Admit it, if you watch ESPN SportsCenter at least two hours a day on average, including the golf if it comes to that, if you sign up for Visa cards at stadiums just to get the free T-shirts, if you're still griping about the incomplete pass call in the Raiders-Patriots game last month, if you're wondering how in the world Tyson keeps getting licensed, if you don't condone Rasheed Wallace and all those technicals but you sorta understand him, if you got an ultimatum from your wife/girlfriend/mother that one more expletive about Dick Bavetta and you're outta the house . . .
. . . if you understood that entire paragraph . . .
. . . then you're enjoying this.
You're enjoying the Elena Berezhnaya & Anton Silkharulidze vs. Jamie Sale & David Pelletier Olympic pairs figure skating controversy.
Hey, maybe figure skating is a sport after all.
Just when you were looking at Olympic figure skating as a kind of biennial duty — the one time during the sporting season when you relinquish control of the remote control — it gets interesting.
Maybe somebody will slug somebody.
That's what happens in the kind of sports you regularly watch. Not that anybody slugs anybody very often, but the threat is always there, and more often than not the reason is due to, in whole or in part, the rotten, lousy, crummy, unbelievably bad officiating.
Awful officiating, you really relate to.
You understand that on a regular basis everybody gets robbed. You understand that it's a part of sports. You understand that sometimes it's your side and sometimes it's the other side, but usually when the other side gets robbed it's really just sour grapes.
You understand that umpires are bums, that referees are hood ornaments. You know they don't get escorted off the football field and the basketball court and the baseball diamond and the soccer pitch — especially the soccer pitch — by flanks of policemen as soon as the game ends because people think of them as Mother Teresa.
You understand that, you understand that almost as clearly as John McEnroe and Bob Knight, and what you've always been unable to understand about figure skating — and this isn't the only thing — is why it doesn't behave more like a sport. Why do they call the refs "judges?" Why do they treat them like they're the Supreme Court or European royalty? Why do they give them such respect?
And then along comes the pairs competition in the Salt Lake Games and boos ring from the rafters as if it's not Dick Button but Dick Bavetta — the Jazz killer himself — in the house.
Which only figures. In Salt Lake City, Bavetta always favors the road team.
Better yet, the controversy keeps thickening. Was there collusion among the skating judges? Did the Frenchwoman cut a devil's deal with the East? Does the deal include a makeup call in the ice dancing? Why did the judges vote completely along geopolitical lines?
Five days later, and television replays are still ever-present. The Russians, Elena and Anton, skating to Massenet's "Meditation," are artistic but clearly clumsy while the Canadians, Jamie and David, skating to "Love Story," are not all that artistic but spot-on with their jumps.
Not only that. They're from Canada, which, along with Mexico, is our favorite neighbor.
Replays, you understand.
Second-guessing, you understand that, too.
And home-crowd favorites, you know all about that.
It's enough to get you past the makeup and the sequins and the lovely costumes and Scott Hamilton. It's enough to brush past the choreography and the bouquets all over the ice and the kiss and cry area.
Well, maybe not the kiss and cry area.
Those you don't understand. Those you'll never understand.
But "Kill the ump" — that's universal.
Lee Benson's column runs daily during the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.
