Michael, we’re all very excited, but the rest of us don’t feel the need to get uncomfortably close to showing the world our wang.

I’ve been watching entirely too much of NBC’s Olympic coverage over the last few days. I didn’t watch the opening ceremony on Friday night, but since then, I’ve been glued to my TV, flipping between the different NBC feeds to watch anything from women’s water polo to beach volleyball to synchronized diving.

I can’t even mask my near-obsessiveness over these events with my enjoyment of everything Costas. As much as I like his candor and dedication, it just stretches credulity to the breaking point. I’m utterly hooked and not entirely sure how I feel about it.

What the hell is wrong with me?

It would be one thing if I was just concerned about men’s swimming, since it seems like everyone and their mother knows every minute detail about Michael Phelps(five golds and counting!). It’s legitimately riveting television, watching him put himself through that amount of stress and pressure on the highest stage. It’s even more riveting to watch as he puts up each inane interview, day after day, event after event, getting more and more strung-out and coming closer and closer to pushing Andrea Mitchell into the pool.

Maybe it’s just a trickle-down effect from Phelps’ journey that has me watching all of these other events. Wrapped around every swimming final and semifinal, NBC makes sure to stick a men’s beach volleyball match or a women’s rowing race. The real-life drama of these borderline psychotics who have dedicated themselves so completely to their sport that they are almost utterly unrecognizable away from it. Other than the aforementioned Phelps and the men’s basketball team, I dare you to tell me with a straight face that you would recognize ANY other Olympic athlete if you saw them on the street.

Bella Karolyi or Boris the Blade?

Speaking of borderline psychotics, the one character from this Olympics so far that I’d most want to invite into my home on a regular basis is former women’s gymnastics coach Bella Karolyi. You know this guy from the Atlanta Olympics, when his constant refrain of “You can do it!” in a comically Soviet-bloc accent landed him on Letterman. He’s simply fucking adorable, in a crusty old Russian kinda way. Watching him interact with Bob Costas in the studio is a thing of pure beauty. He could almost anchor the rest of the Olympics and I wouldn’t miss Costas a bit…almost.

For the most part, they’re regular people, these Olympians. At least that’s what we’re supposed to think. It’s drilled home at every opportunity by NBC, reminding us that so-and-so works at a post office while they train or what’s-his-name is a butcher at the local Piggly Wiggly when he’s not training for his pentathlon/decathalon/other event that no one really cares enough about to know what it all entails. While these stories are occasionally true, that doesn’t make any of these athletes anything like you or me. You and I don’t dedicate our lives to training to be the best, honing our skills to the point that they’re little more than involuntary reactions.

Lest you forget, we live in a country where almost 1/3 of the population is obese and over 1/2 is overweight. We are not Olympians, you and I. Not by a long shot. But, by trying to make us think that we could be, NBC is probably ratcheting up their ratings for these early events by a couple million viewers, making some nice bank from advertisers in the process. They’re also probably contributing to a rise in heart attacks due to every schlub trying to prove he can still run a really fast 100m or an alarming rise in the prevalence of unnecessary spandex on overweight people at the gym. Either way, knock it off, NBC.

I normally won’t watch gymnastics unless you pay me. I’ve never intentionally sat down to watch a WNBA game. Ditto for figure skating or tennis. These sports just don’t pull me in. It might stem back to the fact that I was a terrible golfer, never figure skated, don’t usually play basketball against girls and the only time I tried to play tennis, I served the ball right at my opponent’s face and broke his nose.

Yet, when the Olympics roll around, I find myself enjoying immensely these sports that I could give two shits about. It’s the last vestiges of my patriotic fervor bubbling up through a thick, tar-like layer of cynicism that has accumulated over years and years. I won’t deny that, to some degree, the American in me loves seeing one of my country(wo)men beat the tar out of people from countries I can’t pronounce. It’s xenophobia in it’s most harmless form.

But another part of it, I think, is the basic human drama of the games. It’s the same reason that we watch sports or any kind of competition. The oldest drama in our history is that between winning and losing. We should all come to terms with our obsession with Olympic sports, because it’s ingrained in our DNA to be interested by competition, by winning and losing. There’s nothing we can do about it but sit back, relax and enjoy three straight hours of rowing, beach volleyball, trap shooting and road racing. Pretend to care about the competitor’s backstories and hardships and whatnot, because in the end, all we really want to see is someone win and someone else lose.