Initially at least, I worked hard to watch the XXXIII Summer Olympics, the 33rd edition that launched July 26 in Paris, France, and is now racing toward a Sunday finish.

You might find that phrasing strange.

How hard is it to turn on the television, nestle into the recliner with a cold Bud Light in hand and others on deck, and watch the Games, especially someone as experienced as I am at doing all that? Then that witch Debby removed most other options.

The initial difficulty was finding the motivation, as my love of the Olympics has been waning over the last half-century plus a couple of years.

The conundrum is that by not watching the Olympics, I worry that I could not contribute to the pro-shop conversations about the Games; but more than that, I believe it is my patriotic duty to watch young Americans, figuratively and sometimes literally draped in our nation’s flags, do battle and hopefully step up to the tallest podium as our national anthem blares.

Seeing that still gives me goose bumps.

But the introduction of professional athletes into the Games, plus the increasing politicization of the Games and constant boycotts have removed it from my must-watch list. I did not watch the opening ceremonies, but regardless of the intent of France ushering out drag queens in a display that seemed to mock The Last Supper, the result was polarization, the exact opposite of what the Games should be inspiring, which is unity.

But that all seems like so long ago.

My first real memories of the Olympics are from 1972, when the Games were held in Munich, and Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israel athletes and coaches and a single West German police officer. “They’re all gone,” said a young Jim McKay as I watched.

That was the same Olympics in which basketball officials gave the Soviet Union team as many chances as it needed to defeat the Americans, which turned out to be three, perpetuating the biggest heist in all of sports history, doing so in full view of the world.

That put me scratching off days until 1976, when all of Americans were joining hands to celebrate this nation’s 200th birthday, and I knew that we would exact revenge in Montreal and reclaim the gold. While the Americans did not get to play the Russians, the basketball team, coached by UNC’s Dean Smith and with four UNC basketball players who lived in my dorm on the roster, righted a 4-year-old wrong as those who swore they would root for Russia if they played the Tar Heels had lied.

Those were the Olympics that gave us a fully equipped Bruce Jenner winning the decathlon as the world’s top athlete in record fashion, a flag-waving Sugar Ray Leonard winning the gold in boxing, and Greg Louganis, then just 16 years old, winning a silver in diving.

It was four years later that the U.S. hockey team produced the biggest upset in all of sports history, defeating those commie bastards from the Soviet Union, winners of four straight golds, 4-3, in Lake Placid, New York. Al Michaels asked, “Do you believe in miracles?” Do now.

Months later, however, President Jimmy Carter would keep our athletes home while the Summer Games were held in Moscow, protesting the Russians’ invasion of Afghanistan. Four years after that, when the Games were in Los Angeles, the Russians responded in kind.

My affinity for the Olympics has been in a free fall since, occasionally stalled by those goose-bump moments, such as when Muhammad Ali, shaken by Parkinson’s, carried the Olympic torch in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta to the world’s delight and surprise.

Golf got me watching in earnest on Aug. 1, and I have been checking in here and there during the Games and what occurred to me is this: Despite all the noise, the Olympics is still watch-worthy as we get to see the athletes, who have trained so hard, persevered, defied odds, overcome injuries and their own doubts, write incredible stories.

The Olympics is not about politics, boycotts, or drag queens, but about athletes such as Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Gabby Thomas, Noah Lyles, Scottie Scheffler, Cole Hocker, Katie Douglass, Suni Lee and so many others and their stories.

And I still love a good story.

All that without a mention of perhaps my favorite part of these Olympics, Snoop Dogg.