What will I stay up all night to watch on TV? Not much. Not the NFL. Not the NBA. Not even Major League Baseball. The World Cup? Maybe the Super Bowl. The Summer Olympics? As it turns out … absolutely … if the track meet is going on.

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Apparently, USA Track and Field doesn’t care that it cannot come up with sprint-relay teams who can get a baton around a track. Any time the U.S. has a quartet of sprinters — male or female — running in a major event, American fans who have been paying attention know they may soon need to […]

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I was critical of the U.S. women’s basketball team yesterday. It underwhelmed me in a semifinal victory over France. Then I saw the men play Spain tonight … And they were just as ragged as were the women … while playing significantly more competent opposition. Which means they are in a much more dangerous situation. […]

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I have seen more than a little women’s basketball. I covered WNBA games. I traveled to Arizona to sit down with Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury. I reported on women’s college basketball games and more than a few girls prep basketball games. I covered the U.S. women’s team in an Olympics or three. But […]

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We’re all Olympics critics, aren’t we? Well, many of us. And sometimes we feel like we’re just crabbing about something or other all the time and maybe we should do something about it. So, today, nothing but kind thoughts. Really. None of this is satire. This is just niceness for the sake of changing up […]

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The greatest upset at Rio 2016, so far? As we head into Day 12 of the Summer Games, Great Britain is second in the medals table — at least, the table ordered by gold-medals-won — and ahead of China. There it is: United States, 26 gold medals; Great Britain, second with 16 gold medals; China […]

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I was in the stadium when Usain Bolt of Jamaica won his first Olympic gold medal — at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing 2008. He is up to seven Olympic golds now, including three successive 100-meter triumphs, and I’m getting tired of him and the formulaic post-race routine he has been inflicting on us for […]

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Here in France, we have been watching the Rio 2016 Olympics on the British Broadcasting Company. The BBC, that is. Or the Beeb, as some call it. We were pleased that the television system at the three-unit building we live in, here in semi-rural France, has a smattering of British TV — led by the […]

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Gabby Douglas of the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team found herself in a spot of bother when some viewers did not like her attitude (as in, posture) on the victory stand during the playing of the national anthem at Rio 2016. This was after the Americans won the women’s team gold medal on Tuesday night. […]

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Maybe things are different, back in the States, where NBC must be promoting the Rio Olympics like crazy and Comcast is offering a plan to make another 11 channels of Summer Games available. Maybe you are sick to death of all the promos, you’ve seen so many. Maybe you have heard all you need to […]

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