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[QUOTE="The Yakk, post: 5055815, member: 9988"]
Smith, Stoklos, Kiraly, and Kent Steffes are the [B]reason[/B] beach volleyball is in the Olympics.  That generation of players had a massive positive impact on the sport's popularity, and NBC stepped in at the right time to cash in and push it further.

That sport should have become even more popular than it did.  But it kind of stalled out and there is irony in that.

Around the time TV made its big investment, both the beach and indoor versions moved from [B]side-out[/B] scoring to [B]rally[/B] scoring.  The TV money wanted the sports to fit into fixed time slots, and the sports' governing bodies--eager for that TV exposure--went along with the rule changes.

But that change took a lot of the pleasure out of the sport.  One of the great things about the beach game were those long side-out battles--they were battles of attrition, where the tension grew as the players melted in the sun and we waited to see who would make the first mistake.

That is lost now, and the sport is worse for it.  Probably the TV suits are too stupid to see the irony, but this is on them.
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