I'm Tired of American Coverage of International Sports

When FIFA selected the USA to host the 1994 World Cup, the entire footballing world was in outrage. FIFA wanted to exploit the American market and to bring football to the US, a highly rich untapped market. What they didn't know was that the business in sports in the US had a very strict hand controlling everything. I understand that business controls every sport, in ever part of the world. The problem is that in other countries, it doesn't affect how people watch the sport. Let's look at the World Cup for a minute. I've watched the World Cup in 3 different countries. In Colombia, I could watch every game, live, with opening ceremonies, anthems and other rituals. This was during the '94 and '98 World Cups. In Brazil, I watched the '02 World Cup; I enjoyed the same wholesome coverage. The Euro Cups in between also had adequate coverage. In the US, I watched the 2nd half of both the '94, '98 and '02 World Cups. I could only watch it in Univision, with mediocre commentators and subpar quality. Finally in '06 I could watch the World Cup in either English or Spanish in High Definition, but, in ESPN I could only watch the anthems of the USA games, all 3 of them. The 2010 World Cup had better coverage, we just need to improve the commentators ... progress comes one step at a time. We have a channel called Speed, dedicated to motor racing and cars. You would think they cover the highest level of auto racing, Formula 1. They do, but every once in a while, they would rather show delayed coverage of the race and show the history of the Ford Model T instead. Why?

Now we are in the middle of the Olympics, and I understand that this is a very hard event to cover. There are too many disciplines going on at the same time, and the US has pretty much an athlete in every event. To cover this on TV is a feat in itself. But, what does NBC resorts to? Delayed coverage. It's 2012, we have internet, we know when everything is happening at the exact time that is happening. Are they trying to fool us? Do they even care? Is their precious programming so important you can't make an exception in the summer to cover what the entire world is covering? Yes, this is the greatest country in the world, but can we show a little bit of humility and learn from the rest of the world? We claim to have the best athletes in the world, but doing things our way has not really panned out hasn't it? When was the last time we dominated a sport? We keep doing things our way, running sports like they're a business, but somehow at the world stage we fail to deliver. We are so proud of the NBA, the MLB, NHL, NFL; but we are still not number 1 in the FIBA World Cup, Korea and Japan have dominated the World Baseball Classic since the beginning of the tournament, and not to mention we are way behind in Hockey and Soccer. We seem to dominate football, a sport nobody else in the world plays, and we are pretty damn proud of that. If we want to maintain the level we have, great, let's keep doing what we are doing, and keep our elite athletes to shine only in the US. But if we really want to compete at the highest level, I believe a little humility and taking a look at what other nations, including the so-called 3rd world, are doing, we could maybe learn the final tweaks that we need to reach the next level. But where can we start? Well, how about we start by covering sports the way they deserve, just like the rest of the world does?