10 THINGS we learned from sports this weekend

1. For the United States, the Sochi Olympics won’t be what Vancouver was. With Bode Miller failing to medal in the men’s downhill and Hannah Kearney settling for bronze in the women’s mogul, it’s clear that luck isn’t on the Americans’ side in the same way it was in Vancouver four years ago.
2. It wasn’t just the media hotel accomodations that Sochi wasn’t prepared for. The fifth Olympic ring failing to light up and expand in the opening ceremonies added to Russia’s ever-growing list of shortcomings.
3. Despite the well-publicized deficiencies in the Olympic experience, Russia does deserve credit for avoiding a terrorist attack so far.
4. Social media and push notifications have completely ruined the suspense factor of NBC’s television coverage of the Olympics. We no longer watch to find out what happened, we watch to find out how it happened.
5. NBC isn’t resisting the change either. If you download the mobile app, you can get push notifications for medal results after events happen. Basically, you wake up to a bunch of medal results and then watch how everything happened that night.
6.  In non-Olympic news, having “smart” in your name doesn’t necessarily make you intelligent. Case in point: Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart, who pushed a fan at a Texas Tech game over the weekend. How much Smart was provoked or however much the fan deserved it is irrelevant — that was a dumb move.
7. Marcus Smart has a new best friend. His name is…
8. Michael Sam. The Missouri defensive end and NFL prospect is possibly the bravest man in sports right now, (closely followed by those about to compete in skeleton at the Olympics) after he came out of the closet. Not to make light of Sam’s announcement, but there was only one thing that could make Smart’s actions move out of the top story slot, and this was it.
9. There is still a culture of resistance toward homesexuality in parts of the NFL, mostly in administrative positions. Among the plentiful supportive reactions to Sam’s annoucement were a couple homophobic ones, conveniently from unnamed front office personnel.
10. There was enough positive reaction and support for Sam out there to prove that football has opened its mind enough to accept openly gay players. I didn’t see a single player post a negative reaction, and everything I’ve read said that Sam’s teammates at Missouri were very accepting as well. Like most change, it starts with younger generations and filters up. This appears to be no different.