Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

I've been mentoring a recent UF graduate this summer and during our interview, he asked me how my job changed from start to finish.

In 1978, if you needed to send audio back to the station from the field, you had to find a payphone (or perhaps somebody's office), hopefully find one that allowed you to unscrew the bottom disc, remove the magnetic part that you talk into, use metal alligator clips to connect to the copper wiring and press play on your reel-to-reel or cassette recorder.

When we were assigned a story, you took dimes so you could check in with the boss. No e-mails. No IMs. No cellphones. No pagers. No Blackberries. No desktops, laptops or tablets. No modems, not even 2,400 baud!

Not even the hallowed Radio Shack Trash 80s!

At the Sun-Sentinel in 1980, the folks on the agate desk were expected to stop on their way to work at a newsstand and get programs from Dania Jai-Alai, Hollywood Dog Track and Pompano Park (trotting races). Then we'd get calls every hour from the fronton or the track, informing us of the toteboard results for the previous hour's worth of games or races. That way, we'd already know the names of the players or horses when we typed in the info.

Even when I left the Rocky Mount Telegram in 1999, we hadn't set up personal e-mails for coaches to text information because very few had the technology available to do so.

And the question as to why every TV gets a slight and unique delay from satellite broadcasts has to do with TCP/IP protocols. If you need a full explanation, I'm not nerdy enough to be that guy.

 

Death, taxes and the US men fucking up the 4X100.

 

We learned in middle school PE how to hold and pass a baton. And yet, we can't find four guys who have that skill at a professional track meet.

 

Women took care of bidness. Richardson erased a subpar opening leg and a poor final handoff.

 

Kung-Fu Kenny killed them. That hurts.

 

He came to a stop because he started too soon and was coming up on the end of the zone.

 

I never want to hear any excuses from the US men's team, ever again. You've run in relays your entire lives, from Field Day to high school to college. How do you not understand the basics of an exchange? How can you excel at your individual event, but your brain completely malfunctions when someone hands you a metal tube?

Every other country seems to figure it out just fine every four years. Not so for the American droppsie team.

It's just one medal every Olympics that the US should already have waiting for them at the finish line. They cannot stop being terrible at it.

 

That really sucks for Coleman, because he is a gold medal-worthy leadoff man.

 

Wow. An Athing Mu commercial on the NBC Olympic broadcast.