Summer Olympic Sports Power Rankings

It’s a year late, but it’s nice to be able to enjoy the Olympics again.  And the Winter Olympics are coming up in less than a year.  But it’s weird to watch these events with no fans.  I would have delayed the Summer Olympics another year and then delayed the Paris Olympics until 2025 and then we’d be back on schedule for Los Angeles in 2028.  But actually, why not have the Olympics every three years?  Then we could make it so that you’d have Olympics every 18 months between the Summer and Winter Olympics.

As I’m writing this, I’m watching the United States dominate Iran in basketball.  That’s nice after a bad loss to start the Olympics for the US.  NBC is using Roundball Rock for Olympic basketball so that’s cool, but they’re giving us the height of players in meters.  What?  This is America, we don’t use the silly metric system.  If you want to give me heights in meters for sports like swimming or track and field where the races are measured in meters, fine, it’s still silly for an American audience, but I’ll live with it.  But how are you giving us meters for basketball?  The other bad thing about Olympic basketball is being forced to root for Kevin Durant.  If Kyrie Irving was on the team, I think I just wouldn’t watch.

I like the Winter Olympics more than the Summer Olympics.  The Winter Olympics come in the dead time of the sports calendar and when the weather is bad.  The Summer Olympics come at a time that is pretty dead, but the weather is good and my favorite sport is still going on.  Also the Winter Olympics have curling, which is awesome.  But the Summer Olympics are still fun.  I’m going to go through the sports and rank them by my interest in them (I’m going by the sports listed on the NBC Olympics website, so if I missed anything, it’s their fault):

No Interest

Artistic Swimming- I don’t know what this is.  Is this what we’re calling synchronized swimming now?  We have real swimming.  We don’t need artistic swimming.

Boxing- I’m not a boxing fan to begin with and it doesn’t seem like a sport that lends itself to competing several times in a span of two weeks.

Cycling- I mean, this is a sport where Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens would fit right in.

Equestrian- I have no idea how this sport even works and I’m not interested in finding out.  I’m going to assume the horse is more important than the human.  They should give the horses the medals.

Golf- This is a sport I’ve never understood.  Like I get how it could be fun to play.  I don’t get why somebody would want to watch other people play golf.  If mini golf was an Olympic sport, that would be more interesting.

Gymnastics- It’s the figure skating of the Summer Olympics.  Other people care, I don’t. Obviously these are amazing athletes, but I have no interest in watching it.  I generally dislike sports where the outcome depends on corrupt judges.

Judo, Karate, and Taekwondo- Apparently these are all different Olympic sports.  I have no idea what the difference is between them and I’m not going to try to find out.

Rhythmic gymnastics- This sounds like gymnastics, but sillier.

Shooting- If you’re going to have shooting, it should be combined with something completely unrelated, like biathlon with skiing and shooting in the Winter Olympics.  If you had to like throw a javelin and then shoot a target from the spot where your javelin landed, then I might be interested.

Skateboarding- I think I heard a 13 year old won a medal.  Yeah, I’m not going to care about this one.

Weightlifting- Unlike several sports on this list, I completely understand how this sport works.  You have to lift the most weight.  But that doesn’t make it interesting.

Minimal Interest

Archery- It’s definitely an impressive skill.  If there’s nothing else interesting on, I might watch it.

Canoe/Kayak- This is something that I’ve actually enjoyed doing myself.  I don’t know how exciting of a sport it is to watch on TV, though.

Diving- The only thing I’m interested in is how little of a splash they can make.  I might not watch any diving, but if I do, that’s what I’ll be watching.

Fencing- This is a terrible TV sport, but I will always root for Notre Dame athletes and we pretty much have the best fencing program in the country.  The US has won three Olympic gold medals in fencing and they were all people who fenced (Is that the verb?) at Notre Dame.  Mariel Zagunis won gold in 2004 and 2008 (and bronze in 2008 and 2016).  She was a student when I was a student.  I knew we had a gold medalist at Notre Dame when I was there.  When I first transferred there, my roommate Jorge took me to watch fencing and introduced me to her.  I didn’t realize she was the gold medalist until later.  And Lee Kiefer won a gold medal this year.

Field hockey- Street hockey would be more interesting.

Modern pentathlon- Is there a difference between modern pentathlon and regular pentathlon?

Rowing and sailing- Sports that involve racing can’t be terrible (except for cycling with its rampant steroid usage).  And they’re on water so that’s cool.

Soccer- It’s such a silly sport, but if the United States has a chance to win a medal, then I might watch.  Let me go through my biggest objections to soccer.  First of all, all the players have perfectly good hands but only two of the 22 players on the field are allowed to use them.  Like if it was a sport for disabled people who didn’t have full ability to use their arms and/or hands, then I would get it.  Second, you have a sport with a gigantic goal and it’s impossible to score.  Like how many soccer balls could you fit through the goal at once?  I just googled it and Google says 363.  How many basketballs can fit through a hoop at once?  The answer is two.  Yes, soccer has a goalie, but the goalie occupies such a small percentage of the goal and still nobody can score.  It’s so silly.  Hockey has a goalie who occupies a much larger percentage of the goal than a soccer goalie and there’s much more scoring in hockey than there is in soccer (and there’s not a lot of scoring in hockey).  And then there’s the clock issue.  Why don’t they just stop the clock when somebody gets hurt or there’s a penalty or whatever?  We have the ability to do this.  Other sports do it all the time.  But soccer just keeps it going and then at the end of the half or game they’ll add like three minutes.  But three minutes really means like two minutes and 51 seconds or three minutes and 18 seconds or something like that.  Just stop the clock and then we don’t have to guess when the game ends.  I’m sure there are other objections I could come up with, but those are the big ones.

Sport climbing- I have no idea how you win at this sport, but I’m kind of interested in finding out.  Is it a race?  Maybe I’ll find out at some point during the Olympics.

Surfing- I’ve had this on TV a little bit, but I have no idea how you win.  Like there was a clock counting down and I had no idea what that meant.

Tennis- I am somewhat interested in tennis in general, but it’s not a sport that lends itself to the Olympics.  Like how is tennis in the Olympics any different from any other tennis tournament?  I guess the only thing would be that in doubles you have to have a partner from your own country and in other tournaments your partner could be anybody.  I’d much rather watch Wimbledon than Olympic tennis.

Trampoline- I’m guessing that this is a sport that involves doing a routine and there are judges.  I would be more interested if it was just to see who could jump the highest.

Triathlon- You could just throw some shooting in there and make it quadathlon.

Wrestling- Unlike judo, karate, and taekwondo, I know what wrestling entails.  The fact that it has existed for centuries makes it slightly more interesting.

Legitimately Interested (I just put the first two categories in alphabetical order, but I’ll rank these.)

13.  Softball- Things that would make this sport more interesting would be if more countries were decent at it and if it wasn’t so hard to score.

12.  Table Tennis- It’s not bad, but it’s not as fun to watch as the scene in Forrest Gump would suggest.  I would say it would be better to watch if the camera was positioned to the side of the table rather than behind the table.

11.  Badminton- It’s kind of like tennis except I can watch tennis throughout the year if I want.  The only time I would ever watch badminton would be in the Olympics.

10.  Rugby- They play 14 minute games.  That seems like what the video game version of the sport should be.  It is interesting to watch.  I get how the scoring works.  I’m not sure if there are any other rules in this sport.  It seems like you are allowed to do anything short of murder.

9.  Basketball 3 x 3- It’s like they took the sport of basketball and made it not as good.  But I do like the idea of having different versions of sports in the Olympics.  As I’m writing this, the US has already won 21 medals in swimming.  In theory, we could win medals in men’s and women’s for both regular basketball and 3 x 3 (although apparently we weren’t in the men’s competition for 3 x 3).  So at most, a country could win four basketball medals.  Let’s get more events for basketball and other sports.  A three point contest with several rounds could be an event.  You already have silly sports with corrupt judges, so why not a slam dunk contest?  In baseball, you could have a home run derby and a throwing competition based on accuracy and arm strength or something.  You could have a triples speed competition where you have to hit a ball to the outfield and then round the bases from home to third and you have to end with a slide.  In the Winter Olympics, you could have a hockey shootout competition and a hardest shot competition.  I’m sure there are other things we could add for these sports that don’t have several events.

8.  Handball- You see, this is what soccer should be.  You’re trying to get a ball into a goal and you can use your hands.  And people can actually score in this game.  It would rank higher if the US was good at it (I don’t know if we’re even competing in it).

7.  Baseball- Baseball is my favorite sport, but not as an Olympic sport.  I care much more about the Dodgers and in international competition, I’m more interested in the World Baseball Classic (which is not the greatest because of how they have to limit pitch counts).  Olympic baseball is all guys who are well past their prime or players that nobody has ever heard of.

6.  Track and Field.  Unfortunately Tom Hammond is involved.  Can NBC learn from their Notre Dame coverage and replace him with Mike Tirico?  It seems like this has been the main event of the Olympics for as long as I can remember.  It’s been swimming the first week and then track and field the second week.  I guess the advantage for track and field is a greater variety of events (swimming just has different distances and strokes), but I still like swimming better so I would do track and field the first week and make swimming the main event.

5.  Basketball- The advantage basketball has over baseball is that it’s all players that you know playing for the US.  The disadvantage is that I have to root for Kevin Durant.  I definitely like basketball more than the sports I’ll rank ahead of it, but I can watch basketball for most of the year and it’s not that much fun when the US is just expected to win.  Like I’m not going to be upset about a silver medal in any of the sports that are still to come on this list, but if we win the silver medal in basketball, it’s a failure.  And this year there’s a decent chance that we won’t win the gold so that’s not fun.

4.  Beach Volleyball- Unlike indoor volleyball, this is most definitely a summer sport. I think some people might rank this one even higher than I did.  It’s a fun sport to watch, but I’d go with regular volleyball ahead of it.  My criticism of beach volleyball is that it seems like everybody plays the exact same way.  There’s no variety in the style of play.  If you’ve seen one beach volleyball match, you’ve seen them all.  It’s like watching Big 12 football.  In Big 12 football, you’re going to get lots of passing and no defense.  That doesn’t mean I won’t watch it, but I’d like it more if there were different styles of play.

3.  Water Polo- They’re beating each other up in the water while swimming the whole time.  I have no idea how they have the energy to do this for more than like 90 seconds.  It’s another sport where you have to get a ball into a goal.  The goal is much smaller than soccer and you have the whole swimming and beating each other up the whole time thing and there’s much more scoring than soccer.

2.  Volleyball- This should be a bigger sport in America.  It’s really fun to watch.  I went to a couple of volleyball matches in college, but I should have gone to more.  There should be more college volleyball on TV and after football, basketball, baseball, and maybe hockey, this is the sport I would want Notre Dame to be good at (we made it to the NCAA tournament last year, but I’m talking really good).

1.  Swimming- While track and field is hurt by Tom Hammond, swimming benefits from having Rowdy Gaines.  The United States has produced some great swimmers and it’s always great to see the US do well.  Unlike a lot of other Olympic sports, I don’t need to see it any more often than every summer Olympics, but when it’s the Olympics, I love it.  Like I would have no interest in watching US qualifying for Olympic swimming.  I don’t care who qualifies because I don’t know who most of them are.  Also, I’m assuming the races in qualifying wouldn’t be as exciting as the races in the Olympics (the people who are qualifying are beating people who aren’t good enough to make the Olympics).  But once they’re in the Olympics, I’ll hear about them and be all in on rooting for the Americans against the rest of the world.