Peacock Network Loses Its Luster

Are those Visa executives incredible forecasters or what? At 10:15 PDT Monday night, a Visa commercial aired congratulating Stacy Dragila on her gold medal in the pole vault. Amazingly, 15 minutes later on NBC we actually saw Dragila win the gold.

NICK ROSE

Newport Beach

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Why does everyone rip NBC for its tape-delayed, melodramatic, athlete-profiled Olympic coverage? This amounts to killing the messenger. It’s the advertisers and official sponsors who “are proud to bring you the Olympics.”

If you have a gripe, adjust your spending habits accordingly.

DAVID MOYA

Seal Beach

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Could NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games get any worse? Find out . . . when we return.

DAVID ANDO

Rancho Palos Verdes

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Question: What’s the difference between NBC’s Olympic coverage and professional wrestling?

Answer: In only one of the sports do you know the outcome before you see it.

ROB HAMERS

Irvine

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What is wrong with NBC? Hour after hour of everything from gymnastics to soccer and then 52 seconds of track and field. Don’t they realize without track and field there would be no Olympics?

HARRY N. TADDEO

Pasadena

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NBC should have used performance-enhancing drugs--the coverage would have been faster.

HOWARD MATIONG

Gardena

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C’mon guys, leave poor NBC alone. They have to come up with the salaries for the cast of “Friends” somehow.

MANU APPELIUS

Los Angeles

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Am I the only one who is actually enjoying NBC’s coverage? I appreciate the profiles of the athletes, who are also people.

ELVA GARCIA

Los Angeles

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I swore to myself that I wouldn’t join the chorus of people slamming NBC for its Olympic coverage, not because I like the coverage, but because I know that it will do no good. NBC is the classic ostrich with its head in the sand. The network believes we want overproduced, tape-delayed coverage, so that is what we are going to get for the next 10 years until some other network can outbid them for the rights. (Hello, ESPN?)

So all that being said, I still have to say, “What the hell is wrong with NBC?” They waited until 11:50 p.m. to show the men’s 100-meter final Saturday night. The race took place some 18 hours earlier. Couldn’t they have at least shown it in prime time?

You got me on Saturday, NBC, but you won’t get me again.

PATRICK MALLON

San Luis Obispo

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I don’t know who your focus groups are, NBC, but they’re not working. I was excited about Sydney, but given NBC’s future involvement, I’m already discouraged about Athens.

MICHAEL GOUGH

Van Nuys

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I am amazed at the overwhelming negative reviews that NBC is getting for its coverage of the Olympics. I was a technical supervisor in Korea for the 1988 Olympics and I can tell you firsthand that televising the Olympics is an almost impossible task. Many events are happening at the same time and it takes a lot of equipment, manpower and coordination to schedule everything, capture it, and put it in a nice package for us to watch back home.

And speaking of that package, a lot of people have been complaining about the so-called “human interest” stories. See if you can answer this question honestly: If the scene where Rocky fights Apollo Creed was at the beginning of “Rocky,” would you have cared one way or the other about him? I doubt it.

JIM KATZ

Los Angeles

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Why is C.J. Hunter front page, center stage? He’s not competing. He’s probably not even doing much coaching. He’s sitting in the stands, eating French fries and cheering for his wife. Why should C.J.’s pre-Olympic blood chemistry overshadow Marion Jones in her finest hour? Or obscure the glory of Greco-Roman wrestling, for that matter? Save this witch hunt for another venue.

RON OVADIA

Irvine

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It is unfortunate that such a wonderful athlete as Marion Jones has been caught up in this latest drug scandal and I hope she, as someone who has never failed a drug test, does not have her reputation tainted. But it is time that the U.S. got serious about cleaning up its athletes, as to us in the rest of the world it is looking like “one set of rules for us and another set for U.S.”

CHRIS BROOK

Melbourne, Australia

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IOC officials have a lot of nerve enforcing a strict rules-are-rules stance regarding Andreea Raducan’s innocent and meaningless act of taking a cold pill before her competition. Officials say they have to be fair to the other athletes. What about the rules that you’re not supposed to take bribes from cities that are vying to host the Olympic Games? Is that fair to the other cities?

KATIE SWEENEY

Los Angeles

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Who would’ve ever thought that any sport would rival soccer in tedium? But then along comes Olympic softball, where the U.S. team amasses a whopping batting average of .171. And they’re the gold-medal winners.

JOHN R. GRUSH

Mission Viejo

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God, you shouldn’t have let Tommy win like that; you’ll only encourage him.

ALEX LANDI

North Hills

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Congratulations and thanks to Tom Lasorda. I’m sure your heart still bleeds Dodger blue, but now with just a hint of red and white blended in.

When others gave the U.S. baseball team no chance, Lasorda showed that belief, trust, focus and leadership still count for something in the world of sports.

His style may no longer be welcome among today’s egotistical, overpaid major league crybabies. But it still works with athletes who love game and country more than self-promotion and outrageous pursuit of the almighty buck.

DON CHAPMAN

Redondo Beach

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Tom Lasorda has done more in two weeks with nothing than Davey Johnson in two years with something.

MARK LOPEZ

Lynwood

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Let’s put things in perspective: Tom Lasorda led a team representing 260 million Americans playing its national sport in which only a handful of countries participate in. How then can Lasorda’s crowning achievement be to defeat a tiny Caribbean island in which six of its best players were not allowed to play?

We certainly should congratulate the players, Bavasi and Watson who picked the team--and of course Lasorda. But 1988 or the World Series it ain’t.

SKIP USEN

Santa Monica

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With his perpetual self-serving pronouncements disguised in wrappings of “Dodger Blue” and the “Red, White and Blue,” Tom Lasorda’s boorish behavior is the antithesis of the Olympic spirit. The good sportsmanship of the American women’s soccer team in their loss to Norway was much more inspirational than Tommy’s nationalistic blatherings about beating the Cuban team in retaliation for the actions of Fidel Castro.

I wonder if the Russians beat us in women’s volleyball or men’s water polo in retaliation for Bill Clinton’s treatment of Monica Lewinsky.

D.F. REEVES

Rancho Palos Verdes

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“Gold Is Venus’ Favorite Color” was the perfect headline. We all could see that her favorite colors aren’t red, white and blue. Who was she competing for anyway? I didn’t know Reebok was a country.

JUDY THOMSEN

La Crescenta

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Randy Harvey, I read your article in Monday’s Times and had to laugh at your misconceptions of race. Like most Americans you can’t seem to see past the color of someone’s skin. You mention Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson: Please enlighten me as to which of these sports stars is an American Indian. The Aborigines of Australia have nothing in common with African Americans, their plight is similar to the indigenous Americans you completely ignore while writing about how far America has come.

Are there any American Indians on the U.S. Olympic team? I wouldn’t know, as they still seem to be a subject avoided by the press.

MICHAEL KNUCKEY

Santa Barbara

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My first question for Bill Plaschke [“Melting Pool, Sept. 23] is, “Are you 75% white?” How does one calculate what percentage of any given culture one has in their blood? Can you tell me what difference it makes as to how much percentage of African American Anthony Ervin’s father is, and what does this have to do with his Olympic gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle? It is true that he was the first African American to win such an event, but why was there a need to quantify what percentage of African American his father is?

Have we been suddenly sent back to the days of slavery, where African Americans are quantified as octoroon, quadroon, mulatto, etc.?

ROSEMARY FARMER

Simi Valley

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Olympic odds and ends:

1. Lay off NBC already. No one I know could get up to see it live. I’m frankly tired of TV and radio reports of results without warning us of what’s coming.

2. Congrats to USA baseball. This is what we used to root for. Let the basketball team lose every game. And while we’re at it, don’t let any hockey player on the Nagano team go to Salt Lake City. Treat them like any first-grader who won’t squeal on the class bully.

3. The Gardner-Karelin wrestling match was spine-tingling. What nonstop action! It made me want to watch synchronized whatever.

4. Finally, drop the bum, Marion, and marry me.

MICHAEL REUBEN

Anaheim Hills