Re our frustration with Mr. Miller, I must respectfully disagree with King. Winning, of course, is great, but Americans love our losers, too. As long as they lose with dignity, regret, possibly some tears. Even a casual Olympics observer knows that the difference between winning and crapping out in these events is usually tiny, and often beyond the control of any individual. Compassion is hard to squelch for the athlete who is crushed by his defeat, mortified by some bonehead mistake. Even "I did my best" is a laudably understandable and endearing response to an ignominious loss, if accompanied by tangible signs of actual regret. But "I rocked, man..."? Please. You didn't rock. But more compelling to us, you didn't really seem like you cared, like your catalog of losses and disqualifications even mattered to you at all. And to the people who take athletic competition seriously, that seems like the ultimate betrayal. So ski off into the sunset, Mr. Miller, and party on. You won't be missed.

First, are the Olympics still "special"? Years back, there was an "Olympic year" every 4 years. Now after staggering winter and summer games (for commercial reasons), it comes every two years! i.e. " Specialness" reduced by half...

Also:

@ the commentators: Do you have to have a sob story life before you can be in the games? It seems that every other athlete had one, whether injury, or parents health or sibling dying etc... Enough already! I wanted to watch sports not to see a poor substitute for a soap opera...

@ the commentators: The fear of dead air is such that they blab inanities all the time. I turned off the sound at times just to get to enjoy what was to be seen without the pap the commentators spewed (of course, a tactic that leaves you with nothing during athletes interviews but then, that was when the inanities in questions got even denser)

@ the hype; It is supposed to be a meeting of all the best athletes in the world! So why does NBC pushes its broadcast by a jingoistic hyping of some alledged stars instead of the games themselves? Hell, Bode Miller may be talented but he has never been the dominant force in his disciplines that the Herminator, for example, was a few years back. And he proved it. So them we get the sourpuss anti-Olympic attitude from Costas et al. (Brokaw coming out of retirement!) about not winning medals (or even worse, "only winning a silver")!

When I grew up, the Olympics represented to me an ideal based on a set of principles of sportsmanship and freedom for 2 weeks of petty international rivalries. Naive? Maybe! But in a broadcast such as the NBC one, I strained to capture the old magic.

Thanks for the great coverage of the Winter Olympics King - it's been entertaining. For sure I wouldn't want to be in your shoes trying to cover an event that has so many subjective opinions surrounding it.

For what it's worth, I'm in awe of Olympic ice skaters/dancers. There's an amazing amount of athleticism and skill involved in what those guys and gals do. Whether or not a person likes watching their events, there's still the fundamental component of the figure skater's athleticism that more than justifies their participation in the Olympics. I think to some degree there's always going to be some controversy with the judging in the figure skating events because artistry is a subjective call and it can't be reduced to a purely mathematical, black & white score like with speed skating or downhill slalom.

I have no idea what the answers might be to a better scoring system for figure skating. But the fact that they've overhauled it once perhaps indicates that they'd be willing to do it again if somebody could come up with a better system. As long as any subjectivity exists in any part of the scoring though, we're likely to have the controveries we have now.

Maybe figure skating is always going to be a little messy. And maybe that's part of the reason why it's such a popular event in the Winter Olympics?

Speaking as someone on the West Coast who regularly deals with customers and co-workers in Asia, I'd love it if they'd show events live. Of course, I would have loved if it the Sydney Olympics were live as well, and we got screwed with that.

But since Beijing is at GMT+8, it's only 8 hours behind (perhaps 9, with daylight savings) the West Coast of the US...which means that events starting at noon Tuesday could be on live right in prime time (Monday night).

Of course, I'm sure the networks will instead decide to delay the results almost 24 hours just so they can show them in prime time...

"Could have been worse, though. We could be Norwegians, who actually care about these sports during the other 206 weeks of each Olympiad, and who won two gold medals here, tied for 13th place with China, one behind Estonia. This would be like the U.S. winning fewer gold medals in a Summer Games than Bulgaria."

Norway's population is 4.5 million. It is just 600,000 less than the number of humans roaming the great state of Minnesota. There is snow in Norway. There is snow in Minnesota. The people in Minnesota love to win medals. The people in Norway love to win too. Unfortunately, Minnesotans won only one medal in Turin 2006. Unfortunately, it was bronze. Unfortunately, it was in curling. May be, if the US women ice hockey team had more than four Minnesotans, the Swedish miracle on ice wouldn't have happened, but there were only four. One of them was not even born in Minnesota. The Norwegians won only 19 medals. Unfortunately, only two of them were gold. The fact that they out-medaled Minnesota 19:1 still didn't make them feel like winners. What were they thinking these Norwegians? Weren't they ashamed with all that NBC hype about Bjorndalen being the Michael Jordan of biathlon? The great Ole Einar with only two silver medals and one bronze was a total failure. Michael Jordan? He barely pulled a Kevin McHale. I guess that not every country is North Carolina.

Could have been worse, though. They could have been Americans, who actually sit in a couch, watch TV and stuff themselves with potato chips and corn chips. They worship TV but still miss hockey goals that come before the end of their commercials. Americans watch TV 70 hours a day but don't get the Olympic Games live. Norway does. China, Estonia and Bulgaria do. Does Minnesota?