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Daily Results from Saturday, September 30
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 Highlights and Lowlights
- In a last ditch effort to really screw over their viewer (note: NOT viewers), NBC made a valiant attempt at putting up the most fluff in one night on the final full night of coverage. Unfortunately, NBC couldn't even do this right, finishing with only 52 minutes of fluff as compared to Sunday, September 17th's 54 minutes. Oh well, maybe in four more years...
- Ironically, the entire poor coverage of this Olympic Games could be summarized in NBC's first hour of coverage on Saturday. Like every night, the show opened with the dramatic Olympic theme, followed by Bob Costas giving a brief rundown on what we could expect to see tonight. Just so you'll know, I haven't been counting these first promos as fluff for the whole run of the games. It's only subsequent promos that anger me. Anyway, even though Costas' opening remarks gave me all of the emotional background I needed to enjoy the "human drama" that NBC wants me to see so badly, they proceded to let Al Trautwig spew all over the cycling time trials, then marred the beginning of the track and field segments with fluff over only the two American runners. The first hour of coverage on Saturday night contained an unacceptable 26 minutes of fluff, compared to only 21 minutes of events. Worst of all, this fluff added nothing to the drama produced by any of these moments.
- Al Trautwig's poetic garbage during the men's road cycling event could have just as easily been called "The Lance Armstrong Story." All action and all other competitors were framed only by how they related to Lance Armstrong. The German cyclist was "friendly but not friends" with Lance. The Russian cyclist was a few seconds faster than Lance. The calendar itself was framed against Lance as we were told that October 2nd was "Lance Armstrong Day" in Lance's house, because that's the day that cancer changed his life. Unquestionably, Lance has a great story, but ultimately he finished third in the event. Making him the focus of the road cycling coverage is as ludicrous as framing last year's Super-Bowl-winning St. Louis Rams as "the team that beat Tampa Bay in the NFC Championship game." In the end, I counted most of the road cycling coverage as fluff for this very reason.
- I was forced to feel guilty about the plight of two more U.S. athletes tonight, Marla Runyan, the legally-blind 1,500-meter runner, and Susie Favor Hamilton, her teammate that had a close relative commit suicide. Once again, NBC has turned a simple race into a Greek tragedy, with only the truly gifted suffering the greatest of all wrongs. Obviously, these two deserved to win for their pain. Well, Hamilton fell down, and Runyan finished eighth. One can only imagine the horrible injustices the other runners must have gone through in their lives if the U.S. runners' tragedies weren't severe enough to warrant karmic justice.
- "GM presents Olympic Moments," with Jimmy Roberts. In the shortest (and thus best) GM segment yet, I only spent 210 seconds thinking of getting a Ford. The other reason this was the best "Olympic Moments" piece was that Jimmy said barely a word through the whole thing. Instead, they simply played John Lennon's "Imagine" in the background while they showed video clips of various athletes winning. Ironically, GM showed us more events in these three minutes than they've showed us in the rest of their pathetic two-weeks-worth of coverage.
- The men's basketball finals ran for over an hour-and-a-half and were almost completely uninterrupted by fluff. If only NBC had chosed to let all of their stories play out as "events," this site wouldn't be needed.
- The "Sun America Sports Desk" was about half-and-half events and fluff. I almost put it all under "fluff," but changed my mind, thinking that at least some of it was newsworthy.
- The swimming anouncers, in complimenting a three-minute fluff piece on Russian diver Dmitry Sautin, said that "only now can you respect him" after being shown part of the many hardships of his life. Why only now? Can I not have respect for him simply for being one of the dominant divers in all categories of the Sydney games? Why do I need NBC's help in respecting someone?
- We got three more minutes of pre-race fluff on Marion Jones. Throughout this Olympics, we've spent far more time on fluff pieces about Marion Jones than we've spent on actual events in which Marion Jones has competed. Just thought you should know.
- Overall, in what will probably be NBC's last full night of coverage (tomorrow night will be filled mostly with the closing ceremonies), the peacock dropped the ball. They showed us with basketball that they could present the events without stepping all over them, but they never actually had the guts to do so with any other sport. Tomorrow night will wrap up the games, so there will be only one more report on the measured times here on The Rockwood 2000 Olympics Watch. However, be sure to tune in on Tuesday to see the Olympics Wrap-up. See you then!
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