While I love all Olympic sports, I have to admit that ever since I was a little girl, I've loved figure skating (yeah, shocker). However, I've never really succumbed to the allure of ice dancing. It's to figure skating what trampolining is to gymnastics. It's sort of in the same family of sport, but doesn't seem quite as challenging (not that I could do any of the aforementioned without breaking my neck). Nevertheless, I've ended up watching a lot of it this week because the network executives seem to think that it merits a lion's share of primetime real estate. And while I'm sure it has its fans, I'd much rather be watching luge or any of the eight other sports that barely get covered.

I know that there have been a lot of complaints all over the blogosphere about the tape delay (especially for the West Coasters) used for the Olympics, and even though I don't necessarily agree with the logic used to defend it, it seems futile to keep beating that dead horse. They aren't going to change it, so I just deal with it by avoiding the local news, Twitter updates or Internet sport sites until late at night. However, I do have some other issues with the telecasts, particularly during primetime, that are really starting to take some of the joy out of the Winter Games for me.

As I noted in my preview for this ceremony, there was really no way that this could ever compare to the overwhelming spectacle that was the Beijing Olympics. That was evident right off the bat when instead of giant footprint-shaped fireworks (fake or not) leading up to the venue, we get a snowboarder busting through the Olympic rings. Still impressive in its own right, but lacking the big wow factor. But I'm not going to spend too much time quibbling, especially considering that Bob Coastas at one point said that Vancouver's budget was about $30-40 million dollars compared to the $300-400 million that Beijing spent. And this is the Winter Olympics, which is traditionally smaller in scale anyway. So instead I'm going to focus on how they spent their cash and if it was worth it....

It was recently announced that Stephen Colbert would be sponsoring the U.S. speedskating team, which is actually a pretty cool thing, since "Colbert Nation" will be emblazoned on the U.S. team's legs as they skate around the track. Advertising! We're surprised that other television shows haven't thought of this, so we've come up with suggestions for how they can hop onto this Winter Games bandwagon. It could be just like NASCAR, but better!

I never thought I'd relate so well to 30 Rock's Kenneth, but his devotion to the sportsmanship of the Olympics and his fear of SpongeBob SquarePants rang true (It's that laugh. It's creepy.). I spent the better part of two weeks watching and writing about the good, bad and bizarre sporting events that make up the Olympics and I always kinda thought that some of those sports were a little fishy. Like water polo? Totally can't be real. Kenneth discovers that Women's Soccer isn't real either... which I'd always suspected. Anyway, the genius that is Jack Donaghy and the folks at Scheinhardt Wig Company created faux Olympic sports in order to boost the American spirit and win more medals. Yay, good sportsmanship.

Awesome news. Just when I'd run out of excuses to keep writing about the Olympics. Michael Phelps swoops in and saves the day. (Thank you, Michael!) Hot off of his record-breaking performance at the Olympics, swimmer Phelps has been tapped to host the season opener of Saturday Night Live. I'm thinking I might need to find some excuse to work in the office (here at 30 Rock) on Saturday, September 13th so that I can stalk catch a glimpse of the golden boy. Personally, I love when sports stars host SNL. I don't expect them to be funny, so I'm always pleasantly surprised if they are. Plus, its nice seeing the athletes, who are usually so dead serious during their competitions, loosen up a little bit.

Is it wrong that I got a little teary-eyed during the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics this weekend? Not just because they were beautiful and stunning (which they were) but because I kind of feel like there is no way that any Olympics in my lifetime are going to be able to top these in terms of scale and drama. London's a great city and all, but I can't imagine them getting the amount of volunteers (which they estimate to be about 1 million people, some of whom trained for nine months) or spending the amount of cash (which they estimate to be about 40 billion dollars, if you include infrastructure and everything) to create something so very special. From the Opening ceremonies, which left me breathless, to the action in the pool and on the track, which had me on the edge of my seat, to the creative closing ceremonies which turned an oft forgettable event into something magnificently wonderful.

This goes against everything I've complained about for the last two weeks, but I actually kind of enjoyed watching beach volleyball last night. Well, at least the final set. The American team, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser (who have stupid nicknames like the Professor and the Thin Beast) totally dominated the last round and shut out the poor Brazilian guys. It was intense and kind of awesome. I didn't even mind watching the live broadcast until 12:10 in the morning. That is, until Bob Costas popped up to tell me that because the game went so long, our promised coverage of the decathlon (one of the most impressive feats in the Olympics) was getting jettisoned to the wee hours of the morning. But you know, that's how they roll. Two hours of track and field (just sprinting and hurdles), an hour of beach volleyball, an hour of diving and ten minutes of BMX racing, no time for the 20 odd other sports happening. Would it kill them to put in a 20 minute highlight reel of the events on a given day? MSNBC does this update thing, but it is at like 5 in the afternoon when I don't have time to pay attention. A primetime debriefing would be wonderful. Even if they aired it at midnight as a wrap up. It's really too late to do anything about it now, but if they are looking for ideas for the future 2012, that's my suggestion.

The Olympics have pretty much been unavoidable -- they're all over the internet, TV, and the news, and some of it has been thrilling, some scandalous and some just disappointing. It's been the big topic of conversation around the water cooler and, frankly, it's exhausting to try and keep up with it all and sound intelligent, especially if you had to watch an average of about, say, 10 hours of coverage a day so you could write a daily blog. (Just as an example...) So while we've enjoyed the hype and the fun, we're glad this only comes around every four years (or two, if you count winter, and really, do we need to start counting that?) because we're just looking forward to getting back to our regularly scheduled programming. And that thing... what's it called again? Oh yeah, a life.