The Olympics open up this year without a bang. Granted, after China four years ago anyone would have a tough time topping their opening ceremonies but I really think London fell short. The kids jumping on beds didn’t make sense to me at all. The first half of the music tribute went well with great hits from the 60’s and 70’s but that’s about it. I didn’t get the whole story line of girl losses phone, boy finds phone, and they meet up. Weren’t they texting each other? How can you text someone and have them respond if you have their phone.

On to the actual games. The thing I love about the Olympics is you get to see some awesome sports that you normally would never see on American TV. Two of the most exciting games but are underplayed in America are water polo and handball. These two sports are never on TV and I’m not sure why. The games are exciting, action packed, and translate well on television. I would never watch gymnastics other than in the Olympics but if they had a handball league or water polo season I’d be all in.

The one person in this whole Olympics you have to feel bad for is Ryan Lochte. The guy is a great swimmer but has always been in the shadow of Michael Phelps. He finally gets his day beating Phelps head to head an event that Phelps was favored in and all the headlines read how Phelps failed to medal. Even when he beats Phelps he still has to play second fiddle.

In a closing note I love that no matter what time of day it is there seems to be some channel that has an Olympic event going on but I do have one bone to pick with NBC. I understand the fact that they want to save some big events for primetime and the only way to do that is run them on tape delay. But if that’s your stance don’t give me the results of those events during the day. I was trying to avoid the swimming results but NBC decided to have a breaking news banner scroll at the bottom of the screen that told me what happened about 4 hours before they were scheduled to be on. Come on man