Spoiler Alert! Here's the Olympics Review

The Games of the 30th Olympiad are about to finish in London. No, I didn't use Roman numerals because I know where your minds would go if I wrote "XXX Olympiad"... because my mind would go there too.

Any review of the Olympics will begin and end with NBC's coverage, and the fact that we seem to hate it, but we still can't get enough of it. The contradiction begins with the fact that NBC, now in the hands of Comcast, is able to spread out the programming over more networks than ever. CNBC was the Boxing Channel, Bravo had all the tennis, and if you were fortunate enough to have Comcast as your cable system, you also got channels completely devoted to basketball and soccer. Meanwhile, MSNBC and the NBC Sports Network bounced around from obscure event to obscure event, giving them a degree of attention never before seen, and the chance for people to find their new quirky sport-of-choice in this quadrennial global competition.

Like archery. For me, archery is now the Summer Olympics version of curling. When it's on, I've gotta watch. When Americans are involved, people suddenly think they are experts at the fine art of the bow and arrow. I don't... I tried archery in summer camp when I was a kid, and I was in way over my head. It's a miracle I didn't injure anyone with a wayward arrow. The "uniforms" also got a lot of attention; the Americans dressed like they were out for a day in the woods hunting for deer, the South Koreans wearing LL Cool J-like kangaroo hats and hipster glasses. I tried to get into some of the other non-mainstream events, but they didn't have the appeal of archery. Handball? Yeah, I don't get it. It just looks like a bunch of guys playing some kind of cross between soccer and basketball with no dribbling. So if that doesn't work for ya, how about we take this game, throw everyone in a pool, and call it water polo. I tried watching that as well, and despite NBC's savvy move of putting hockey play-by-play master Doc Emrick on announcing duties, my reaction was kinda meh. And poor Pierre McGuire, reduced to poolside interviews with dripping-wet competitors.

Perhaps in Rio they should put Emrick and McGuire on field hockey... at least it's a little closer to their natural sport, and they might liven up things a little. Aside from the Boise State-like "smurf turf", Olympic field hockey was a little lacking. I've watched field hockey played at the collegiate level, and the women's game unfortunately has all the problems of women's lacrosse... they blow the whistle every 10 seconds and there is no flow to the game. The men's game is pretty exciting, although it's rather annoying that they only let you score from one place on the field and the other team can just pack all of their players into that area to prevent the ball from getting in. It's like saying you can only score in the paint in basketball and allowing the opponent to put all 5 of their guys there. I also tried to watch fencing... all I got from that was that they use swords, and there's a lot of yelling. Seriously. After every freakin' point, someone screams. I watched the women's gold medal match, and I haven't seen so many Italians yelling since the last time I watched "Jersey Shore." (Ba dum bum) But seriously, folks...

So I'm grateful that NBC/Universal/Comcast gave us so many opportunities to watch these different events. However, the one thing NBC refused to do was show major events live... unless of course you had the wherewithal to go online and stream them, and the patience to put up with the inevitable hiccups that still come with streaming. Instead, they held off until prime-time, after the rest of the world had already told you what happened. Oh sure, some news organizations decided to be fair and just announce that the competitions were over and if you wanted to know, you could click a link to find out, but the purpose of these spoiler-free tweets were defeated by the 5 tweets surrounding them that either came from news organizations that had no problem giving spoilers or from the people you follow cheering wildly for the results. But despite the calls of some to boycott the prime-time coverage to send NBC the appropriate message, we all watched anyway, giving NBC record ratings and a chance to break even financially. Of course, this means that NBC will brush off any and all criticism for their delay tactics and do the exact same thing 2 years from now at the next Winter games in Russia.

Meanwhile, the Internet fights back by giving us reason to laugh about it all. An "NBC Delayed" Twitter account popped up the day after the Opening Ceremony, and within hours had 5,000 followers.  As of now, it's over 30,000. In an age where memes pop up and spread like wildfire, the image of an "unimpressed" McKayla Maroney brushing off major world events became just as popular as the photoshopped Curiosity pictures from Mars. As I've said before, this is how we deal with most things in the Internet age; we have our initial emotional response (joy/anger/etc.)... then we make fun of them.

Or we continue to get mad at each other... as has been the case with the latest international Twitter fight between the United States and Canada. No, Ottawa Senators hockey goon Chris Neil was not the cause of this flame war, which is rather shocking because he usually is the primary reason that Canadians and Americans attack each other online. Anyway, following some sketchy officiating in the semifinal women's soccer match between the favored Americans and the upstart Canadians, Canada spent the rest of the medal round convinced that the U.S. was playing 14-on-11, if you get my drift. A missed handball call and a missed penalty-box tackle that would have given Japan ample opportunity to win or at least tie the gold medal game didn't help. I'm glad that our neighbors to the north dusted themselves off and beat France to take the nation's first medal in a team sport since 1936, but in the eyes of many Canadians, the medal should have been gold. Even Canadian star Christine Sinclair hinted that the fix was in. Oh by the way, the next Women's World Cup in 2015... will be played in CANADA. I'm betting that the Canadian fans will not forget what happened in London, and our women will likely be booed every time they take the field.

Let's see, what else happened during the Olympics... oh yeah, lots of track and field and lots of swimming. Usain Bolt is ridiculously fast, and quite frankly, he's gotta be bored with winning so easily. Our American women spread the wealth around; there is no central figure like a FloJo or Gail Devers. Instead, we have Allison Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, Carmelita Jeter, and the list goes on. Michael Phelps retired as the greatest Olympian ever, and is now free to smoke all the bongs. Our most impressive female Olympians may have been the youngest. In terms of swimming, it's amazing that a 17-year old Missy Franklin can crush the competition like she does, and perhaps she might be looking to pull a Phelps-like 8-for-8 gold medal spree in Rio. Oh, and a 15-year old Katie Ledecky trounced the field in the 800 meters. It's crazy to think that they can only get better from here. In terms of gymnastics... well, it's a little creepy that the American rule of thumb now seems to be that when you reach voting age, you're finished. Yes, our "Fierce Five" won gold, but when Maroney disappointed in her signature event, the vault, the first thing I thought was what a shame it would be that she'll never get another chance at the gold... because in 4 years, she'll be a far-too-old-by-American-standards 20 years of age. Oh well, at least she and Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber probably have "Dancing With the Stars" in their future. Meanwhile, Gabby Douglas has a Corn Flakes box and stardom ahead of her... regardless of what others think about her hair.

It looks like the U.S. will wrap up first in the medal count, and the British exceeded their goal of 48 medals. It's always good when the home team makes their fans happy, regardless of who they are. Which brings me to Rio 2016. Brazil's on the way up, with a lot of team sports making the medal round. I'll be intrigued to see how well they do with the Olympics on their home turf in 4 years... and as it will actually be on our side of the planet, perhaps NBC might actually decide to show everything live.

Or not.