The Silver Medalists for 2015:
Seattle Seahawks
Cleveland Cavaliers
Tampa Bay Lightning
New York Mets
Yes, those are all the teams that made it to the championships last year and lost. Did the players on those teams receive a consolation prize? So why the big deal with silver medals? And who even thinks coming in third is noteworthy? Does anyone remember Dortmund?
Chalk some of this up to old age. I used to be glued to the television during the 1960s broadcasts of the Olympics. (But remember, back then sports on television were rare. To see Lew Alcindor play Elvin Hays in the college basketball game of the century you needed to travel to Houston.) Then it dawned on me, thanks to Wide World of Sports, that every year some international competition in track, swimming, or skiing was happening, and that the record-winning times had as much significance as performances in the Olympics. The Olympics were no longer special, and they had yet to be hyped the networks or doped by the pharmacists (at least in the free world).
Add to that the admission of professional athletes to what used to be a competition for amateurs, though of course Harold Abrahams superiors at Caius College had other thoughts about gentlemen athletes, and I figured I’d just as soon watch national sports as opposed to those competitions promoted by liberals who pined for one-world-government.
Old Life 