From the Sidelines

Too much schmaltz, not enough sports

V. Stephanie Carendi/YH

What has always appealed to me about sports is their utter unpredictability. There are no scripts or plots. There are no clichés, and there can be happy endings as easily as sad ones. Not even the most sophisticated sports pundits can predict a bottom-of-the-eighth homer, or a season-ending injury, or a brawl under the basket. On the court or the track or the field, personalities clash, nerves fail, and luck runs out. The immediacy of it all is what makes it exciting. And the Olympics—the ultimate international competition—should be the culmination of this spontaneity.

But led in recent years by NBC's team of crack tearjerker bit-writers, every bit of natural, unrehearsed drama has been squeezed out of the Games. We've already seen it in the overproduced, melodramatic athlete profile ads they've been running nonstop: as the music swells, Bob Costas softly intones, "Greg had his third arm amputated three years ago...now he's going for gold in the shotput." And if you think the commercials are bad, brace yourself for the triple-barreled event coverage about to begin.

Don't get me wrong—I think the occasional feature piece on an athlete's daily life and family can be fascinating. There's something special about listening to a Romanian gymnast's grandmother tell how she brought her granddaughter 20 miles through the mountains to the gym every day for practice. It's sometimes nice to know a little more than the vital stats. But recently we haven't been able to watch five minutes of studio coverage without being subjected to overwrought pieces investigating the minute details of the lives of minor or uninteresting athletes.

NBC is taking a gamble by airing the Olympics in prime time for two straight weeks. Not everyone likes sports, and the other networks dangle tantalizing alternatives across the dial (for instance, CBS is rerunning all 13 episodes of Survivor head-to-head with the Games). NBC has to find a way to convince viewers that are used to ER and Law and Order that the Olympics can be just as gripping. This year, they pulled out all the stops and tried to make the rivalry between Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene into Dr. Carter vs. Dr. Benton. The problem is, Dr. Carter never pulls a hamstring in the middle of ER. Johnson and Greene both came up lame in the Olympic trials, and suddenly all the air came out of the battle of wills that had been billed as the most exciting of the Games. You just can't script sports. If you try to, they will either backfire or cheapen the reason most of us started watching in the first place.

Admittedly, NBC is between a rock and a hard place. The network needs to make sure enough average Americans are interested in its telecasts, but it also needs to do justice to the competition itself by presenting the Games' gravity and professionalism. But the solution is simpler than it seems. If NBC spent more time previewing the Games and less on the schmaltzy details of the athletes' lives, when the athletes take the field, the thrill of competition itself would be infinitely more exciting than any personal battles the commentators may have highlighted.

People from all over the world are converging on Australia to compete in and witness the Games. Those of us who will not make it down to Sydney will only be able to follow them on our televisions. Let's hope NBC exercises some restraint in its coverage and allows the athletes' performances to do most of the talking. Athletes are not movie stars. In the next two weeks, they will undoubtedly achieve record-breaking, spectacular, even beautiful athletic feats. So cut the sob stories. Olympian grace and skill alone should be enough to keep Americans glued to their seats.

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