AFFotD Summer Olympics Viewing Guide

“J-I-N-G-O and Jingo was his name-o!”

~Olympics!

Every two years, Americans gather around their television sets to root for a bunch of sports that are either stupid but fun (Winter) or largely stupid (Summer) with the single goal of flipping the bird to every other country while saying, “We’re better than you in every possible way.”  The Olympics are beautiful, and the closest we can come to Manifest Destiny without the ACLU being all up on our asses.  It also helps remind us why China is a terrifying force who we have to defeat, lest they get cocky and we find ourselves in a Red Dawn situation.

As the Summer Olympics come and pass, and everyone spends two weeks pretending to care about gymnastics, running, and swimming, we are here to give you a handy guide of what American sports you should enjoy during the Olympics, and which sports you should avoid at all costs.

AFFotD’s Official Summer Olympics Guide

Everyone is going to spend their time watching gymnastics, swimming, and track and field during these Olympic games, because we’ve decided that those are the most fun, and not at all because those are the ones where America tends to get the most medals.  Because of course we’d love watching people swim in a pool for two minutes if we weren’t able to use it as a barometer for how much better we are than every other country.

But there are dozens, if not hundreds (truth be told we don’t care enough to look it up) of events out there, and some of them might be worth the attention of our American looking orbs.  And some we must avoid like the plague.  So without further delay, here are five sports you should be watching (as well as five that you should avoid).

WATCH:  SKEET SHOOTING

AVOID:  JUDO

Skeet shooting is an event so tailor-made for Americans that it’s almost unfair.  It’d be like England competing in a “broil all the flavor out of food” competition, or France competing in an Olympic event for “being awful.”  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we’ve already won this in both the Men’s and Women’s categories.  Or that the US Men’s Skeet representative, Vincent Hancock, has won gold in two Olympics by the age of 23…when the average age of his competitor is in the mid-30s.  It’s people who are really good at shooting guns at people, what is there not to like?

On the flip side, however, we are stuck with Judo, which as far as we can tell is a sport that involves grown men putting on bathrobes and grabbing each other’s hands a lot.  We tried watching the bronze medal match between USA and Canada the other day on NBC’s live feed, without commentary, and we still don’t know what we saw.  America lost 1-0, and we don’t know why that was the case, we just know that both of the competitors were crying afterwards and our staff members had very troubling erections.  We’re not fans, it’s best to stay away from this one.

WATCH:  ARCHERY

AVOID:   SAILING

You know when you watch a really competitive game of darts at a bar and you find yourself getting way more excited about each shot than you should?  Archery is just like that, right down to the fact that you can be a world class archer and still be kind of pudgy.  This is a sport that’s just as fun to watch with the men’s competitors and the women’s competitors, since everyone plays on a pretty similar level.  And we cannot stress this enough, there are chubby players.  How American is that?  We love sports where you don’t have to break a sweat.  We actually record bowling games and put it on TV, for fuck’s sake.  Plus, watching this without commentary on a live feed?  Far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

But sailing?  Fuck sailing.  Sailing is so boring that we’re not even going to bother to look up if and when it airs on TV.  We’re not going to watch it, on principle, even if hundreds of people tell us that it’s actually much better than we’d expect.  We feel the same way about Arby’s.  No, fuck your curly fries, we’re not going to eat there.

WATCH:  FENCING

AVOID:  DRESSAGE

We were 100% ready to hate on fencing.  Everyone dresses up like they’re doing a Daft Punk impression, the referees only speak in French, and you have no idea when the hell anyone scores (seriously, 90% of this sport appears to be one second of scuffling followed by some beeps, two people shouting, and nothing happening to the scoreboard).  Lights flash, but you have no idea what it means.

That being said, fencing is awesome.  And it serves as a constant reminder that in real life, sword fights would be so short.  If these were actual blades, both fencers would die of their wounds in five minutes.  Blood would be everywhere.  This is the one sport we’d most like to see done drunk (after shooting).

But did you know that there is a horse event called Dressing?  It’s literally people dressing up very fancy and sitting on a horse and being British as fuck and, well, just look at this for yourself to see how stupid this whole thing is.  Just let that sink in.  Someone’s going to win a gold medal for being able to do that.  And they will brag about it.  Goddamn it.

WATCH:  TABLE TENNIS

AVOID:  SOCCER

The one issue we have with Table Tennis is that, for whatever reason, America sucks at it, and China is the only country that wins it.  Why the hell is this?  Is there some particular reason why Table Tennis is one of the four events that America has never medaled in, while China won both gold and silver this year?  The hell kind of bullshit is that?

Listen, we’ve all seen Forrest Gump, we know that America has the capability of being good at ping pong.  Get back on this, Americans, we need to take this event back.

That being said, it’s pretty awesome to watch a long rally and see the audience totally losing their shit.  Which is way better than Soccer.  Soccer’s not even an event we give a shit about in America, other countries don’t care about Olympic Soccer.  Watching Soccer at the Olympics is like using a jelly donut as a masturbatory tool.  You’re not going to tell anyone what you’ve done, but deep in the back of your mind, every time you’re out in public, you’ll think, “they know.”

WATCH:  ANY SPORT WHERE USA WINS

AVOID:  ANY SPORT WHERE CHINA WINS

Every great hero needs a villain.  Lately, that villain has been China, the communist-loving, performance-enhancing nation that has been our direct competition for the medals title this Olympics, like many Olympics prior.  So while you watch the Olympics, make sure to cheer on the grand U S of A, while flipping a massive bird to those Chinese bastards.  It’s the American way!