The Russians are at it again

The Winter Olympics are set to start in Sochi, but who is going to watch? The Olympics will be aired on NBC and the opening ceremonies will start on Feb. 7 with events starting on Feb. 8.

I was just reading the Review Journal article about this on Wednesday and it said the majority of the viewers will be over 50 years of age. The RJ article said 65 percent of the people over 50 are planning to watch it, as opposed to just 47 percent of the people among younger adults. Is this lack of interest due to a lack of patriotism among young people? I think so.

These stats tell me we are not educating our youth and about what it is to be patriotic. When I was growing up, everyone watched the Olympics, summer or winter, it didn’t matter because simply put, it was our patriotic duty to support our team and country. For example, I was honored to watch in 1980 as our hockey team beat the Soviet Union. Wow, what a show that was. It was also a defining moment for our generation that went on to affect us for the rest of our lives. For the World War II generation, they had Pearl Harbor and Jesse Owens. What was the defining moment for the current generation, was it Tanya Harding? If so, that would explain a lot.

I was a teacher, so I know what is being taught in the schools today. My wife is a teacher still. I think our young people are lucky to know who fought in World War II, let alone what side we were on and why. Schools are not getting to the patriotism because the young people are too busy learning how to read English and not much else. The Pledge of Allegiance is slowly going away.

I could blast the school district, but honestly they are doing the best they can with what they have. I feel this is a lost generation where the parents are just as lost as the children. Of course, my answer to this would be to play more sports. The solution to everything in my world. If more kids would play more sports, there would not be any video game sales and obesity would be on the decline because all kids would be in the sun playing. That is exactly what I did growing up. Kids in my generation would find kids today to be pretty strange.

Hotel Sochi style — and so it begins. You know it’s a bad sign when athletes check into a hotel and the hotel is not even finished. The Canadian hockey team checked into their room and it had small bunk beds. One of the buildings had two toilets per stall in typical Russian fashion.This should be an interesting Olympics.

On an upbeat note, UNLV is turning around its football team. The Running Rebels had a winning year in football for the first time. It was the first post season in 13 years for the Rebs and it was the first time that UNLV beat UNR in nine years. My hat is off to Bobby Hauck for an impressive season.

The Toilet Bowl was boring … Boy was I wrong on the Broncos winning. Not only did they not win, but they really stank. For the Broncos it was a season low of 8 points. Manning was really not effective thanks to the awesome Seattle defense. Shoot, I never thought I would ever write those words. This is me eating crow. Go Seahawks — Rah.

I am now turning the page on football until next year and concentrating on basketball. March Madness is upon us. As of this week, Syracuse is 21-0 and is the number one ranked team in the nation. That is no big surprise. The big surprise is Arizona, the Pacific 12 leader is number two at 21-1 and number five is San Diego State at 19-1, the Mountain West leader.

I know I am a little late with this March Madness news which came out a bit earlier, but it was overshadowed by the Super Bowl. Warren Buffet has pledged 1 billion dollars to the person who turns in a perfect March Madness tournament bracket. The chances of someone predicting all 63 games is around 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Quicken is sponsoring this and will also give $100,000 to the 20 people who come the closest to picking all the games. What a deal! Go for it.

College basketball is hard to predict and if people come close, then more power to them. They deserve the money for just making the attempt.

I never bet on anything and basketball would be the last thing I would bet on.