Winter Olympic Sports Power Rankings

I’ve always been a big fan of the Winter Olympics.  We need to have it back in the United States.  Having it in Beijing is a terrible idea for many reasons.  They don’t get much snow so they have to make it, they had some skiing events near a nuclear power plant so that looked ridiculous, and the Chinese government is pretty evil.  But it’s not the athletes’ fault that they have to compete in China so I’ve still been supporting them.  In four years, the Winter Olympics will be in Italy so that’s much better.  And then in eight years, it looks like the possibilities are a Spain/France/Andorra combination, Japan, Canada, or the United States.  We do have the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 so I would say we should wait and try to get the 2034 Winter Olympics.

I get the week of Washington’s Birthday off every year.  Ever since I’ve been teaching, the second week of the Winter Olympics was during my week off and it was awesome.  But with Washington’s Birthday being late this year, I had to work both weeks of the Winter Olympics and it was really annoying.  I wanted to just be able to stay up and watch stuff live as much as possible.  Now I’m off for a week and the Winter Olympics are about to be over.  I already checked the dates for 2026 and I’ll be off during the second week again so that will be better.

Anyway, I ranked the Summer Olympic events back in July when they were going on so I had to do it for the Winter Olympics.  There aren’t as many events in the Winter Olympics so I’m going to rank every event, not just list the ones that I have no interest or minimal interest in.  Here we go:

15. Figure Skating- It’s the gymnastics of the Winter Olympics.  I don’t care.  They’re amazing athletes, but I’m not going to care about events determined by corrupt judges.

14. Nordic Combined- I had no idea what this was.  I looked it up and it combines cross-country skiing and ski jumping.  If you’re going to combine things, my policy is that it should be things that seemingly have no relation to each other.

13. Cross-Country Skiing- I don’t get why somebody would want to do this.  I get the appeal of skiing down a mountain, but cross-country skiing doesn’t seem fun.  But events that involve racing can’t be terrible.  In four years, ski mountaineering will be an Olympic sport.  I had no idea what that was so I looked it up.  It involves skiing up a mountain and then down the mountain.  Sign me up for that one.  I mean, sign me up for watching it, not for doing it.  All I know about skiing is that French fry when you should pizza, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Before moving on, it’s worth pointing out that cross-country skiing did give us this four years ago:

12. Freestyle Skiing- Ski cross is cool because it’s a race.  But I have no interest in the events that are judged.

11. Snowboarding- Again, racing is good so snowboard cross is cool.  I know there’s half-pipe and then there are other snowboarding events called parallel, slopestyle, and big air.  I have no idea what those things mean.  I didn’t bother to find out.

10. Ski Jumping- This is one of the events that would result in my death if I ever tried it.  It looks cool enough.  I haven’t watched much this year and if I was watching, I wasn’t really paying attention.  The problem is that I could watch somebody do it and have no idea if they’re good or bad at it.  I think they put like a first down line on the screen to show how far the leader jumped so you can see what each person has to beat.  But without that, I’d be completely lost.

9. Skeleton- This is another event that I wouldn’t survive trying.  It’s cool to watch them sliding, but again, I have no idea how good somebody is at this just watching it.  If something goes terribly wrong, then it’s easy to tell, but you can’t really tell other than that.  Trying to be the fastest at something makes for an interesting sport, but track and field and swimming are better because people are competing against each other at the same time so you can actually see who is the fastest.

8. Bobsled- This one isn’t nearly as crazy as skeleton, but it has the same issue in terms of competing for the fastest time, but you’re not competing at the same time.  Going back to swimming, the other thing that makes it fun to watch is when they put the line on the screen that moves at the pace of the world record.  That gives me an idea to make this a better sport to watch, which I’m taking from the original Mario Kart (perhaps the greatest video game of all time).  If you did a time trial, they would have a ghost driver with the fastest time on the screen.  So you would be competing against the ghost driver.  It’s 2022, it seems like we should be able to take the team with the fastest time and put them on the screen as a ghost bobsled as each team goes.  That would be much more fun to watch.

7. Luge- It’s less crazy than skeleton and more fun than bobsled.  But I don’t get why doubles luge is a thing.

6. Biathlon- This sport was invented by Norwegians based on their experience fighting the Nazis, right?  The combination of skiing and shooting makes it weird enough to be interesting.  And it’s a race where everybody is racing against each other at the same time.

5. Speed Skating- You get two skaters at the same time so that’s better than the sports where it’s just one person or team going at a time.  But there is a better skating event.

4. Alpine Skiing- It definitely looks cool.  Adding the ghost skier with the fastest time would make it better.  I’m going to watch some tonight and drink a Sam Adams Alpine Lager since I drink by mood.

Before we get to the three Winter Olympic sports that are clearly ahead of the rest for me, I saw a tweet that said that every Winter Olympic sport is some variation of “get down hill fast” or “knife feet.” And that’s kind of true. We could use more variety in Winter Olympic sports and just more Winter Olympic sports in general (the Summer Olympics have a lot more sports than the Winter Olympics). So I googled sports that should be in the Winter Olympics and I found some winners:

Yukigassen:

Snow Rugby:

And I had the idea for events like a three-point shootout and home run derby in the Summer Olympics. So why not an accuracy shooting competition for hockey? You could also make a hockey shootout its own Olympic event. Speaking of hockey…

3. Hockey- It’s the basketball of the Winter Olympics.  The thing that makes it worse than basketball this year is that we don’t have NHL players.  The thing that makes it better is that there’s more parity.  The US should win every gold medal in basketball.  I love it when the US wins gold medals, but it’s less interesting when it’s entirely expected.  I would love to see the US win the gold medal in hockey.  It looked like we had a chance this year, but we were eliminated with a tough loss in a shootout. As I said, make the shootout its own event and get rid of shootouts in the medal round of hockey. They do play a three on three overtime for ten minutes before going to the shootout, but that’s a bad way for a team to be eliminated. The NHL gets this right. In the playoffs, they just keep playing regular hockey until somebody scores. Overtime hockey in the playoffs is amazing (but if your team is involved, its pretty much as stressful as playoff baseball).

2. Short Track- I always want more of short track.  It’s kind of like swimming with everybody racing each other at the same time.  The relay races are especially crazy.  The all skate so fast and there’s not a lot of space on the short track so the idea of passing somebody always seems impossible to me.  Sometimes you do get races where somebody just leads wire to wire, but then there are crazy races where they lead changes as the race goes on.  This event is the Mario Kart of the Winter Olympics.  You never know what’s going to happen.  I feel like it should be more like Mario Kart.  Just let the skaters throw turtle shells at each other.

1. Curling- It’s just the best.  Women’s curling is the main event of the Winter Olympics.  I really hope the US can win gold someday, but I would settle for any medal.  It was amazing when the men won the gold medal four years ago.  Sadly, the men finished in fourth this year.  But since three of the four men’s curlers were the same as the team that won it four years ago, it wasn’t as disappointing as it would have been without the gold medal four years ago.  John Shuster, Matt Hamilton, and John Landsteiner have represented the United States well and I will never speak ill of them.  John Shuster is the greatest American curler of all time (five-time Olympian, 2006 bronze medalist, 2018 gold medalist). Finishing fourth this year would be like if Notre Dame won a National Championship and then the next year the same quarterback and head coach didn’t have as much success, I probably would not complain at all.  The difference is that in curling, there’s nobody like Michigan or USC who could win and completely ruin my experience as a curling fan.  We lost to Canada in the bronze medal game and if there’s anybody that I don’t want to lose to in curling, it’s probably them, but that’s not nearly as bad as the idea of Michigan or USC winning a National Championship.  I was happy that Sweden won the gold medal after they lost to us in the gold medal game four years ago (it was definitely the same skip for them, but I don’t know about the rest of the team).  So yeah, I’ll always been a fan of John Shuster and his team.  I will still hold out hope that Cassie and Jamie Johnson (they have different last names now that they’re married) will get back to the Winter Olympics in four years and win the first medal for the US in women’s curing.

I got to see them and John Shuster at the USA Curling Nationals in 2014.

The Super Bowl of Eating

Thanksgiving is really the Super Bowl of Eating, but the Super Bowl is up there as a big eating event.  Before I get to the food, I’m looking forward to the game.  I have lost so much interest in the NFL in the last decade, but I’ve enjoyed the playoffs (other than having a Monday night playoff game).  Eight of the last ten Super Bowls have featured at least one of the Patriots, Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, or Tom Brady.  The only ones that didn’t were Super Bowl L (I refuse to not use the Roman numeral) and Super Bowl LIV.  But those other eight games had the possibility of making me miserable (it was guaranteed in the case of Super Bowl XLIX).  Super Bowl XLVI turned out to be amazing, but there have been far too many Super Bowls recently that I haven’t been able to enjoy.  But this year, there’s no terrible outcome other than a bad game.  There’s nobody I despise and both teams have one Notre Dame player.  I love Los Angeles, but I like the idea of the Dodgers being the most recent Los Angeles team to win a championship.  And the Rams’ Notre Dame player is Ben Skowronek, who only spent one year at Notre Dame as a graduate transfer (I’m guessing he didn’t finish a graduate degree).  The Bengals have Khalid Kareem, who spent four years at Notre Dame (I’m assuming he graduated) and recorded 13 sacks.  So I’m rooting for the Bengals, but I won’t be too disappointed if the Rams win.

When it comes to watching the Super Bowl, I know I’m different from most people.  I don’t like watching the game with a lot of people.  I want to be able to watch it and pay attention without being distracted at a party.  But I do like combining good food with football.  So let’s talk about designing a Super Bowl food and beverage program.

I’ll start with the easiest part, which is my Super Bowl beer.  Last year I didn’t drink anything because of an issue with my blood test from my physical a couple of weeks earlier.  I ended up having to have two more blood tests and two other tests and seeing two more doctors, but everything turned out fine.  I just had my physical this year and everything came back fine so I’ll definitely be enjoying some beer with this Super Bowl.  George Costanza dresses by mood and I drink by mood.  I love Sam Adams, but I couldn’t drink any Sam Adams whenever the Patriots were in the Super Bowl.  I would try to find some beer from the city of their opponent.  But this year’s beer selection is easy.  Everybody associates Sam Adams with Boston, but much of their beer is brewed in Cincinnati.  I’m rooting for the Bengals.  I love football in the snow, but I think of football as a fall sport.  The start of football marks the end of summer and the end of football marks the beginning of the long dark winter in sports until college basketball conference tournaments (which is made much more bearable this year thanks to the Winter Olympics and the this being the latest Super Bowl ever).  Orange is one of the Bengals’ colors and I completely missed out on Sam Adams Octoberfest in 2020 because of the pandemic.  I did not miss out on Octoberfest this year.  I still have some that’s good until April.  It was probably brewed in Cincinnati and the label is orange so I’ll be drinking Octoberfest.

As for food, I’ve been listening to the Ringer Food podcast.  They went through the signature foods for each playoff city.  It was tacos for Los Angeles and Skyline chili for Cincinnati.  Tacos aren’t a terrible food option for football.  I’d go burrito over taco most of the time, but a burrito is a much bigger commitment and I’d rather not make that commitment when there’s lots of other food to eat.  I’m not interested in Skyline chili.  They did a bracket of all the playoff food and it came down to Buffalo wings against the Philly cheesesteak.  If you’re going to have a sandwich, a Philly cheesesteak is a really good option, but I think the Buffalo wing is pretty much the perfect football food.  For their bracket, they first narrowed it down to four AFC cities and four NFC cities and then got the food delivered from Gold Belly.  For Green Bay, it was bratwurst with cheese curds. Hot dogs are the classic baseball food. I would agree that bratwursts are more of a football food. I definitely had some brats tailgating at Notre Dame as a student, but I’d take a hot dog over a brat (one of the best hot dogs I ever had was tailgating before the USC game in 2011, unfortunately that turned out to be the highlight of the day). Anyway, I considered getting something from Gold Belly for the Super Bowl, but I opted not to.  Back in the spring of 2020, I got some Chicago deep dish “pizza” delivered from Gold Belly.  It was good, but I don’t think it was the same quality that you’d actually get in Chicago.  Some other foods might travel better, but the prices for things other than pizza are pretty high.  And of course, I can get actual pizza (not deep dish “pizza”) from many local establishments for a cheaper price.  But back to Buffalo wings, I had them in Buffalo last summer and I could definitely get Buffalo wings that are just as good from some places around here.

So what do I want to eat for the Super Bowl?  Well, I do live in the Pizza Belt.  The great thing about living in the Pizza Belt is that so many places have really good regular pizza.  I think the biggest variance is in the speciality slices.  I have three clear favorite local specialty slices:

Jimmy’s Buffalo Chicken

Chefs Broccoli Cheddar

Little Vincent’s Cold Cheese

All are outstanding, but for the Super Bowl, I think Jimmy’s Buffalo Chicken is the clear winner.  You’re combining Buffalo wings and pizza.  And Jimmy’s does it so well.  Buffalo chicken pizza has become ubiquitous in the last decade and a half or so, but so many places don’t do it well.  You need to feel like you’re eating a slice of pizza, not just having dough with a bunch of Buffalo chicken piled on top of it.  I’ve seen it served with a side of blue cheese.  That’s not the way to do it.  The blue cheese has to be part of the pizza and you need to get the ratio of chicken, buffalo sauce, blue cheese, and mozzarella cheese just right.  When Jimmy’s of Greenlawn was sold, I was most disappointed about losing their Buffalo chicken slice, but then I realized that Jimmy’s of Centerport still has the same quality Buffalo chicken pizza.  I have a leftover slice that I’ll be heating up for the game.

As for snacks, I don’t need much.  I was going to go with pretzels and hummus.  Boar’s Head makes an everything bagel hummus, which is fantastic.  But my grocery plans changed today and I ended up getting stuff delivered from 7-Eleven on Doordash.  I didn’t like their pretzel selection so I was looking at other options.  Tortilla chips and salsa are a good option.  Two snacks that I think are overrated are popcorn and regular potato chips.  I ended up getting Cheez-Its and pistachios.  If you want some vegetables, you should reconsider your Super Bowl food decisions.  But if you must, I would want something like baby carrots or celery that you could have with hummus or dip in blue cheese if you’re having Buffalo wings. I should have given more consideration to Totinos Pizza Rolls.

For dessert, I was trying to get some edible cookie dough.  There’s a place in the mall that I’ve gotten it from before, but they didn’t have it this weekend.  So I’ll keep it simple.  I rediscovered the classic ice cream sandwich at the beginning of the pandemic.  It’s really good.  I’m taking it easy on the dessert because I’m sure I’ll have enough food.

So I’m looking forward to some good food and one last football game.  I’ll finish with a scheduling tangent.  We need to make it so that the Super Bowl is Washington’s Birthday Eve (remember Presidents Day is not a thing) so that I don’t have to go to work the next day.  With the extra regular season game, it will be Washington’s Birthday Eve some years, but it’s not this year.  The NFL should take a page from college when it comes to scheduling (a page, not multiple pages, there are plenty of problems when it comes to college football scheduling with the most glaring being that they play the championship game on a Monday night).  The college football regular season goes from Labor Day to Thanksgiving weekend.  Sometimes there’s an extra week in there and so teams just have an extra bye week.  The NFL regular season has 18 weeks now and then you have three weeks of playoffs, a week off, and then the Super Bowl.  They should just make it so that some years have 18 regular season weeks and some years have 19 depending on when Washington’s Birthday is so that the Super Bowl is always the day before Washington’s Birthday.

Anyway, I hope everybody enjoys some delicious food and a Super Bowl without the Patriots, Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, and Tom Brady as much as I’m going to.