some observations and modest proposals for the iooc...

02/26/10

Both Miz Susan and I were disappointed when the U.S. women's hockey team didn't grab the gold last night. Heck of a game though, eh? If the USAers didn't claim the top step of the podium they at least caught Susan's attention to the point that she watched the entire game from the time that she got home. We missed the early scoring--her, because she works for a living and me, because I was boiling eggs in the kitchen for another of Susan's nummy salads (translation: meatless meals) for dinner. I shouldn't be kicking since all I had to do was stand around in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil while she had to brave the Mississippi Market to get salad greens and more half+half.

Despite the loss, Susan's willingness to watch the game last night might just mark the opening up of whole new worlds of possibilities for us. I doubt that, in her entire life, apart from her niece Marcy's youth league games, Susan has watched enough minutes to patch together a full hockey game. You'll hear the hockey announcers talk about a star defenseman racking up 40+ minutes of ice time in a big game but that's about where Susan stands for her viewing career. In her defense, I sense that ice hockey was not a way of life down in Lamberton, MN. I'm not saying that there wasn't talent for the game out west on Hwy 14 but it would appear that whatever talent there was got scooped up early and hustled of to the top Junior A leagues. It's tough to run a grade-A high school hockey program when your best kids keep getting sent north to Montreal and Toronto.

Susan was very disappointed that our ladies (didn't you want to strangle Mike Milbury every time he used that word last night? I'd forgotten how much I despised him when he played for the Bruins.) fell short but I tend to the philosophical in these things. As the puckheads are want to say, "You've got to put the biscuit in the basket if you wanna win." Do puckheads really say that? Anyway, our skaters didn't really come close to lighting the lamp except for maybe once off of a scramble in the second period and the Canuckers played plenty well enough to make it stand up. Hats off to the Canadiennes. I'm happy to join in on Oh, Canada! most any time.

But we do need to remember the real purpose of the Olympics and who invented them. The Americans and NBC-TV, right? C'mon, everyone knows that. And when I say "Americans", I'm not willing to get all inclusive to bunch Canada and Mexico in with us. Both of those countries have made plenty of contributions to the world at large but, by god, the Olympics are ours. And with an eye to avoiding future disappointments to households all over this great land and to maintain the potential for ad revenue growth for NBC, I have a few suggestions (the "modest proposals" mentioned in the title above) on how to improve the game of Olympic hockey.

What we really need to understand is that we can't have the U.S. teams in ice hockey losing to anybody. The rest of the world can have all the curling and team Nordic combined skiing medals that they can bear to drape around their necks but the integrity of U.S. viewership needs to be protected at nearly all costs. So, with that in mind, I'm going to throw out these few simple suggestions. Get back to me and tell me what you think.

I'm perfectly willing to let the first period of any future hockey game get played on an even keel. But if Team USA (and this is for women's and men's teams alike) is losing after the first period then the second period will need to be with the other team playing without skates. Broomball shoes would be OK but no skates. And if we're still down after two, then the other guys will have to pull their goalie. For the whole period. Oh, we'll let them have a sixth player but he or she would be restricted to staying inside the center face-off circle. Oh yeah, and that sixth player wouldn't get a stick. These few simple rules modifications should be enough to give our U.S. team a fighting chance to win in most games.

I came up with these ideas last night after Team USA's loss but I'd been thinking hard about ways to improve the Olympics even before that. How about, for example, running the downhill skiing events at night? The cameras could be equipped with infra-red lenses to pick up the body heat from the skiers as they go bouncing past. Or maybe doing the ice dancing competitions on the bobsled run? I'm even working on ideas to successfully combine the ski aerials, snowboard-cross and the biathlon. This could make for some major league fantastic reality TV. And the ratings. Just imagine the ratings!!