The Olympics: why we care

Friday night, I was going to park myself in front of a television and watch the Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. But, I forgot.

This past weekend, after I talked with my mother about the Georgian luge athlete's death, I planned to check to see what else was going on up in Canada. But, I forgot that, too.

In short, I'd like to like the Olympics. But I find them, in a word…forgettable.

It seems I'm not the only one. Google "2010 Winter Olympics," and within three clicks you're just as likely to come across a blog entry titled "Why we don't care about the Olympics" as you are a schedule of sporting events.

Everywhere you turn, it's cynicism about interest in the Games, and, upon first glance, it seems that this cynicism is deserved. Nielsenwire, a blog carrying news of television's Nielsen ratings, prominently charts historical ratings for the Olympics, and a quick survey of these data indicates that America's Olympic viewership has, more or less, been in steady decline since 1980, with the exception of spikes for Games hosted on U.S. soil.

Maybe, we don't like the Olympics—especially the winter version—because Americans are so often not dominant in the competition. And if watching curling virtually guarantees seeing a non-American win, why would we bother tuning in?

On Feb. 12, the main entry for CNN's blog Connect the World was entitled "Do you care about the Winter Olympics?" What is this if not indicative of a general and predictable disinterest in the Games?

But then I got to thinking. And it dawned on me that I'm not sure that we don't care about the Olympics. I have no evidentiary proof of this assertion, of course. But come on, an American skier was in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. We must care at least a little.

I think where the real gap in attention could be is in the media itself—maybe the sports news machine is just doing a mighty fine job of convincing me that I'm not interested in the Olympics. It seems a little analogous to the 1994 World Cup: The only World Cup to be held on American soil, a country that modern media coverage proclaims doesn't care about soccer at all, also had the highest attendance of any World Cup, ever, anywhere in the world. The American people clearly cared—and probably still do care—about soccer. But you'd hardly know it from American sports news coverage.

If nothing else, the presence of so many articles on why we don't care about the Olympics makes it pretty clear that we do. Somebody is reading those stories. There is a demand for features about the Winter Games. It may be non-traditional, or it may be deflected onto articles about hating the Olympics, but the demand exists nonetheless. Maybe the lack of ratings and the perceived lack of attention paid to the international event is more an indictment against the media than it is against the American sports fan.

Ultimately, what we have to remember is that apathy is not a one-way street. The media tells us what we ought to be interested in, sure, but we as viewers and news consumers can also tell the media what we're interested in. If we've heard it once, we've heard it a thousand times: The Olympics are the real deal. Coming together on a world stage, putting aside political differences to bond over the ski jump—it's trite, but it's also true. The media might be reinforcing the disinterested status-quo with "How much do you not care about the Olympics?" polls, but we're also playing into that apathetic hand by predictably and mindlessly answering "a lot."

What we should do, then—and what I'll be trying to do—is mark our calendars, call our moms to discuss the figure skaters' outfits and look past the latest Tiger Woods headlines to find the "Winter Olympics 2010" link on our favorite sports news websites. Let's stand up for ourselves and our international awareness, America. Our bobsled team deserves no less.