I think the Olympics are totally stupid. The instances of hypocrisy and bullshit are too numerous and tiresome to get into here, but I find the entire event quite distasteful. The whole jingoistic affair is huge turn off and I see no reason to throw my allegiances behind some previously unknown athletes merely because they were born within the same political boundaries as me or because NBC and their affiliated sponsors tell me to.
Thats why I relish the opportunity to gamble on them, and encourage everyone else to do the same. Gambling, as we all know, makes every sporting event better. And the best type of gambling involves a small sum of money that provides a monetary rooting interest in as many events as possible. That is why NCAA Tournament pools are so awesome. For $20 bucks I can now care about 33 basketball games that I would under other circumstances not give an underwater-pogo-sticking fuck about.
During each of the last summer and winter Olympiads, me and 4 of my friends have competed in an Olympic Team Pool, and even though it was an extremely slap dick operation, I can no longer imagine following future games without first throwing down 20 bucks on it.
The way it works is simple. We hold a snake draft where each player picks a country until all the participating National Olympic Committees (NOCs, ie participating countries) are taken and then for each medal a players' county earns, that player earns points, 3, 2 or 1 for gold, silver and bronze, respectively.
That's it. Pretty simple and it ensures that you'll have a rooting interest in nearly every event going on. A stupendous productivity killer if there ever was one.
You can read about the past 2004 Winter Olympic Pool we conducted on this old blog I used to write with my old college room mates here. Its a totally stupid blog, not at all unlike the one you're reading now.
Anyway, I'll be interrupting the regular GMDB news coverage with intermittent Olympic Pool news posts over the next two weeks. Wish me luck!
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