Shortly after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, you couldn’t find an athlete more revered, more talked about and more sought-after than Michael Phelps.
And unfortunately, producers of ‘Saturday Night Live’ got a hold of him, and it’s been all down hill from there.
What should have been a winter of bedding models, talk show appearances and the second coming of Peyton Manning’s slew of deadpan endorsements, has morphed into awkward interviews, and puzzling looks from sports observers.
And its not because he’s a douchebag or some kind of social misfit, but because the muscle-flexing, smiling Phelps who made world-records look like reaching for a bowl of Frosted Flakes got exposed as slower-witted than we like our golden boy athletes.
And that’s Saturday Night Live’s fault.
Those writers are paid to bring out the best in their hosts. Tom Brady had the right kind of skits. Peyton Manning had the right kind of skits. Should we believe the same machine that made Rob Schneider allegedly funny couldn’t have done the same for Michael Phelps?
Sure, it doesn’t help that he has an image maintenance machine around him that is rivaled only by President Bush and Daniel Snyder, but that doesn’t mean he has to come off like a wet paper towel in his latest pulic appearances. And if he had never hosted SNL, we’d still be looking at him as the quiet kid who likes to listen to Weezy, buy local pools and cop feels on Vegas strippers.
Instead, he’s getting mocked by wannabe racial expert and paid-to-be-loud Dan Le Batard on a radio interview.
We didn’t do this to Michael Phelps, and he certainly didn’t do it to himself. This is a product of a flailing comedy franchise who knowingly threw a swimmer to the pop culture sharks.
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