Sunday night was, quite simply, one of the best hockey games in Olympic history.
Ryan Miller stood on his head in goal stopping 42 shots and making spectacular saves in the third period, Brian Rafalski scored two goals and assisted on a third when his shot was redirected, and Team USA silenced a massive home crowd on their way to a 5-3 win over gold medal favorite Canada.
According to NBC, though, it still wasn't as compelling as ice dancing.
The game was the most important and impressive victory for a USA Hockey team since the Miracle on Ice. But thanks to the network broadcasting the games, Team USA's win aired on MSNBC because ice dancing—a sport almost everyone thinks is exactly the same as figure skating (probably because it is)—was apparently more popular and had to air in primetime on NBC.
That meant a game that could have been the biggest advertisement hockey has had in 30 years was not broadcast to the widest possible audience of NBC. Instead, it went out on a cable network normally dedicated to politics, making it impossible for any casual fans to stumble upon the thrilling contest and realize how amazing it was.
Sunday's game was the latest in a series of huge mistakes NBC has made in covering these Olympics—the network's coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Games has been atrocious beyond words. I've tried to think of an example of an outlet covering an event worse than NBC has done with these Olympics, and I can't come up with anything.
In every aspect of its coverage, NBC has failed. Their announcing teams are wooden and boring (even Dan Patrick and Al Michaels can't save them), just about everything fans want to watch is tape-delayed despite the fact that there is only a two-hour time difference between here and Vancouver, the events are overshadowed by the hours of corny features NBC produces for every athlete, and their online video stream is extremely complicated for no good reason. Hell, even their promotions for the upcoming movie ""How to Train Your Dragon"" suck.
NBC's coverage has been so bad that just about everyone, from hockey fans who want to see the game they love given the respect it deserves (i.e. me) to people who just want to see a live sporting event and/or not have it ruined by the internet and tape delay (i.e. any sports fan), is speaking out against the network. Across the blogosphere people are decrying the absolute crap NBC has been producing in Vancouver, devoting countless posts to ripping the network, as they should.
It almost seems like NBC, who announced before the games even started that they were likely to lose more than $200 million by covering the Olympics, just decided, ""well, we aren't going to make any money—we might as well phone it in for the next couple of weeks.""
The good news, though, is that it could all be over soon.
According to a recent report in Bloomberg, Fox and ABC are considering bids for the rights to broadcast the 2014 and 2016 Olympics. If either of these networks gets the games, it would be a blow to NBC, but a big win for sports fans.
NBC might put together all-star broadcasting teams, like their massive Football Night in America staff, but those analysts never seem to put it all together and provide the kinds of compelling commentary you would expect from so many big names. The NBC Universal network—including USA, CNBC and MSNBC, cable channels that have been broadcasting some of the games this year—gives it an advantage, but as we have seen in the past week, that doesn't guarantee good coverage.
Fox Sports or ABC have much more established sports coverage teams used to handling bigger events than NBC. Sure, there would be downsides to such a change: Bob Costas hasn't been on his game this Olympics, but he beats the hell out of Joe Buck or—God forbid—Chris Berman.
But let's say ABC got the rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics. Obviously there would be primetime coverage on the ABC broadcast network, but during the day you could use the entire family of ESPN channels to show Olympic events.
ESPN and ESPN2 would show the games when ABC isn't broadcasting, ESPNews could have nonstop Olympic highlights and ESPNClassic would show replays of classic Olympic moments. Bored by the shotput qualifying round? Well click over to Classic and re-live the Dream Team's greatest moments. Curling not your thing? Why not watch the Miracle on Ice?
This doesn't even include the online streaming video infrastructure already in place at ESPN360, which would allow viewers to watch endless hours of cross-country skiing and marathon, if they so chose.
I know I've talked about how scary ESPN's dominance of the sports media landscape is, and yes, getting the Olympics would only make it worse. But honestly, I'd rather have the ESPN monster claim another event than watch NBC's terrible coverage for another Olympics.
How do you think NBC has done this year? Should they keep the rights to broadcast the games? E-mail Nico at savidgewilki@dailycardinal.com.
