The Fury said:
I have a question to the USA folk, you and others if need be, as I always wondered something. Sure the USA are interested in the Olympics but how much? I ask this as one of your greatest ever competitors in the Olympics, Michael Johnson (whose 400m record was broken at these Olympics) is part of the BBC athletics team and has been for years. Infact he awesome at this job and I wonder why he doesn't do said job for an American company? (The BBC coverage would be so much better if they got rid of Denise Richards, she knows nothing and adds nothing to the analysis of events. |
I watch a lot of sports and listen to some sports radio and the Olympics seems to be losing popularity. Most of the coverage I see is of the rah-rah, USA-USA mentality but otherwise there isn't nearly as much coverage of it as there is of the NFL or the NBA. We are by far an (American) football country first, and aside from Phelps, Ledecky, the women's gymnastics team and Bolt, the athletes don't tend to draw much interest. As Pokoko said, the teams we send are so big that a lot of the medals don't seem to mean that much, save for those that have some historical significance (such as Simone Manuel's win in the pool).
I'm generalizing here, and certainly can't speak for the entire country, but the olympics seems to have lost a bit of its popularity from when I was younger. I still enjoy the games as much as I used to, but few of my friends ever talk about it, and it seems that the World Cup is starting to capture more enthusiasm in the realms of patriotic sports events. The Olympics is still a big thing, but I think it is getting less popular. Maybe because, as pokoko said, there's no real rival to go against, both in the political and physical sense.
The Olympics is pretty minor compared to the Super Bowl in this country, to be honest, with March Madness, the college football championship, and the NBA finals being very big as well.