An Exercise in Olympic Superlativism

Sportwriters should stick to what they know. How many more “Olympic” pieces are going to be written by the likes of Jemele Hill? Sure, we all know Michael Phelps just completed one of the most amazing Olympic performances of all-time, but immediately after Phelps wins his eighth gold medal, Jemele Hill writes an article proclaiming him to be the “greatest athlete of all time”. Maybe it was the greatest feat of all time, but it’s going to take more than a 750 word essay with half-assed comparisons to Wilt Chamberlain and Brett Favre to convince anyone, or at least it should.

For me, this was the absolute worst passage of the article: “Phelps has had to beat Ian Crocker, Ryan Lochte and Laszlo Cseh in Beijing all of whom were world-record holders. Phelps is beating his competition in their individual specialties. Imagine if Kobe Bryant sang a better national anthem than Marvin Gaye, or if Alex Rodriguez dunked better than Dwight Howard.” Never mind the absurdity of comparing the similarity of swim events to that of nailing a three pointer and singing, but Phelps didn’t actually beat Lochte in his world-record event (200 Back) and Laszlo’s "specialty" is the Individual Medley, which is comprised of all four strokes. By no means am I a Phelps-hater (quite the opposite), but I find the immediate need to proclaim him (or anyone) the best athlete of all-time unnecessary at best and, at worst, insulting.

For those of you that occasionally, likely as a result of boredom, read ESPN’s TMQ, you may have noticed his brief commentary on Michael Phelps in today's effort: “In other Olympic news, the timer said Michael Phelps swam the 100-meter butterfly in 50.58 seconds, Milorad Cavic swam it in 50.59 -- can anyone seriously believe either finished one-hundredth of a second different from the other? …Tenths of seconds are absurd enough, as Tuesday Morning Quarterback noted a few months ago. A hundredth of a second is too fleeting to have any common-sense relevance, let alone decide an athletic event; and this is setting aside whether a mechanical device splashed with water (the touch pads) can be accurate to the hundredth of the second. Yet numerous clocks in Beijing show hundredths of seconds, as if these splinters of time can be measured meaningfully. Reader Fred Ruonala notes that as the Phelps result was announced, one of the NBC announcers said viewers could "clearly see Phelps touched first." Now Olympics announcers can perceive hundredths of seconds.”

First of all, it IS clear from replays that Phelps finished first, if ever so slightly. If tenths and hundreds of seconds are too small to decide athletic competitions, how does “TMQ” propose that these events be decided? Any swimmer or track sprinter can tell you that a quarter or tenth of a second can be a huge difference. It is widely acknowledged that Usain Bolt torched the competition in the 100M Dash. However, his margin of victory was only a meager .2 seconds. Under TMQ’s assumptions, that difference is “irrelevant” and “fleeting”. Perhaps all the finalists should have been awarded gold medals, since their times would have all rounded to ten seconds.

Also, his description of touchpads as “mechanical device(s) splashed with water” grossly misrepresents the quality and accuracy of these electronic machines. TMQ is simply making guesses about things he does not understand. In an age where technology improves by leaps and bounds every year, it is harder to believe that we would be unable to create an accurate timing device than it is to believe we could. If races could be timed to hundredths of seconds in Mark Spitz’s era, does TMQ honestly believe we should use a larger unit of time to decide races some 30 years later?

I may not be a qualified journalist, but I’m also not being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to write about sports. The least we can expect is some semblance of a coherent argument and a clear indication that these individuals are even watching the events before jumping to their laptops.

Sorry for the lengthy layoff. Expect SEC college football previews within the week.