I’m such a sucker for sentimental schlock. Last night, after a week of listening to commentators drone so sadly about many U.S. Olympic athletes “only getting the silver” or “only getting the bronze” and watching America’s pathetic excuse for a basketball “Dream Team” lose again, I decided to watch a feel-good Olympics movie…something that might restore my faith, if you will.

In the spirit of such underrated underdog sports movies such as Lucas, Wildcats, The Cutting Edge and Quarterback Princess, my husband and I watched Miracle, the Disney-ized recount of Herb Brooks’ 1980 U.S. Hockey team and their quest for Olympic gold. In true Disney spirit, I think my eyes started watering about ten minutes in, when Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell, complete with circa ‘79 hair) starts busting the balls of a bunch of cocky ice hockey phenoms from Bawston and Minniesota. At the beginning, he asks them their name and who they play for. They give their name and their college. Halfway through the movie, they finally catch on to why they’ve been running drills for hours on end and respond with their name and an enthusiastic “the United States of America!” Music swells.

You watch them train, you watch all of these hockey players lose their individual momentum and become a true team…”a family” four of them call themselves to Brooks as they express their concern that one of them will be the final person cut to get their team down to 20 players from 21. You watch their no-longer-a-boy-not-quite-a-man expressions as they stare down the stoic Soviet hockey players, then you cheer with them when they indeed beat the Soviet team, 4-3.

Now, I was only eight years old when this momentous game was played and there’s a whole generation of kids and young adults out there who don’t remember what the Cold War was or that there used to be an Olympic juggernaut known as the Soviet Union. But, although I was young, I remember. I remember what a huge deal it was for a bunch of kids to get together and beat the best hockey team in the world…a team who’d had that distinction for 15 years prior.

Miracle reminded me what I’ve always thought the Olympics should be about…sure, the term “triumph of the human spirit” is overly sentimental and probably quaint, but don’t you get a big surge of pride when you see someone achieve something great after working so damn hard to make that achievement? I do…and that’s why it pains me to see professional athletes in the Olympic games. I watch the arrogant, self-righteousness of the U.S. men’s basketball team and I don’t see that desire…don’t see that hunger…to be a part of something for our country. They don’t care because they can go back to their multi-million dollar contracts without even skipping a beat. They don’t care because the sum of their individual egos will always be larger than the sum of their community spirit. You can tell. They’re not, well, a family. They don’t need to be, anymore.

If I could insert a .wav file here that played that swelling music you always here at the end of a feel-good movie when the hero (or heroine) triumphs, I would. How cool would that be?

Back to television this week…Trading Spices and The Amazing Race. I’m rather enjoying the proverbial calm before the storm that is the onslaught of the New Fall TV Season. Batten down the hatches, it’s gonna be a wild ride!