Snow Foolin'

Some (loser) folks have gone off on mini-tirades against one of the last honest men in broadcasting, Bryant Gumbel over his remarks against the Winter Olympics. I'll give what I've seen of his entire quote, you can guess which part mealy-mouthed crybabies are whining and cracking wise about.

"Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like them and won't watch them ... Because they're so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something's not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what's called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they're done, when we can move on to March Madness - for God's sake, let the games begin."

Now if you're like me and not particularly interested in finding stupid sniglets of 'racism' under every rug, you get to the heart of the matter. Byrant Gumbel's show is called 'Real Sports'. Righteous. When I grew up we used to have debates about whether or not something was a sport or an activity. Remember that? Well I'm sure Gumbel had that in mind when he named his show. Now consider some common sense observations:

bowling, darts, golf..anything that lacks defense is not a sport

I consider golf a sport, I guess I would consider sand and water the "defense". Poker and gymnastics are not sports. Definitely anything that has judges deciding the outcome is not a sport(gymnastics, ice skating, cheeerleading). Those are more competitions than sports.

Running is not a sport. Nor is NASCAR.

Wrestling, boxing, kickboxing and other types of indivdual fighting are the only true sports.

No aparatuses aiding the athlete.

All that makes sense and we could get a discussion going here. But I think the question has already been settled by ESPN when they did their Degree of Difficulty study. In that famous evaluation, 60 sports were ranked in ten categories: (Endurance, Strength, Power, Speed, Agility, Flexibility, Nerve, Durability, Hand/Eye and Analytic Ability). I happen to think it takes more nerve than 4.38 to play Lacrosse, but other than that I find the results very satisfying.

Take the word of our panel of experts, a group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail.

They're the ones who told us that boxing is the most demanding sport -- and that fishing is the least demanding sport.

In that list, Ice Hockey and Alpine Skiing make the top 15. Also Figure skating and Speed skating make the top half as do Bobsledding and Luge, just ahead of Badminton. Ski Jumping is in the bottom half, but it is rescued by the second highest score when it comes to Nerve. (The highest goes to Rodeo). Snowboarding didn't make the list, nor did Skeleton. And Curling is right near the bottom where it belongs, below Cheerleading.

Now I don't follow Hockey close enough to know whether or not anyone takes Olympic Hockey seriously as compared to the NHL, but my guess is that other than the US vs Russians, nobody cares. So when it comes to keeping it real, Gumbel is dead on it. Now I suppose we could go ask the Nielsen people if more people watch March Madness than the Winter Games, but my guess again is no contest and the NCAA wins hands-down, not to mention the NIT. (According to my Google Toolbar 'NCAA Basketball' gets 7.5million entries and 'Winter Olympics' get 2.8million Case Closed).

I'm not going to dignify the squirrel chatter about Bryant Gumbel's remarks being racist, just like I'm not going to ask what kind of beer Dick Cheney drinks. Some people need to grow up. As for the Winter Olympics.. eh. I'd rather watch the new Tour of California.