SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Time for sports.
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SIMON: Ah, we've been waiting for this weekend. Get your nachos and pizza - Winter Olympics in Milan, Super Bowl Sunday in the Bay Area. Sports writer Howard Bryant joins us. Howard, thanks so much for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. How are you?
SIMON: Fine, thank you. Winter Olympics opening ceremony took place yesterday. Norway, that Winter Olympics juggernaut, is favored again in overall medals. But I don't know. It's nice to see the world come together again on this, isn't it?
BRYANT: Yeah. I love the Olympics, and I did love the extremely artistic and very fashionable opening ceremonies. It's what the Olympics is all about. And I had the pleasure and the good fortune of covering the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. And it's just such a great...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Event where you do see the world coming together. And you do see all of these different sports that you don't see except for every four years, especially in the United States, where nobody's talking about luge, bobsled or skeleton, you know, unless it's an Olympic year. And it's great because of that sort of international flavor. And I also feel that journalistically, it feels very sad in a lot of ways because one of the great fun parts about the Olympics is covering - is joining a lot of these international journalists. And where the state of journalism is with the news with The...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Washington Post here, it all feels a little bit gloomy or a lot gloomy. But one of the beauties of the Olympics is, once you get started, the individual stories and the individual achievements. This is not $100 million athletes doing their thing, in large cases. Usually, it's individual small stories, people doing things that they love, and the stories have always been really inspiring.
SIMON: Lindsey Vonn, coming out of retirement, is going to compete despite tearing her ACL. NHL Players have been away from the Olympics for more than a decade. They're back. What are you looking forward to?
BRYANT: Well, I think what I always look forward to is that you know there are certain spaces that are going to dominate. If you happen to be there, you know that when you get to the speed skating rink, you know, the Dutch are going to be there. They always show up. That's fun. You know, the Swiss and the Italians are up on the ski mountain. You know, they're going to represent. And of course, in the - from the United States standpoint, you've got Mikaela Shiffrin, an unbelievable - one of the - you know, probably the greatest female skier of all time, if not the greatest skier of all time. And then, of course, there's Lindsey Vonn, who is...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Not just 41, who isn't just competing with a partially replaced knee, but also with no ACL. She ruptured her ACL in a crash a - you know, a couple of weeks ago. And so that individual story is great. And, yeah, it's wonderful to see the NHL players playing again, even though that does take away a little bit from the amateurish side of it.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: But who doesn't want to see Connor McDavid and the great NHL players on the world stage? I'll tell you who we're not going to see, however...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Is - we're not going to see Russia in any large number because of the invasion of Ukraine. So Belarusian and Russian athletes - not going to be seeing them, especially out on the rink.
SIMON: Super Bowl Sunday tomorrow - Seattle Seahawks, New England Patriots. What do you foresee?
BRYANT: The thing that we always get. You're going to get $7 million ads for your Super Bowl commercials. You're going to try to get a lot of pageantry here. But it all feels a little bland to me, simply because it's hard to love sports when the world feels like it's on fire. But those two fan bases are going to be into this. Seattle, the Patriots - of course, they are linked because of the last time they met in the...
SIMON: Oh, yeah.
BRYANT: ...Super Bowl.
SIMON: There's a history there.
BRYANT: There's a history...
SIMON: One yard...
BRYANT: ...There with...
SIMON: ...To go - pass.
BRYANT: That's right.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: A pass, and Malcolm Butler intercepts the game-winning throw by Russell Wilson. All that's under the bridge. The Patriots are underdogs here. I think Seattle is very much considered to be the better team, but not by that much. But the Patriots have been underestimated all year. You've got a young quarterback, Drake Maye, in his second year now in the Super Bowl. And you've got another quarterback, Sam Darnold, who used to play for the Jets and the Vikings. And everybody sort of underestimated and called him a bust, and here he is...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...In the Super Bowl, one game away from being a world champion. And so this is a game where the - you're dealing with one team that is rising. The Seahawks have been considered the best team in the league for weeks. And another team, the Patriots, that are still there. And everyone keeps saying, how are they still here?
SIMON: And?
BRYANT: Oh, you - prediction? Come on, Scott Simon. I don't know. That's why they play the games. Don't put me on the spot.
SIMON: All right.
BRYANT: Somebody's going to win. How about that?
SIMON: Oh, I - perfect.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: I'll bet on that. Howard Bryant, thanks for being with us.
BRYANT: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: And for more Olympics coverage, you can check out Up First Winter Games, a new video podcast from NPR. Find new episodes at youtube.com/npr. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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