they decided American girls needed/wanted to hear. Then, you discover that women are underrepresented in scientific and engineering career fields, despite the fact that the ones who ARE in those fields tend to be quite successful.
James Pollock – I tended to do both girl and boy things. Having no brothers dad treated me,the oldest daughter, as his substitute son and we would play catch, etc. and believe me, I could not and cannot properly throw a ball or anything else. I also did better than most boys in schools and took advanced courses with heavy science and math (beyond that of Robert). I was lucky to have parents who told all 3 of their daughters that in the world they could do anything a boy could (even if they couldn’t throw a ball).
P.P.S. Unless Bill can fix the problem with invisible HTML links, I think the best solution is going to be including the URL as cleartext, even if that is unsightly and doesn’t always work with WordPress’s assumptions about what counts as a legal URL character.
There was a series of commercials that predates both of these cartoons, which involved players of one sport trying out other sports but not quite getting the rules correct. One of these featured a football player who blocks a tee shot and then “sacks” the golfer, but the first one involved a traditional putting scene, the guy lines up a long-ish putt, hits it, the ball gets almost to the hole and looks like it’s going to go in, and then a basketball player swats it away into the trees and starts celebrating.
Comics I Don't Understand 
She enjoys skating and the various snow sports, but doesn’t much enjoy the summer events. But, winter or summer, she likes the flash and bang of the ceremonies.
Maybe she just doesn’t like much of what’s available on TV these days, and so now she has stuff to watch for the next 2 weeks.
She likes to watch the opening and closing ceremonies but not the sports. In the summer time everything else on TV is reruns so there is nothing new to watch but in the winter there are new episodes to watch.
I think Tom has it. I won’t make any sweeping generalizations, but certainly in my household my wife likes the winter games (ice dancing, figure skating…) better than real sports in the summer Olympics. I will now prepare for the inevitable abuse.
I agree with Tom and Mike. (I also agree with Janis. All the interesting sports are in the Winter games. It’s also the only time I give a crap about hockey, which theoretically makes me a bad Canadian. <_< )
At least as far as network programming, it seems as though many shows are taking hiatus during the Olympics.
Both the summer and winter games include sports that most Americans don’t care about unless they are the Olympic games. Some don’t care during the games, either. Stereotypically, women like the winter sports… like figure skating, while stereotypically, menfolk don’t care as much for the figure skating.
I can watch about an hour, total, of figure skating, though I don’t promise full attention while doing so. Curling? On TV??? Ski racing, except the part that represents “the agony of defeat”?
I heard a discussion about sports (where you know who won right at the end) and exhibitions (where you have to wait to see what the judges thought they saw).
I agree with Kevin’s take.
Eight years ago, the curling coverage was so good, so well shot, and so well commented that it became addictive for me. They even had a special late-night segment, “Curling after Dark” (geezer reference to the laid-back late night celebrity party show).
They dropped “Curling after Dark” 4 years ago and the streaming video on NBC Sports last night was not off to a good start. It’s as if the directors don’t understand sports at all. Getting the stone moving and riding with it is the unique physically challenging aspect of curling. They focused much more on the sweepers and the sitting stones. The sweepers can only work with the direction and spin the player gives it. Plus I like watching the body stretching along with their focus, so I followed the women’s competition more in 2010. The gods blessed me with having no job during the whole event (and more!)
I’ve enjoyed watching curling for many years, but the advantage here is that the sport has such a sufficient (niche) popularity that the coverage is uniformly excellent, and we get to watch world cup events every winter, instead of only once every four years. Eurosport’s German channel often invites a national competitor as expert consultant (in addition to their normal staff commentators, who are already quite good).
P.S. I prefer to study the strategic placement of the stones, rather than the decorative effects of the surrounding anatomy.
Several decades ago, NBC made a discovery. Olympic coverage drew strong ratings, but they discovered that they could draw even better ratings by pushing the actual Olympic competition to the background in favor of extended biography of the (American) athletes and reactions from the family.
Kevin’s explanation is the only one that makes sense, but if that was JJ’s intent, I don’t think he got it across properly.
May I open a can of worms? A pet peeve of mine is confusing “sport” with “athletic competition.” Sport involves some type of objective goal: first across the finish line, get the (object) in the (designated location), etc. So any competition which involves subjective scoring cannot be a sport. This includes figure skating, cheerleading, wrestling, and gymnastics (among others). These are fantastic demonstrations of talent, strength, and grace… but they are not “sports.” All sport is athletic competition, but not all athletic competitions are sport. Semantics, I know….
What about sports like car racing, where there is no athleticism required?
@ larK – The same thing could be claimed for billiards, but in either case, success at the highest level requires excellent physical condition. Formula One drivers have to withstand fairly high G-forces just to stay in position and keep the car under control, and top snooker players end up walking several kilometers during one single session of a major match (typically 8 frames), not to mention all the contortions required for each shot. In both cases, it is normal to conduct a thorough program of alternative fitness exercises, just to balance out the exertion required for the primary sport.
OK, fine, how about video game professional players? Robot warriors? Chess tournaments? If “Sport” is defined as a competition with an objective goal, and the assertion is made that all sport is athletic competition, but not all athletic competition is sport, my mind can’t help but object and fill in the missing quadrant: sport that isn’t athletic competition.
Or, for a different view, “sport” is a competition you can gamble on.
Is it called the Olympic Games or the Olympic Sports?
Athletic competitions to achieve objective goals are called “men’s sports.” Athletic competitions to look good are called “women’s sports.”
…
I feel like this comment shouldn’t go unchallenged but I’m having a hard time coming up with a civil response. Consider apologizing?
This is intended to be “funny because it’s true.” Tonya Harding believed she was given lower scores because the judges thought her costumes were tacky, which would never be an issue in objective goal-oriented sports. Showy sports that immediately come to mind include:
Women’s sports: Cheerleading, synchronized swimming.
Largely women’s sports: Gymnastics, figure skating.
Gender-equal sport: Diving.
Professional male wrestling and female mud wrestling might form a different category: All show and no sport.
If my comment drove you to incivility, then I failed my intent and I apologize.
” Athletic competitions to look good are called ‘women’s sports.'”
Yeah, it’s not true and it isn’t funny.
http://rhymeswithorange.com/comics/february-9-2008/
“Yeah, it’s not true and it isn’t funny.”
There’s an ad for that, too.
Mythbusters took a look at the topic. Here’s the concluding segment:
https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/throws-like-a-girl-minimyth
I either throw like a girl or some sort of thing that cannot throw. I admit it.
“I either throw like a girl or some sort of thing that cannot throw. I admit it.”
Admitting it isn’t the issue. The question is, what is the root cause of your throwing disability?
Is it caused by a lack of Y chromosomal material?
Is it caused by a lack of practice and development of throwing skills?
The conclusion offered by Mythbusters is that it is the second one. Girls throw “like a girl” because when they were young, they were told that girls shouldn’t/don’t throw things, whereas the boys’ throwing skills were encouraged and developed.
Research shows that the effect intensifies around puberty. Young women, naturally confused about their adult roles, seek to fit into predefined roles. This can be observed in the areas of athletics, wherein many girls lose interest in athletic play because that’s “for boys”. It also shows up in academics… around puberty, many girls start to hide how smart they are, and shy away from demanding academic subjects. Through the primary grades, girls consistently outperform boys in most academic areas. Then, in their teens, suddenly there’s a drop off in math, science, and technical achievement for the girls. When they made a talking Barbie, one of the things she’d say was “ooh, I hate math. It’s too hard!” or whatever it was they decided American girls needed/wanted to hear. Then, you discover that women are underrepresented in scientific and engineering career fields, despite the fact that the ones who ARE in those fields tend to be quite successful.
James Pollock – I tended to do both girl and boy things. Having no brothers dad treated me,the oldest daughter, as his substitute son and we would play catch, etc. and believe me, I could not and cannot properly throw a ball or anything else. I also did better than most boys in schools and took advanced courses with heavy science and math (beyond that of Robert). I was lucky to have parents who told all 3 of their daughters that in the world they could do anything a boy could (even if they couldn’t throw a ball).
Saturday’s Non Sequitur has an interesting idea about what counts as a sport: http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2018/2/24
P.S. Calvin has an alternative solution for golf: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/07/19
P.P.S. Unless Bill can fix the problem with invisible HTML links, I think the best solution is going to be including the URL as cleartext, even if that is unsightly and doesn’t always work with WordPress’s assumptions about what counts as a legal URL character.
There was a series of commercials that predates both of these cartoons, which involved players of one sport trying out other sports but not quite getting the rules correct. One of these featured a football player who blocks a tee shot and then “sacks” the golfer, but the first one involved a traditional putting scene, the guy lines up a long-ish putt, hits it, the ball gets almost to the hole and looks like it’s going to go in, and then a basketball player swats it away into the trees and starts celebrating.
I do not remember what I was supposed to buy.