Olympic Poseur: Day One

Welcome to International Figure Skating Championships!

Wait. What? There are other events at the Olympics? Are you sure? I turned on NBC at 8 in the morning and watched until 1:30, and even followed the coverage to NBCSports, and the only sport they broadcast was figure skating with a 15 minute highlight of cross-country skiing.

Admittedly, there was some women's hockey on MSNBC, and there was some events broadcast in the middle of the night, but as a normal human being with a child, ruling late night TV watching out as a viable option, the only thing to watch on this first day of the Olympics has been figure skating.

Hey, I know it pays the bills. I know casual fans like figure skating. I'm not saying NBC shouldn't cover skating or even that it shouldn't be the centerpiece of their coverage. By all means, pay your bills. But for godsakes, SHOW SOMETHING ELSE.

Five gold medals have been handed out, and according to the non-vampire set, none of them have occurred yet on broadcast television. NBC has five channels dedicated to the Olympics, and for the first morning of the Olympics, they decided to only show figure skating and hockey. That's it.

NBC's coverage is an abomination, and downright hateful to sports fans. You couldn't have worse coverage of the Olympics so far if they were actively trying. It's been terrible so far.

Luckily, I'm now curled up this afternoon, and NBC has dedicated the afternoon to some other sports, so  it can try to rally. It's not hard, people: SHOW THE SPORTS. I don't ask for much and luckily, the online coverage is still excellent. Just show me the sports, and a wide variety if you can.

So... opening complaints out of the way, welcome to another edition of the Olympic Poseur. The format is simple, every day I will choose one sport to immerse myself in and by Olympics' end, I will hopefully have spent a day with every single event. Now, I won't get to every discipline within a sport, but I will try to give every sport an open and honest try.

Also, there is the hockey tournament going on. I'll close each entry with a review of t day's action in the men's tournament, which is only the best team sport tournament in any sport in the world. Olympic hockey is awesome.

Because the Olympics will primarily be contested while I am sleeping, I will wake up and watch an event in its entirety. NBC expects the entire internet to embargo the results for 18 hours until their prime time show. That isn't going to happen.

That means this column will be full of spoilers. If you don't want to know until the prime time show, more power to you. Don't read this series or if you do, read it a day late. The comments are spoilerific as well. Feel free to discuss any event in full detail. I am not NBC's marketing agent. We can talk about things as they happen.

Cool? Cool.

I'm pretty excited by the Olympics, and I make no apologies for being a total Olympic junkie. I like sports, what can I say? Let's all cheer on the red, white, and blue. That includes Russia.

I'm a firm believer in rooting for the host nation. It's great for hometown fans to root on the hometown athletes. I want the fans to go home happy. This violates the instincts of anyone who grew up with the Cold War Olympics, but Russia is not our enemy. Treating them as such traps us in the past, but it also distracts you from who you need to be rooting against...

Canada.

NEXT SPORT: ALPINE SKIING