Let the games begin!

Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens and now Torino.

Opening ceremonies for the 2006 XX Winter Olympic Games will soon be underway.

The top athletes from all over the world have made their way to Italy for the chance to compete for a coveted gold medal.

With all the prestige surrounding this huge event which brings together hundreds of talented participants from dozens of countries, you would think that the countdown to the Olympics would be on everyone’s minds.

But evidently that is not the case.

With the games just days away, there is little national news coverage of the events, let alone buzz spreading about campus.

Many students at the university scrunched their faces in disbelief when I questioned them about plans to watch the games.

“There’s an Olympics this year?” said John Leciejewski, a resident adviser in Kohl Hall.

And he wasn’t the only one caught off guard.

“I don’t think I’ll watch them,” sophomore Kitty Devany said. “I don’t even know when they are.”

The overall lack of concern and excitement for the Olympics which, by the way, air on NBC starting tomorrow night, makes one fact clear: the Olympic Games just aren’t what they used to be.

We sure have come a long way from ancient Greece.

The modern Winter Olympic Games were established in 1924, and they were originally held in the same year as the Summer Games.

I can remember being excited to sit down and watch the Olympics as a kid because it was a momentous event that only came around once every four years.

And when you’re nine, four years seems like forever.

But starting in 1994, the Winter Olympic Games began being held between the Summer Games so that some form of the Olympics is now held every two years.

And two years seems to just fly by, especially when it’s more like only a year and a half.

I can recall watching the Athens Summer Games while moving into my dorm room as a freshman, which was really just last academic year.

The games aren’t so special when they seem to come around so often.

This supports that the emphasis placed on the Olympics in general is simply not as great as it once was.

The hype is still there to some degree, but it doesn’t really grab people’s attention anymore.

A majority of the time, people are busy and don’t have time to watch the games.

Usually people tune in whenever they have time and are bored or there is nothing else on TV.

Except for the few events that they actually want to see, which almost always conveniently aired at ridiculously early hours of the morning, people aren’t that interested in watching the Olympics for hours at a time.

“The only thing that I watch is the figure skating,” said sophomore Jessica Bouman. “The rest isn’t that big of a deal to me.”

But some students wouldn’t watch even if they did have the time. Many find the games annoying rather than exciting.

“I don’t plan on watching the Olympics,” sophomore Angie Azzardi. “It makes me angry when they start running into Conan time.”

How much prestige could the Olympics still hold if people are mad that they disrupt regular weekly shows?

Also, is it really accurate to consider today’s Olympians the best of the best?

Maybe the athletes were just the best on the day of their Olympic tryout.

With so many factors coming into play, there is no way to be certain if all Olympic athletes really are the cream of the crop.

And all the scandals of recent Olympics past have certainly put a damper on the integrity of the games.

Nothing takes away the credibility of a gold medal like the prevalent use of steroids.

What happened to the days of Kerri Strug?

If she was able to vault the US gymnastics team to victory in the Atlanta Summer Games of 1996 despite having a sprained ankle, then why do other athletes feel the need to use steroids?

Steroid use does not get you put on a Wheaties box.

Abuse of performance enhancing drugs has become more commonplace in today’s Olympics, and the scandals only reduce the popularity of the games.

But despite the fact that the Olympics are not as prestigious as they once were, you can still catch them on NBC from February 10 to the 26.

Send comments to Taylor at [email protected]