Hard Knocks and Olympic Indicators

Did I see the score right on the bottom of ESPN? Did the USA just almost get beat by...Lithuania? Lith...? Were my contacts in right? Had my eyes deceived me? Is Obi-Wan right, that your eyes can deceive you--don't trust them? Lithuania? Not Brazil or Argentina, teams that have reputations as competitive nations in the game of basketball. What in the world happened?

Then it hit me like Ivan Drago clocking Creed in Rocky IV: this was the harbinger of downfall. Like the Roman Empire before its fall, the US has flirted with disaster for the past decade, its invincibility cloak long removed to reveal a shell of its former self. The Olympics has long been a key performance indicator (KPI) of a nation's future potential or a nation's imminent downfall. The 1936 Olympics heralded the rise of the US Superpower following WWII. The 1972 Olympics in Munich portended the malaise of the 1970s. The 1980 Olympics signified the Reagan Revolution and return to greatness. The 1992 Olympics reaffirmed US supremacy on the court and precipitated the 1990s decade of economic prosperity. But when I saw the score of that game, the results of the past decade of slothful contentment became crystalized.

The US, once great innovators of business, and entrepeneurship, and technology, had just come within a hair of losing to a basketball team in a game that should have been as one-sided as the Muchida fight from this past weekend (if you blikned, you missed it). The game served as a microcosm of America's declining position in the world. Yet, more than the fact that the game may have heralded the end of an empire, it functioned as an example of what we are capable of.

Exhibit A: King James taking the team on his back and making sure that his team was not beaten and embarassed. That fire, that heart, that refusal to die is still alive and well and if the country is to reattain its old glory, that spirit needs to be proliferated across the country--or as Bob Costas once said "and with G-String Divas up next, this is Bob Costas reporting from somewhere in an ever-declining Western Civilization."

You gotta love Costas.

Annnd the logical transition from impending doom to Hard Knocks. 

I caught the last half of HBO's Hard Knocks: The Miami Dolphins. Boy does HBO know how to make dynamite television. The sights, the sounds, the transitions made the training camp into a war movie. With Liev Schreiber's flawless voiceovers and the compelling drama and tension created in the plot, the show just drew me in and made for better TV than half of what is on these days.  

One scene that stands out is Chad Johnson barging into a members only meeting with the coaches and then walking out as if nothing happened when he found out the meeting wasn't for players.

What a guy.