A little over a week to go! How much of it will you watch, and which sports in these Games are you most excited for? I'll watch as much of everything as I can on the NBC family of 16:9 HD channels, but besides the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, two of my top interests (but not the only ones) in these Games are Soccer and Basketball. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
My Olympics rooting order for every event is the same as my World Cup rooting order: United States Russia Ukraine Brazil Considering which countries did and didn't qualify for each event, my Soccer and Basketball rooting order for these Games is: Men's soccer: Brazil Women's soccer: United States Brazil Men's basketball: United States Russia Brazil Women's basketball: United States Russia Brazil How about for you all? GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I was already peeved at the IOC because they pulled baseball and softball as a sport for these games. While the US basketball team is in it, they're going to roll the competition so little reason to watch that until maybe the last game. And with the US Men's team not making the soccer tournament... there really isn't much for me to root for or watch there either. Never been a fan of any of the "olympic" sports either, especially any sport like diving or gymnastics that has scoring based solely on the subjective view of a panel of judges. They are no more a sport than the WWE is a sport.
While the U.S. Men's soccer team not qualifying for these games was certainly a downer and the U.S. Men's basketball team will likely roll over most of the competition, there are some foreign basketball national teams that may give the U.S. fits considering the foreign teams' increased skill level and NBA representation in the last decade or so. After all, the U.S. had to rally from 30 points or so down to eventually defeat Brazil recently. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
While the Opening Ceremony is two days away, the Women's Soccer portion of the games begins today (Wednesday, 7/25/12) and the Men's Soccer portion begins tomorrow (Thursday, 7/26/12). GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
In today's (Wednesday, 7/25/12) women's soccer games : Of my teams, the U.S. defeated France 4-2 and Brazil defeated Cameroon 5-0. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
In today's (Thursday, 7/26/12) men's soccer games : Of my teams, Brazil defeated Egypt 3-2. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I hate NBC's coverage. They spend more time showing us crap from old Olympics than they do stuff going on in the current games. Like why aren't the opening ceremonies being shown live on NBC Sports Network and then being rebroadcast later on NBC?
I'd imagine that since that would allow many of us to record the NBC Sports Network live broadcast on our VCR's, DVR's and/or HD-DVR's to watch later when we return home from work and/or school, ratings for the NBC rebroadcast would then suffer, pissing off all the companies that bought commercial time for the primetime showing. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Pretty good Opening Ceremony. However, the fact that I still remember the 2008 Opening Ceremony as if it was yesterday further proves that I'm old. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I thought it was one of the more enjoyable opening's that I've ever seen. Way better than 2008 in Beijing. Which is ironic considering just about every talking head review of the 2012 ceremony hated it.
I gave in GS. Decided to root for the Great Britain soccer team since they are an oddity that rarely plays and has few dedicated fans (and I'm partially descended from all 4 nationalities based in the British Isles.)
I agree that NBC's coverage continues to set the standard for horribly sucking at covering the games. They're so bad, I don't even want to talk about it anymore, except to say that soccer is getting the (usual) shaft from them. The mother network of course emphasizes gymnastics and swimming (and absurd interviews with irrelevant people about irrelevant topics), but it's been difficult to find any soccer on any of the other four channels that are carrying events. Even when the Comcast menu indicates there's a soccer game on, I most often find that they're showing oddball stuff. Bravo is almost all boxing; MSNBC (?) is dominated by equestrian (wtf?); and after that it's a total crapshoot (you're lucky if you can find anything better than synchronized blindfolded skeet shooting from a whitewater kayak). I'm thrilled if I can catch some ping pong, which is just sad.
So glad I have ATT Uverse. They have a 2 dedicated channels for both the soccer and basketball games. It's made NBC's otherwise crappy coverage somewhat tolerable.
It's the only thing making the soccer watchable. I was watching the women's games on MSNBC and they had the gall to actually cut to commercials at least twice during the second half of the GBR v Brazil match. I've never seen a network cut to commercial in the middle of a half like that before. Absolutely unforgivable by NBC.
The basketball coverage has been good, made even better by Bob Fitzgerald's play-by-play announcing. And yes, that's the same Bob Fitzgerald that regularly does the play-by-play (alongside color commentator Jim Barnett) for Golden State Warriors broadcasts on CSN Bay Area. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
That's surprising, considering that NBC Sports Network's MLS coverage has been excellent thus far. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I wasn't going to watch the US basketball game today. Glad I did *SPOILER*, the US just smashed the all time Olympic and all time US scoring records by putting up 156 pts against Nigeria (they won 156-73). The previous Olympic record had been 138 set by Brazil in 1988. It turned into a 3pt and dunking exhibition. And this was with them playing the second team the whole second half.
What fun is it to watch a game you know the outcome of. Just turns out I didn't know just how much the US would kick the Nigerian's asses.