Sunday, February 8, 2026

It's Super (short) Sunday.

Fewer events and less fluff.

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• It's Super Bowl Sunday! Did you watch? Did your team win? Have you already forgotten about Bad Bunny? Yes, no, and yes! Football is over and the Seahawks won, so let's head out to Italy for a short night of Olympics!
• We start at the Women's Downhill where American Breezy Johnson is the first skier we see. Her bib number is six so we've missed five other skiers. But Breezy does well and she's the best of the first six! Next up, bib number 10, Emma Aicher of Germany. She's a little sloppy in the middle of the course and finishes four-hundredths of a second behind a clearly relieved Breezy.
• Up next, and by next I mean number 13, Lindsey Vonn. Eek! She barely gets on the course before she crashes. You can't really tell what happens in the replay due to the spray of snow when she hits, but she gets airlifted off the mountain, so that can’t be good. Was the crash ACL-related? I can't tell. It didn't look like it, but I guess we'll hear from her later and she can tell us.
• After a 20-minute delay for NBC but instantaneously for us, number 15 Sofia Goggia of Italy comes down the mountain. The drone shot following her in the sunshine looks even better than the drone shots yesterday. Third place! Breezy is still in first. Number 17 Jackie Wiles of the US is up next. Fourth! Are there more skiers? As far as NBC is concerned, no! We’re done! Breezy wins gold!
• To the rink, for the Women' Free Skate portion of the Team Event. First up is Amber Glenn for Team USA. She wasn't perfect, but finishes in second. Will that be enough to get the US the gold? Kaori Sakamoto of Japan follows with a first-place performance and knocks Amber down to third. Now Japan and the US are tied going into the Men's Free Skate portion.
• Usually when I watch the Games I'm time shifting by DVRing everything. But since tonight started late after the Super Bowl, I have to watch all the commercials like I was in the 1980s. So what do we talk about while I'm waiting for the Games to come back on? Does anyone else think it was weird that there was more English spoken at the Italian Olympics Opening Ceremonies than there was at halftime in the American Super Bowl? Talk amongst yourselves.
• Let's skip ahead to the Men's Free Skate. Up first: the Quad God, Ilia Malinin, who needs to beat Japan's Shun Sato for the US to win gold. Oh no! He nails a bunch of other jumps, but nearly falls on one of them. Remember, all I know about scoring in skating is that falls are bad. So hopefully all the things I don't know about can still get him a winning score. He's in first for now. Will it hold up over Shun Sato?
• More commercials. The Xfinity Jurassic Park ad is great, even if the de-aging software they're using on the stars makes them all look creepy.
• Sato is the last person to skate. He's no Quad God, but he hasn't fallen yet and he looks really solid. This could be a problem. Tara tells us that the "invisible score" of creative execution could make all the difference. An invisible score? That sounds like shenanigans to me. Maybe New England had an invisible score of 17 extra points and really won the Super Bowl. Sato's visible score is two points less than Malinin, but now I'm concerned that he might have scored a few touchdowns somewhere that I didn't see. Nope! He finishes second, and so does Japan to Team USA's gold!
• After the medal ceremony, Andrea Joyce interviews Team USA to… HEY! Wait a minute! "After the medal ceremony?" What medal ceremony? NBC didn't show us that. But they did show us Team USA showing all of their parents their medals. I mean, that's cool, but it's no medal ceremony. I'm not going to count it as fluff because they were all in a back room somewhere, so it was clearly not over-produced. But I do feel a little cheated that we didn’t get to see the actual presentation.
• Mike Tirico is back in Santa Clara talking about Lindsey Vonn, but he can't really give us any kind of update on her condition. For the last segment of the night he throws us over to Breezy Johnson's gold medal ceremony. Is she singing? No, but she is crying and that is almost as good. Wait! She IS singing! Congratulations, Breezy! You're my current favorite athlete of the 2026 Olympic Games!
• Project Hail Mary. Yep. I want to see it.
• Medal count time! Italy is first because they won six medals today. The US has two, but they're both gold, so that counts more, right? Let's say yes. That's how my invisible scoring works.

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No fluff! None! Did you miss it? Of course you didn't. My very visible scoring rates that as the best ever! Will that hold up for tomorrow? Of course not, but I can dream can't I? See you then!       

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