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Olympics

By Coach Kip | August 10, 2008

There is nothing like the Olympics. I love it (I think that they should do away with professional athletes but that is another story).

I was at a party yesterday and they had the preseason football game on. Although I was interested in how Washington and Buffalo was running their defenses, I really wanted to watch the Olympics. So what is the attraction?

I think that the big attraction is that it is only every 4 years, it is very important to the athletes, and they are competing for their country.

The every 4 years thing gives it a bit of a scarcity factor. Business people know all about the scarcity factor. It certainly raises the awareness of the games, it attracts people from all over, and in this case it puts you in the position to be the champion for 4 years. No one can say that they are the champion the next year.

It is important to the athletes. That is a big factor. Everyone knows Michael Phelps. He was so dominant yesterday in the 400M IM. It was amazing. I watched the preliminaries and he was half a body past the World Record before he shut it down. The finals? If you have not seen it got to NBC Olympic site. You can watch all the raw footage there. He was an entire body ahead of the World Record, and way further ahead of everyone else. So far ahead that it looked unfair. Did he just suddenly become able to swim that fast? No way! It was the fact that he was in the Olympics and pushed himself further than he ever thought was possible.

I love being able to root for my country. I love the USA. It really is a great country and for those of you who think not, quit whining about something you don’t know. I have travelled a lot, and I love the USA. OK off my soap box now.

I love rooting for the USA. I don’t care who is competing. I don’t care about the pros that are playing. I don’t care about the names. I am interested in them, but what I really want to see is the Red, White, and Blue standing on the podium. That is why I think that the professionals should be outlawed. It does not matter. I don’t care to watch the professional basketball players. I would be far more interested in watching our best amateurs go against the world’s best. We never had a problem before (except that little episode with Russia in the 70’s).

It is also refreshing to root for the team. Why do you think that fantasy sports are so popular? It is because the athletes switch teams so often today. They switch for money (I don’t blame them), they switch due to personality conflicts, and they switch for god knows why. I like just rooting for a team. That is why I prefer college to the pros, and high school to all else. They play for pride, and they play for the team and not much else.

So kudos to the Olympics. I hope that they can maintain the excitement for years to come.

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