re: What is the Greatest Sports Event Ever Televised?

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Great question, the reasons I wouldn't go with the Miracle on Ice are it wasn't the gold medal game and it was on delay from a game played in New York.

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The event transcended sports.

The USA and USSR were still very much locked in the Cold War. The USSR was our mortal enemy at that time and the Olympics were still a massive event. The US would boycott the Summer Olympics later that year in Moscow. The USSR would do the same in the 84 Summer Olympics in LA.

The fact that it was the gold medal game didn’t really matter to anyone watching it. And the fact it was tape delayed was mitigated by the fact most people couldn’t find out the result before the broadcast anyway. There was no internet or 24 hour news. Hell, there weren’t even that many channels. It was pretty easy to avoid learning of the result if you wanted to, and even if you didn’t want to. Morale in the country wasn’t particularly high in early 1980. The massive upset gave Americans something to feel good about.

People who didn’t know much, if anything, about ice hockey watched that event.