Last Friday, I was driving home, following a late evening at work, listening to the Reds blow another game in the bottom of the tenth inning against the Houston Astros on WLW. I pulled into my driveway after Marty Brennaman’s wrap-up show, listening to “Seg” Dennison present the sport highlights of the day. My lovely wife, Julia, was still up, and following my usual warm greeting, went into great detail, describing the broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which she had been watching earlier that evening. My response?

“Oh, yeah, that’s right, the Olympics started today.”

Not only was I caught unaware, but I didn’t recall hearing anything on WLW about the Olympics that night. This led me to a question that I haven’t heard on any of the media outlets. Is this the least anticipated Olympics in collective memory?

Now granted, Beijing is literally on the other side of the globe from Greensburg, and much of the Olympic coverage will be tape delayed this year, due to the nearly 12-hour time difference. In addition, I’m sure residents of China have been anticipating this year’s edition of the Olympic Games more closely than American residents. But seriously, where are the countless months of television advertisements leading up to the games? Where are the Olympic rings and the “USA” logos on soft drinks and cereal boxes? Where is the “buzz?”

The shine has worn off the Olympic rings for a variety of reasons. First of all, we now live in a global economy. Western nations are not compelled to view competition against the old “Communist Block” countries as vindicating contests to help determine whose political philosophy should be accepted as right or wrong.

Secondly, what began as a collection of the simplest sports, specifically track and field, has ballooned into a cornucopia of little known activities that we are exposed to once every four years. For example, as I right this column, it is Saturday afternoon, and our pet cat, Oreo, is positioned in front of our television set, (Well, actually, just sleeping in front of the television set.) taking in the Olympic action. What is center stage this afternoon on NBC’s Olympic coverage? Bikini beach volleyball.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching babes in bikinis playing volleyball in the sand as much as the next guy, but is this really an Olympic sport? I thought it was invented by ESPN about 20 years ago, when they had to fill broadcast time during breaks in the football, basketball, and baseball seasons.

Unfortunately, the third and final reason the Olympics have become so diminished, in my opinion, has been the exposed scandals, but not scandals in the form of the infamous Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding skating rivalry. Americans couldn’t get enough of that story, and the resulting publicity, good or bad, may have done more to promote the popularity of figure skating than any other single event.

No, the Olympic scandals to which I refer have involved payoffs to corrupt International Olympic Committee members by countries desperate to host the games, judges that have been placed in positions by crony-ism, rather than earning the assignment through skill, and of course, the stigma that could ultimately ruin the games for good. We now routinely ask, as the national anthem of the winning country is being played in the background, and the athlete is standing on the podium, “Do you think he used anything?”

The use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes has, quite possibly, been the single most detrimental influence on the Olympic movement since it’s modern inception in the 1890’s. From Ben Johnson’s nearly 10-meter victory in the 100-meter dash at the 1988 Olympics, to Marion Jones’ 100-meter victory at the 2000 games in Sydney, Australia, many of our Olympic heroes have suffered hard falls from grace, by using, lying about, and becoming involved in the underground world of performance enhancing drugs. I understand urine samples will now be kept for eight years, in case future testing techniques are more advanced. In other words, the winners you see this week in Beijing may be stripped of those medals anytime before 2016, should they be found to have used something illegal. Is it any wonder that the average American citizen’s interest in this event is less than stellar?

I suppose the Olympics may take solace in the fact that cheating has been, and probably always will be, an unfortunate part of sports. My Grandfather attended one of the World Series games in Cincinnati against the Chicago White Sox, later dubbed the “Black Sox” in 1919, a series that had been fixed by gamblers for Chicago to lose. He told me later that he watched the entire game and at no time did it remotely seem to be fixed. Regardless, he didn’t write off baseball because of the scandal, and remained a loyal Reds fan until his death. Likewise, many will continue to follow the Olympics for the unrealized panacea they would like it to be.

Oh, well, I guess I better wake up Oreo and watch the Olympics. I wonder if beach tanning will ever be an Olympic sport?