fishyj0e: King, I know you have a dislike for the judged sports, or the events that feature one athlete after another. Why isn't the team pursuit in ice skating for you then? It's straight up heads up battlin!

It's not straight up battlin. It's separated battlin. It's a little prissy. It's better than regular speed skating, which is individual vs. clock times however many athletes. I like the Team A vs. Team B, tournament format. But I'd like it better if they didn't separate the teams on opposite sides of the oval, which makes it look like individual vs. clock. Let them race each other, all 6 skaters jockeying for position on the track. That would be a little more exciting than watching the two teams, separately, gliding along.

I like snowboard cross, which started today, better than most winter and/or racing sports, because the competitors are on the course, against each other, at the same time. It's still a race, and races tend to bore me, but at least they are straight up battlin.

Christy: I think Davis' decision is eminently reasonable. To question his patriotism, as some other readers have, is absurd.

I agree. It's a separate issue, though, whether Davis is a jerk who can't get along with his teammates. Which he seems to be, though I don't know that. I think if a well-liked skater decided not to participate, he wouldn't take such a hit over it from his teammates. And, getting back to what I mentioned, would he be so disliked if he were the same guy but white? I have no idea, but it's a valid question.

You sure you're not me?

Ed Furey, I think you make excellent points about both the Olympics and the World Series.

dan: Being on the East Coast, my problem with the World Series games is that they start too late, not that it's too easy to see them.

By your logic the Super Bowl should start at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday ...

I don't see how you can argue that it would've been better for me as a baseball fan (and White Sox fan) to claw the walls of my office while the games were on or to have to take my vacation days to watch the World Series. Or how that would be good for baseball as a sport.

Dan, the NFL doesn't take it to the extreme you joke about, but it absolutely uses scarcity as a way to promote its product. Any marketers in this discussion could speak more intelligently about this than I can, but the NFL, just as one example, makes its satellite package available only on DirecTV. The scarcity makes it worth more. (DirecTV is willing to pay for it.) How is it better for the Red Sox (sorry, Red) not to have tickets readily available? You can't just up and go to a game! Isn't that bad for business? Well, no.

It would be better for baseball for you to be climbing the walls of your office when the White Sox are playing a daytime World Series game because you'd be climbing the walls of your office over baseball. You'd be thinking about it, passionate about it. You might take a vacation day to watch it on TV. You and your work mates might spend a good part of the day talking and messaging about it, you'd desperately check the Web for updates, and so on. If it's on at night, you choose to watch it or not. If the choice is World Series or skip work, and you can't skip work, you'll climb the walls. If the choice is World Series or the Rolling Stones concert, or World Series and a date with that hot number you met last week -- you may choose World Series, but if you don't, you won't be climbing the walls. Am I making sense?

MacGuffin: There are two kinds of sport, one is where competitors (or teams) strive to beat each other in a pre-determined fashion and officials are there just to enforce rules. The second sport is where where competitors (or teams) strive to beat each other in a pre-determined fashion and officials are there to judge a winner.

You make a good point about Americans not going for the latter. Just not in our national psyche. I'd argue there's two divisions in that first "kind": Contests, where competitors take turns doing their thing, and the results are compared: Ski racing, speed skating, bowling, golf, etc. The other is where the competitors are doing the same thing at the same time, and are able to affect their opponents' play. Most sports popular in the U.S. are in this category.

Stephen Rifkin: Hemmingway said there are three sports

Bullfighting

Mountain climbing

...and something else, maybe dueling or lion wrestling or something.

Motor racing.

It's important to remember in this context that Hemingway was full of it. I said that to him once in Spain and we laughed about it and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and Gertrude Stein broke my nose ...

I think that was the first gold (though not in an individual sport). Didn't Debi Thomas win the bronze in 1988?

Yeah, that's a typo. I meant to say first gold of any type, meaning hers was a team medal. I'll get the word gold stuck in there.