| There Ought To Be A Law: Olympics just made-up sports, and no football |
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By: STEPHEN LEWIS
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Posted: Sunday, August 17, 2008 8:10 am
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Don’t the Olympics fill you with that good ‘ol American spirit? Staying up late watching premier athletes compete at the highest levels. Spending time at work talking at the water cooler about how great the U.S. is doing. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it now. Who am I kidding? I thought I’d write a feel good story about the Olympics but I just can’t do it. This is the South and the only thing we care about in August is football. Not a bunch of people we’ve never heard of before competing in what seems to me to be made-up sports.
Let’s examine a few of the sports taking place in the Olympics. Apparently a fellow named Michael Phelps is on track to win seven or eight gold medals for swimming. Have you seen the Olympic swimmers compete? Give me a break! They have these special suits that make them glide through the water faster than a normal suit. Of course the normal suit used to be a Speedo that covers just enough to give the Olympics a PG-13 rating. I tried on one of those sleek new suits while I was down in Florida. I looked like a 225-pound black bag of potatoes.
I once swam all the way across Center Hill Lake in a pair of cut-off khakis with a belt on, my billfold in my back pocket, after eating two hamburgers and a half a cantaloupe. Plus I had to dodge several jet skiers that I swear were purposely trying to run over me. I almost swam back across but my stomach cramped up and I had to grab a floating log and hold on until the TWRA boated by and picked me up. They made me take a breathalyzer because they said nobody could be stupid enough to swim across the whole lake if they weren’t drunk. I proved them wrong. I didn’t get a gold medal when I got back to shore but I did have another hamburger to settle my stomach cramps. Let “pretty boy” Phelps try that if he wants to be considered “world’s best swimmer.”
Can you believe wrestling is an Olympic sport? I’m not actually against wrestling being an Olympic sport; I’m just against the exclusion of some of the world’s greatest wrestlers. How can you claim to be the best wrestler in the world if you haven’t faced “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair? Or “Stone Cold” Steve Austin? It just doesn’t make sense? Now I would be for Olympic competition in women’s Jell-O or mud wrestling. The winner would be determined by who could disrobe their competitor first. Actually we’d all be winners wouldn’t we?
Speaking of the women’s side of the Olympics, have you watched women’s beach volleyball? Women in skimpy bikinis jumping around in the sand hitting a volleyball. No doubt a man invented that sport. The first time I saw this on television I actually thought I was dreaming. I asked my wife to pinch me to see if I was dreaming. Instead she slapped me upside my head. I say we keep the bikinis, forget about the volleyball and put the women on trampolines and just have them jump up and down. I could be an Olympic judge of that sport and I’ve got a couple buddies who would love to join me at the judges’ table.
The Chinese have a death grip on the diving medals. You notice how you never see anybody from the south competing as an Olympic diver? That’s because the judges are biased against the dives we southerners excel at. Plus we’re better at diving off the bluffs of a lake or river than a fancy shmancy diving board. I’ll agree that the degree of difficulty may not be as high for a “cannonball” dive but if done correctly you can soak anyone within 20 feet of where you land. The “can opener,” “nutcracker” and “preacher seat” are all dives I guarantee a southerner can do better than any Chinese diver.
And don’t get me started on synchronized swimming and water polo. I would tell you what I think of these sports but it would be so politically incorrect my publisher and editor would probably make me take one of those sensitivity training courses. And quite frankly I pride myself on my lack of sensitivity.
So watch the Olympics if you must. I suppose there are enough northern transplants who don’t get into football like we do down here who will enjoy watching badminton, fencing and rowing. But in answer to Hank Williams, Jr.’s weekly question: Yes, I am ready for some football!
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