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Editor's note: Starting this week, Play Ball will become a weekly feature on Christianity Today Online, and will be written by an extended team of writers. This week we welcome Mark Moring, a former sportswriter who now edits Christianity Today Movies and Christian Music Today.

I like to win. I've always been competitive, though here in my mid-40s some of that edge has dulled. I'm finding joy more in the game itself than in the final result. (Still, I did hate losing a recent marathon game of Risk—Lord of the Rings version—to my 12-year-old, whose impromptu and snarky Mount Doom Victory Dance only rubbed it in.)

When the Olympics roll around, I tend to examine my own competitive spirit, and that's certainly been the case the last couple of weeks as we've watched the events—joyful, painful, and even controversial—unfold at the Winter Games in Italy.

I watch a fair bit of sports on TV, but nothing seems to trigger this self-examination like the Olympics. Why? I think it's partly a result of the way most of the media handles Olympic coverage. Open any sports section and right there, front and center, you'll see it: Medal Count. Or Medal Tracker.

Sure, I'm interested to see which countries are winning the most medals, but it's given far too much weight. I mean, when it's all said and done, do we really expect headlines that read, "Norway Wins Winter Olympics!"? I think not.

But more than the team medal count is the media's overemphasis on individual awards, as if the colors gold, silver, and bronze were all that mattered. I'm not aiming for a simplistic "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" message here. I'm not launching into a "whatever happened to the real Olympic spirit" rant.

But I am taking aim at much of the media here. And though my colleague Mark Galli singled out Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey in last week's Play Ball, I'm afraid I'm going to pick on Morrissey too. To be fair, Morrissey is only one of many I could point to; the attitude seems fairly prevalent across the sportswriting board. But in back-to-back columns last week, Morrissey managed to highlight exactly what's wrong—not with the Games themselves, but with the Western media's coverage of them.

In a February 12 column titled, "Brash, loud—and 5th," Morrissey ripped U.S. downhill skier Bode Miller, not so much for not winning a medal, but for the way Miller was dealing with it. Miller, arguably the face of the American contingent in Turino, gracing several major magazine covers as the Games began, was an overwhelming favorite to win the men's downhill … but finished fifth. After the race, Miller, known for his rebel spirit and outspokenness, simply said, "You have a moment of disappointment, but after that, what can you do? My subjective criteria was satisfied."

Morrissey retorted: "A rebel does not say things like, 'My subjective criteria was satisfied.' … So what do you call it when the wild child stays the course and follows it with statements about being pleased with a fifth-place finish? Boring, yes. But something of a cop-out too."

Miller: "I raced hard. I was super-happy with the effort."

Morrissey: "Sorry. Not buying it. … Putting things in perspective is fine, but Sunday wasn't the time for that."

So, when is it the time? The guy said he raced hard and was happy with his effort. He apparently competed with joy. Who's Morrissey—or anyone—to diss him for that?

Speaking of competing with joy, Morrissey came back the next day with a column praising another U.S. athlete for doing just that. The main difference? She won gold.

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February (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50