Although I'm generally a 'Today' show loyalist, for the next two weeks, I'm going to be a 'Good Morning America' fan.

Why? Three words: The Winter Olympics.

Every two years, since NBC started carrying the Olympics, they turn their top-rated morning news show into essentially the Games' morning recap show. Sure, you still get that first half hour of pure news, but after that, the show becomes all-Olympics, all the time, from examining the personal stories of the athletes, to travelogues about whatever exotic locale the Games are in that year, to deep, 'SportsCenter'-like examination of the previous night's results.

But that's not the part that annoys me the most. When the hosts go out and try to do the Olympic sports themselves, the cringe factor goes up exponentially. Especially when Matt Lauer and Al Roker are involved.

I still can't shake the image of a Lycra-clad Lauer and Roker doing the two-man luge at Torino in 2006. Going back to the video and listening to the two, who have talked about their bromance on multiple occasions, joke about the fact that Roker was going to go on top of Lauer made me shudder. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld once said; still, the imagery was just too much for me to bear.



This was in between the pair's Athens synchronized swimming and their Beijing rhythmic gymnastics adventures. Is it the 'Today' producers' mission to put these guys in as many homoerotic sports as they can find? What's this year's pairing going to be, ice dancing?

And it won't end there. I'm sure we'll see lots of Vancouver-area misadventures from the rest of the crew: Natalie Morales trying her hand at curling, Meredith Vieira stumbling around the slopes, Ann Curry emoting her way through the biathlon, and Jenna Wolfe making herself the center of attention (the last thing is a safe bet, because that's what she does every time she's on camera).

Look, I don't begrudge NBC for trying to promote their massive Olympic investment at any chance they can get; they're already going to lose $200 million on the Games, so they want to pump up the ratings as much as they can. And the first few days of Olympic stories are a nice respite from being hammered over the head with cooking segments, how many calories we're consuming segments, and the show's increasing focus towards tabloid stories. But two weeks of this is just too much.

So, 'GMA,' you've got my attention for the next fortnight. Maybe Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos will make me a permanent convert.