Coach's Corner

I've been de- nounced for so many alleged emotional crimes: Not being "in touch with my feelings," avoiding unpleasant confrontations by hiding on the golf course, or just refusing to answer the phone. A plethora of "communication issues" and the topic of "hidden agendas and pre-conceived notions." Perhaps there are tiny shreds of truth here.

Demonstrating to anyone who may have questioned some of these idiosyncrasies in the past, I'll do something rare: I'll fess up to a hidden agenda and a stubborn, pre-conceived notion. I've been preparing, for months, to pen a venomous screed, lambasting everything and anything concerned with Atlanta, The Olympics, NBC, and Coca-Cola. I was ready to rant about the $700 million -- take that, Shaq! -- advertisers are paying NBC. The blizzard of products -- flea powder, pantyhose, beer, golf balls, and prophylactics bearing the title of "The Official Condom of the '96 Olympics." Concerning sorrowful tales of the Hungarian steeplechaser's unfortunate mishap with a rabid goat, the Chinese gymnast coldly ripped from loving families at two years of age and forced to swing from a bar like a monkey to "honor family and country," or the orphaned, three-toed, Am-erican swimmer laid low by scarlet fever and leprosy, competing for the gold... all these sappy "up-close" features NBC had prepared were to be trashed as blatant, cynical, and quietly effective methods of hooking sports-impaired female viewers.

The disgusting agenda of the Olympics -- to sell us itself -- is, sadly, the nature of the beast. However, when the full weight of the entire American media, both electronic and print, is brought to bear on a single issue for weeks on end, well, we're presented with commercialization brought to an Nth degree which, like Alonzo Mourning's salary, is incomprehensible.

Out here in Colorado, I'm getting a little bored. There's only so much golf I can play and fresh air I can inhale. Chit-chat with my boxer Floyd, though comforting, is limiting. There's nothing on TV. Still, when I think back on the week, despite my bitching, I've watched nothing but the Olympics.

As I note a tear rolling down my cheek and goosebumps on my skin, it seems like an appropriate moment to re-examine my beliefs. I'm not an aficionado -- who is? -- of a single Olympic sport. The last time I thought of these "events" was in high school, when the tumbling, wrestling, track, and swimming segment of P.E. came around. My only thought then: how to get out. Yet only last night I was passionately discussing with Floyd the incompetence of an Eastern European gymnast whose name I couldn't pronounce, from a country I'd never heard of, who couldn't "stick a landing." I'm screaming at electronic images of swimmers to "Stroke, girl...! watch that turn!", an occurrence heretofore reserved for Pippens, Sanderses, and Mackovics.

The hook is the same kind of raw, desperate emotion, common to high school competition. I'm not that saying Jason Kidd or James Brown don't care about winning. No doubt, they're obsessed. The difference is Kidd plays for millions and Brown long ago learned it's not cool to show you care.

Take the already clichéd Kerri Strug story. There's nothing unusual about athletes playing while hurt. On the professional and college level, it's positively expected. Hockey players skate with jaws wired shut, football players compete with knees requiring surgery, baseball players throw with bone chips floating in their elbows. But these are the pros, who are paid money to perform. Strug is 18, a high school senior, paid nothing. Her sport -- gymnastics -- offers no real professional career. Yet Strug, America's last hope to win a team gold, on her last vault, on an already badly-injured ankle, with the international media in her face, overcame her pain and coolly performed a perfect vault, or whatever it's called, basically breaking her ankle in the process.

This is an extraordinary thing.

Not to stray too far out of character, in the midst of all this Pollyanna-ish goop, I have a serious gripe. Let's be resolved: The U.S. has proved its point about who's best in basketball. Basketball was once my favorite Olympic event. Our college guys against the best from the rest of the planet. Those were some intensely competitive games. Now, well, I'd rather watch canoeing than the Dream Team. Let's go back to the college kids. Let's never again repeat the fatal mistake of making them play for control freak, my-way-or-the- highway, college dictators, who want to command more than they want to win. Give the tykes a pro coach and let 'em play.

Think of the corollary benefits. In addition to easing the ugly American bully image and restoring at least the semblance of an amateur team, it would keep bored, testosterone-crazed college stars from beating up their girlfriends and help them avoid the unseemly predicament with the NCAA concerning payment from boosters for summer jobs never worked, not to mention 7-Elevens not robbed.

Oh, my god! It's possible we might not win a gold. Heavens to Betsy! Tell you medal freaks what, every four Olympics, we'll send over another Dream Team, to make the world right and whip some Euro-bootay. n