Nobody likes the winter sports. They are boring and the US doesn't dominate like the summer games.
I wouldn't say "nobody likes winter sports" - if we view that through Earle's comment about the South then it makes more sense.
Granted, I bring the baggage of five years living in Europe (three in UK, two on mainland during the Cold War). One of my best friends is from a small town in northern Minnesota just outside Canadian border (she was high school classmates with one of the guys on the "Miracle on Ice" team) - and she LOVES certain events that she
can relate to - ice skating, hockey, even the Zamboni race.
I think the whole everything has changed, though. We USED to ASSUME the innocence of it all - we now know better. In fact, Americans (and I'm thinking more specifically of the Summer Games) were a lot like college football fans - "we're number one, but if we lose, the Eastern bloc/Soviets cheated." Plus, we kinda made it stupid when we decided to send the Dream Team in 1992, and we only did that because we'd lost in 72 (robbed) and then 88 (and we only lost then because John Thompson was more interested in showing the world the Georgetown way than in actually winning the gold medal).
I'll bet everyone here old enough remembers the name Ben Johnson (and probably what he is famous for). I watched years ago as Carl Lewis shot his mouth off about how difficult it was to stand there with Johnson winning what should have been "his" gold medal and knowing all the while Ben was "dirty." Of course, in 2013 the hypocrisy of Lewis comes out when it's revealed he not only tested positive, he did so THREE TIMES prior to the Olympics, meaning he shouldn't have even been there.
Yet most folks don't even know that and Carl Lewis is seen as an all-time great Olympian who did it cleanly even if he couldn't sing the National Anthem worth a damn.
Lewis was worse than Johnson (and an arrogant snot when the inconsistency was pointed out). Johnson did drugs and was humiliated worldwide. Lewis did drugs and won the gold medal and piled on what a dirty guy Johnson was - and turns out he was just as dirty, but he gets to keep the gold medal he didn't deserve and hide behind "well, that was the climate then."
And I think there's now enough suspicion on things like that, questionable judges rulings (boxing in 84 and 88, gymnastics in whenever that was), and outright theft (72 basketball) that folks don't care anymore. We all saw Lance Armstrong "never fail a drug test" while running a dirty operation. And throw in the baseball steroids stuff and I think most folks just shrug anymore. (It's the same reason you're not gonna score any points on Trump's not illegal adultery from years ago - in part due to so many politicians being dirty and in part because of the new rules set by the Lewinsky saga, nobody really cares in the larger picture).
One other thing: a lot of things owed their fame to being on TV when there were three channels and even color TV was kind of new. So the Olympics was different programming. It's kinda like Evel Knievel - does anyone have that big a name as a daredevil nowadays? I don't know of any. If I have to actually pay close attention
to what daredevils do then he's not Evel Knievel, whom people who knew nothing about stunts knew his name and that he was kinda nuts.
To give another example:
Game 7 of the 1967 World Series (Cards-Red Sox) was played on a Thursday afternoon in Boston while people were still at work. TV audience was 40 million in a nation of 198 million people.
Game 7 of the 2016 World Series (Cubs-Indians) was played on a Wed night prime time. TV audience was 39 million in a nation of 323 million people.....and even
that was the first time in 25 years that they approached that number.
The point being we're beyond the time when folks just put on the Olympics when nothing else was on.
