Winter Olympics: Why Do We Watch?

Aaron wrote this up but hasn't had occasion to post it:

A while back, we discussed a Malcolm Gladwell article, where he compares football to dog fighting. We now know that football players are hurting themselves long term and we continue to like and support the support and kind of look the other way.

NASCAR is one of the most watched sports in the world. But why? Every lap looks the same on TV with an occasional pit stop.

In terms of watching the Winter Olympics on TV, I argue that we can classify every event into one of two categories: Exciting competition or crashable.

Would you want the Olympics in your home town?

The location for the 2016 Olympics will be decided tomorrow. A number of Chicagoans are openly against Chicago winning the bid:

1) The Chicago Tribune had a poll in August that showed only 47% support Chicago's bid

2) Gene Wojciechowski openly argued against in an ESPN.com article today

3) Some are even actively promoting Rio's bid which is something I am full agreement with.

My question to you is this: would you want your home town to win an Olympic bid?

A new Olympics Channel?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-olympics9-2009jul09,0,4919875.story

A couple of things:

1) I LOVE sports and the Olympics, but I can't envision myself watching this channel for more than a couple hours a month.

2) I feel as though NBC screwed this one up - they already had the Universal Sports channel which I watched a lot during Beijing (for stuff like water polo and volleyball); it seemed only natural that they should have simply turned that into the Olympics channel, or offered to buy the rights to show all the events this new channel will show. Although, after my first response, I guess they made a good business decision?