I know.  BLASPHEMY!  UNPATRIOTIC!  I love most sports, at least the ones that fit George Carlin’s definition of a sport.  I’m a die-hard Yankees fan.  I love the football Giants.  I never missed a Knicks game when Patrick Ewing was in the pivot.  I was ecstatic to hear the “1940″ chant go into mothballs when the Blue Shirts won the Stanley Cup back in 1994.  But I couldn’t care less about the Olympics.

Uh, I thought we were going to watch sports…

Curling.  The luge.  Ice dancing?  Are you f-ing kidding me?  About the only event that I’ll watch is hockey, which according to Carlin, isn’t a sport because it’s played with a puck.  I saw the Miracle on Ice back in 1980, but I missed the Canadian women’s celebration after their gold medal win, and I’m sorry that I did.  Looks like they did it up right, smoking cigars and pounding brewskis.  Hey, those are two of my favorite food groups!  All that was missing were the chicken wings and it could have been my last Super Bowl party.  But apparently this earthy celebration was decidedly un-Olympian, at least according to the IOC.  Well, I call bullshit.

A proud sponsor…

If you check this page of Winter Olympics sponsors and suppliers, you’ll notice that Molson and Coors are listed (I couldn’t find Rocky Patel,  or even White Owl).  So maybe this was just good product placement by the athletes.  No stink is ever raised when Tim McCarver is soaked with champagne in the winner’s clubhouse after the World Series.  Maybe the Canadian women were just drinking a brand of beer that wasn’t an Olympic sponsor.  Or that Canadians are held to a higher standard of public behavior than us knuckle-dragging Yanks.  I mean, who but their families were watching this match anyway?  There was probably a larger viewing audience at my wisdom tooth extraction.  Let the ladies have their moment in the sun.

Branding opportunities

Think of the commercial opportunities for these women.  I mean, there’s no professional league at the end of this, so they might as well make hay when the sun shines, so to speak.  I can see a spread in Cigar Aficionado, with the ladies puffing on their favorite puros, debating the superiority of Maduro wrappers to the Connecticut kind.  Maybe a joint commercial with AMF and Budweiser, where the Canadians can play the Americans in gold-medal beer pong.  Think how much weight an endorsement by Marie-Philip Poulin will carry when college students are deciding on their dorm-room equipment.  Hockey players generally don’t clean up in endorsements; they better strike while the iron is hot (I’ve now reached my two-clichés-per-paragraph limit).

Hypocrites

It’s funny how it’s OK to drink beer when it’s officially sanctioned by the IOC.  Hell, even McDonald’s is a sponsor.  The same company that Goose Gossage said was poisoning the world with their hamburgers.  You can bet that Michael Phelps isn’t running to Mickie D’s when he has the munchies; it’s always a trip to Subway after a joint.  They don’t get on his case.

As far as the controversy, I couldn’t care less about that, either.  Pitchers and catchers have already reported to Spring Training, and I’ll be able to watch a real sport pretty soon.

With a Sam Adams in one hand and a Gurkha Ancient Warrior in the other.

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