Apparently, the Olympics are going on right now.

That's nice.

I suppose it's a good time, seeing as how football is over, baseball is a month away and basketball and hockey are in their slumbering mid-season stages.

But other than the skeleton (men and women careening down a luge track face first — I've got to see this), watching NHL teammates throttling each other against the boards because they play for different nations, and an extended amount of Bob Costas (he's just so witty), there really aren't a whole lot of reasons to watch NBC's endless marketing techniques. . .I mean, coverage.

It's just hard to get excited about the 19th Winter Olympiad, even if it is on our home turf. The sports are as unfamiliar as the athletes, too much of the success is predicated by what seem to be increasingly biased judges, and the relentless hype is downright nauseating. Why do the major networks always assume that playing theme songs from popular movies (i.e. Braveheart, Titanic) will make our hearts swell with pride for a cross-country skier no one's ever heard of?

Americans want to watch sports that have a definitive outcome — when the Heat take on the Knicks, someone's going to win, someone's going to lose, and someone's very likely going to put someone in a chokehold. The fans know the rules of the game, they know the athletes, as both competitors and celebrities.

You think there are Olympic trading cards circulating through Salt Lake City? (I'll trade you a Georg Hackl and a Jonny Moseley for a Bode Miller.) I doubt you'll see any authentic replicas of a Travis Mayer ski suit. We need athletes we've known for more than two days, so we can appreciate their struggles, revel in their victories and mourn their defeats.

My colleagues chastise me for not knowing who Simon Ammann of Switzerland is. "Rice, he's the only man ever to win gold medals in both the K90 and K100 ski jumps!!"

Whoooooooo.

Even the athletes that NBC and other media have tried to hype up — Apollo Ohno, Kelly Clark — may be charismatic on and off the ice/snow, but we just aren't drawn to them, perhaps knowing that we won't see them again for another four years — if at all.

Here's the point: While a few constant strengths of the Olympics — world-class athletes pushing their bodies to places most of us can only dream of, countries all around the world proudly represented and introduced in stirring opening ceremonies — remain, there just aren't enough elements that make professional sports something to immerse yourself in.

Even the lackluster NBA All-Star weekend festivities were more entertaining than any Olympic events I've seen, and not just because Kobe got booed.

Yes, I know, Olympic athletes don't do it for money (though I'm sure Picabo Street endorses Chap Stick merely for the well-being of lips everywhere), they do it for love, they do it for their country. And yes, I know, there are great stories, such as Drexel University professor Prawat Nagvajara representing Thailand in cross-country skiing.

But the finals of the short-track speedskating event don't quite have the same luster as the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. The giant slalom doesn't put fannies in the seats the way a Maryland-Duke basketball game does. And watching the Arizona Diamondbacks storm the field after unseating the Yankees in Game 7 puts any gold-medal presentation to shame.

But I digress. I have to go — Costas just told me that curling starts in five minutes.