Does anyone know? We haven’t really been paying attention, and all we know is that Michael Phelps’ run to eight medals is complete and he’s a national treasure and maybe The Greatest Athlete of All-Time, depending on who you ask.

The bad part is we don’t really care. Sure, Phelps’ accomplishments are certainly impressive, but we wonder why, if he’s such a great athlete, he didn’t take up a real sport like baseball or basketball or cribbage. Swimming’s hard as anything, we know that. We can barely do it ourselves. But swimming is merely a contest, not a sport proper.

That’s essentially why we haven’t been following the Olympics, because there are far more contests than sports being contested. Basketball? Sport. 100-meter dash? Contest. And the problem with contests is that someone wins and everyone else loses, and there’s not much else that can happen. Whoa, some guy ran faster than all those other guys. Wow. What else did we expect?

Here’s the thing about Phelps: He should take up competitive eating. That’s something we’d love to watch.