Let them have their Olympics. And watch it, too.

Have you been watching the Olympics???

Of course, WHO HASN'T?

Is it just me, or are people talking more than normal about the Olympics this year? Water cooler talk has Brett Favre's new uniform rivaling against talk about "the age of that Chinese girl." People have also been as excited to talk about Michael Phelps' amazing trek for gold medals as they have been about Super Bowl commercials.

Ex. - "I stopped paying attention to the game after the first quarter, but did you see that Amtrak commercial? Yea, the one with the goldfish and volcano?? Hilarious!!!!"

It hasn't always been this way. Does anyone else remember NBC's Triplecast? The sudden leap in coverage offered to viewers in 1992's Summer Games? It was 100 hours of live coverage, but it came at a hefty cost (Up to $170, big money back then) and it totally flopped. If you don't remember it, or were eating Gerber back then, check here to read more about it.

NBC lost an atrocious $100 million on the deal. After that mess, they strapped on a Band-Aid, learning to never again put the Olympics on pay-per-view, and they healed, letting CBS take over a few years, and have since healed considerably after teaming with cable networks for coverage, and escalating coverage to unbelievable new heights. Thanks to teamwork from the network, cable channels and now streaming Internet video, this year's coverage is up to 3,600 hours of video, 1,400 on television and 2,200 on the Internet! Get this - that's 1,100 more hours than coverage of all the previous Summer Games combined since the start in 1964, when, for comparison's sake, NBC showed a total of 45 minutes of video per day.

But the Opening Ceremonies were also in color that year!

Anyways, it's worked for wised-up NBC, as they are receiving 30.5 million viewers for each night of coverage, up 5 million from last year.

The point of all this is, I'm starting to wonder, does this show a growing trend in sports coverage and even pop culture? I believe that in the past, people were more drawn to the team sports and the big Sportscenter personalities - Shaq, David Ortiz, Deion Sanders, etc. - and whoever had the shiniest, coolest looking jersies, but now, shifting to pop culture, we are shifting more to being interested in indivuals on the rise from obscurity.

Due to an amazing amount of interest, people are rising from obscurity via Youtube, Facebook, blogs American Idol, and now people are dying to know what Michael Phelps is listening to on his iPod. Phelps probably went from having 300 friends on Facebook to 3 million in a week.

And about the iPod, seriously, that was featured on Yahoo. I read it and he likes a little bit of everything! Amazing!

Maybe we are beginning to realize that celebrities are people, too, and Olympians are people that work exhaustingly at their job. And we respect that.

But, readership, what are your thoughts on this year's Olympics? Has it been overhyped? Is Michael Phelps awesome? Is He Klexin 16? Have you bought a jar of honey, too?