Confessions of an Olympics addict

Auburn Athlete Kirsty Coventry is swimming for Zimbabwe in the Athens Olympics.


I confess, I am a bit of a sports junkie. I have found myself watching the 9 ball tournament on the Duce (if you don’t know what the Duce is, your fortunate enough to not share my problem) at 2 a.m. on a weeknight on more than one occasion. And forget about college football. Last year my wife and I had a conversation something like this:

HER: “Is there anything else on other than football.”
ME: “Yes, but this is a really good game.”
HER: “Oh, who’s playing…I didn’t even know they played college football on a Tuesday night.”
ME: “This is the ’89 Tennessee/Alabama Game”
HER: “This game didn’t even take place this decade? Don’t you already know who won?”
ME: “Yes, ummm, No errrrrr”
HER: “I’m going to see what else is on.”

So it was no surprise that I took to watching the Olympics with almost a zombie like devotion. I mean most people get excited about the Olympics and enjoy watching the prime time coverage and cheering for Team USA. So why would I think I have an addiction?

I think the first clue came to me while watching team table tennis. I mean part of the fun of the Olympics is being exposed to different sports, but I was arguing a call made by the ref…and I wasn’t even watching the Americans.

That brings us to my next clue. You see, this year NBC has done a great job of offering tons of coverage. Which is great, but if you’re going to be an addict; you can’t limit yourself to watching just Team USA. So I started searching for other teams to root for and low and behold there are a ton of my fellow Auburn Alumnus participating in the Olympics this year. And many of them will be doing so for other countries. So now I have 11 more countries to cheer for…well only when they are competing, and I can’t cheer for them to beat Americans…wait this is getting confusing. I need to make rules:

1. Cheer for Americans
2. When no Americans are competing Cheer for Auburn Alumnus
3. When no Americans or Auburn Alumnus are competing, Cheer for The Underdog.

Then of course there are exceptions. For example, last night I cheered for American Natalie Coughlin to win Gold (which she did) and Auburn senior Kirsty Coventry, who swims for Zimbabwe to get the Silver (which she did). So it was fun to watch, although it did dawn on me that when you make detailed rules such as this…you have a problem. Well I can’t worry about that right now; I have to watch Men’s swimming while recording Women’s Soccer and watching pre-recorded Rowing.

For you fellow addicts:
TV Listings
Results
Newsweek’s Athens blog
Auburn Athlete Kirsty Coventry's Olympics Diary