American Gladiators versus the Olympics: No Contest

American Gladiators

Faster. Higher. Stronger. Better on TV?

August 3, 2008 

By Ben Mathis-Lilley

If, like me, you're one of the true-blue patriots who follow the hyperactive, entertainingly contrived sports program "American Gladiators," you may have noticed that NBC has been running ads along the bottom of the screen for another, (somewhat) less contrived sporting event about to take place in China. The season finale of "Gladiators" will air on Aug. 4, just four days before the Olympics start in Beijing. NBC's marketing strategy seems pretty clear: Use fake sports to whet the viewer's appetite for real sports.

But in a just universe, you'd do the reverse, because the heretical truth is that "American Gladiators" is more fun to watch than the Olympics.

With a premise that sweeping and stupid-sounding, I need to state some caveats, of course. I define Olympic sports as the running/jumping/throwing/swimming events -- the ones that are prominent only in Olympic years, as opposed to the events covered round-the-clock at all other times, such as basketball, soccer, tennis, boxing, archery and canoe racing. And I'm going to discuss these spectacles in terms of the way they're consumed by most people: via television. Because this isn't just about the frivolous question of whether it's more fun to watch the Gladiator event "Rocketball" (in which contestants on fly-wires shoot baskets) or Olympic platform diving. It's about the slightly less frivolous question of what makes sports on television fun to watch in the first place.

Let's start with a basic but rarely acknowledged point: Staggering physical ability, in and of itself, is a boring thing to observe on TV. The most frequent result of high-level athletes competing directly against other high-level athletes are the disappointing mini-stalemates that you've seen thousands of times, full of missed jump shots, pop flies to the catcher and two-yard carries.

You can get some enjoyment out of following the strategic battle between teams or players, but that requires paying freakishly close attention to the television and knowing a lot about the sport, and the only payoff is self-satisfaction. There's also the occasional play of such extreme impressiveness that it's stunning even on TV. But those kinds of things happen only once every couple of games, and sitting through an entire televised event to catch one is a waste of time; doubtless a 13-year-old with the username MadDunkz477 has already done a fine job of cataloguing 10 better plays, with well-synchronized rap accompaniment, on YouTube.

No, there are two real reasons to watch sports on television. The lesser one is to keep track of what's going on in the league and store up observations that you can share with your friends. (That's not a reason to be underestimated: After you reach a certain age, if you can't talk to your friends about sports, you have to talk to them about things like how their desire to reconnect with their religious side is complicated by their fraught relationship with their parents.)

But the best reason to watch sports is that someone always wins. And if you have a team or individual to root for, the game provides you with two-plus hours of gripping drama that (we hope) ends with a feeling of tribal triumph. It's one of the best feelings on Earth. You can enjoy it by yourself or in solidarity with friends, total strangers and, if you've been drinking, tree branches and road signs. (High five!) All the screaming and team-color-wearing may seem irrational and atavistic to some, but it's a sign of social progress that we can feel that triumphant without putting thousands of our enemies to the sword. In the Middle Ages, "We're No. 1!" foam fingers were made out of crushed skulls.

If watching sports is really all about winning, that means it's about having someone to root for. This fact is especially pronounced in the case of your running/jumping/throwing/swimming Olympic endeavors. The layman, even the most sports-obsessed layman, barely knows anything about the technique or strategy involved in these events. Nor is there a compelling water-cooler-chatter reason to see what happens, given how quickly the events transpire.

The pleasure of watching Olympic sports, then, comes almost solely from the rooting interests the viewer brings to the proceedings. Many Americans will certainly tune in out of national pride -- I, for example, hope that Michael Phelps wins all those swimming gold medals, and I'm excited for the 100-meter dash because I know that it will be a big showdown between the fearsome Jamaican Usain Bolt and his American rival Tyson Gay. But with the decline of the Olympic sports as major attractions in non-Olympic years, it's hard to absorb information about the competitors -- even the Americans -- through sports osmosis. Viewers don't know much more about whom to root for than what they find out when they turn on the TV.

Which happens to be the same amount of knowledge that I bring to "American Gladiators." Like most people, I'm fascinated by two kinds of athlete: the ones I find easy to relate to and the ones who are mythical, inhuman-seeming champions. The genius of "American Gladiators" is that all the competitors are prescreened for relatability -- teachers, IT people, mortgage brokers and so forth have worked themselves into unbelievable shape -- while the "gladiators" are selected for inhuman-seeming-strength, bringing both sides of the spectrum together.

The "real people" competitors are always smiley and gregarious. I love them! I'm so excited when any of them win. The NBC Olympics team would be well-advised to produce back story segments that are less inspirational and more banally relatable. A sprinter who washes his car and does online banking is a sprinter the people can believe in. That's what "Gladiators" understands that the Olympics don't (although, given some of their other production choices -- Hulk Hogan as host, characters named Wolf and Beast, a cartoonishly overweight referee -- it's possible that any genius insight may have been accidental).

To complete the comparison, let's remember how this whole Olympic business got began in the first place. Lo, it began when citizens from across ancient Greece, ordinary but for their extraordinary physical ability, came together to win honor for their hometowns and their families in athletic competition. How inspiring. If rocket-powered basketball had been involved, I do believe it would have made great television.

bml@nymag.com

Ben Mathis-Lilley is an assistant editor at New York magazine.

Source:  Washington Post