Who cares about the Winter Olympics?

HOLLANDER: The Winter Olympics remains a hallowed institution that is sui generis. There's nothing else like it.

Sure, there are skiing competitions, X-Games, figure skating World Championships and bobsled invitationals throughout the year, but only at the Winter Olympics are these sports all under one roof, every country in one city. It is still the biggest stage for all of these sports, and for most of these athletes, it's still most impressive credential on their resume.

You say these minor sports are unimportant. I say the world would be a much poorer place without them. Take away the bobsled and we would never have the Disney classic Cool Runnings. I love the luge. How can you not? Hell, I miss barrel jumping at Grossingers. They should make that an Olympic sport.

What about all the titillating back-stories? Will Bode Miller be drunk? More to the point, how drunk will he be? That cloying, ill-fated Michelle Kwan-will she or won't she this last time? How about that subversive snowboarder Danny Kass spray-painting grenades on NBC cameramen? Which skeleton coach is sexually harassing his team today?

Then there's the sight of speed skater Apolo Ohno and that overgrown pubic triangle pasted on his chin. Will he spark a soul-patch revival? Major enterprises take their cues from the Winter Olympics. Without Torino, where would the Ice Capades find their next headliner? Without an Olympic hero to put on the front of their boxes, Wheaties could go out of business. (That might not be so bad, actually.) [Readers, don't eat Wheaties. There are good reasons for this.-The Eds.]

Plus, you've got the scandals. The French figure skating judge who was caught red-handed cheating last time? The failed drug tests? Nothing beats that kind of public disgrace.

And where else in sports today can you find vulgar and unabashed nationalism on display other than at the Olympics?

The only thing I wish was that NBC showed it to us as it happened. The tape delay is a huge and unnecessary disservice. Other than that, C.J., all I can say is, "Let the games begin!"

SULLIVAN: If the Winter Olympics would bring in New York winter sports, then I would get excited. The first would be to have boxing on ice. I am not talking about hockey fights with the pugilists wearing skates. I mean two boxers in trunks and boxing shoes, duking it out on an ice rink. The knockdowns would be legion. Also creating the biggest line of yellow snow would be quite a crowd-pleaser, as would an all-out snowball fight. And answer me, Hollander, how can a Winter Olympics be held without a rousing snowball fight?

I would also like to see athletes run down the slalom sans skis. Just snow boots and pure leg speed. And why not some under-the-ice swimming events? Harry Houdini was a master at this.

Also, how about having the effete figure skaters, along with their jumps, engage in kickboxing with each other to add grace and violence, which would be a big winner? And who needs a bobsled? I say you go around that track on your own back and risk life and limb.

Go ahead, Hollander, make fun of my innovations. But you call curling a sport? The Olympic Committee needs to get in touch with me ASAP to jazz this thing up.

HOLLANDER: The guys in the white coats need to get in touch with you. Have you lost your shit totally? You have degraded me, this column and our readers with your juvenile musings. I will rub your face in a pile of yellow snow if you don't take the Winter Games seriously.

Have you no respect for the sacrifice these athletes have made to get to Torino? Doubtless we will hear tell of some Bosnian orphan, who ate the rotting flesh of her dead family while swearing to her autographed Polaroid of Alberto Tomba that if she survived the bombings she would devote her life to one day skiing in the Olympics. How can you mock such profiles in courage?

While you sit at home stuffing you face with Ring-Dings and pigs in a blanket, men and women from nations you've never been to will be stretching their bodies and their wills in sports you cannot begin to comprehend. Pull your head out of the winter freeze, my friend, and join Bob Costas and Hannah Storm as they wax profound over each day's events and the human interest stores connected to every one of them. At least you've got to get into the hockey. They've got NHL stars, C.J. I know that as long as something has been on TV, it passes your litmus test as a legitimate sport. (Actually, I do wonder how, if at all, players competing intensely against their teammates can affect team chemistry when teams are reunited to chase the Stanley Cup.)

But if you're really into making up games, why not this one: You lay down on the Bruckner Expressway and I run over you with a city snowplow?

SULLIVAN: My New York Post colleague Steve Dunleavy was once-allegedly-having sex in a snow bank with a comely and drunk young vixen when a snowplow ran over his foot, breaking it. Upon hearing this news Pete Hamill queried, "I hope it wasn't his writing foot."

That is my heart-warming Winter Olympics tale.

Look, I am depressed. Football is over and baseball yet to begin. I am from New York, so I am allergic to hockey. The Knicks should just fold and leave town, and you wax poetic about a bunch of snowbound loons who I'm supposed to get all excited about as they push a fuckin' sewer-sized piece of wood across ice and call it a sport.

I know you ice-skated in your pastoral New Jersey town as your mom made hot cocoa for you and your friends. Me, I grew up in the Bronx. I threw snowballs at bullies and then ran for my life. That, my friend, is a winter sport.