ESPN is one of my best friends.

Yes, I realize how pathetic that may sound, but it’s true. I spend hours a day watching ESPN and hours more browsing ESPN.com, and I’m fine with that. I love reading about sports and watching sports and analyzing sports, so ESPN is the place for me.    Unfortunately, for the past few days, ESPN has become my enemy.

Why?    Because it’s Olympics time. And while people all over will point out that the Winter Olympics aren’t nearly as fun as the Summer Olympics, they’re still a major event and they can still be thrilling to watch.

Unless you already know the results.    See, NBC has a monopoly on Olympics coverage, so it chooses to maximize its ratings by tape delaying events so they can be shown in primetime. This means that, even though we West Coasters are in the same time zone as the actual events in Vancouver, we have to watch the events three hours later than people on the East Coast. Yet again, my sports life has been ruined by East Coast bias.

What does ESPN have to do with this? Well, ESPN gets the results when they happen, and, being a media source that strives to be first to a story, displays the results immediately. This effectively means that anyone who checks ESPN.com or watches SportsCenter or even glances at ESPN’s Bottom Line will inevitably have the day’s Olympic results ruined before ever having a chance to watch them happen.

In reality, this isn’t ESPN’s fault, and I know it. ESPN is doing what many media sources do, and plenty of people are content with learning the results of the Olympics through ESPN and not even watching them. Even NBC’s own website announced Bode Miller’s bronze medal before NBC aired his event.

And I suppose it’s up to me to avoid finding out what happens each day in the Olympics before watching it. I could just watch NBC and only NBC for the next two weeks and none of the results would be spoiled for me. And that’s exactly what NBC wants.

But you know what? I want to be able to watch ESPN, or any other channel for that matter. I want to be able to flip between moguls and the NBA All-Star Game (defense sold separately), or to watch college basketball highlights in between speed skating races. And I think I have the right to do so without seeing medal results before I see the races.

So this all comes back to NBC. NBC is the reason I get so many results ruined for me, and NBC doesn’t care at all. The network pays a huge sum of money to be the sole broadcaster of the Games, and it does so because of the enormous amount of money and prestige it gets in return. And to maximize this revenue, it saves the biggest events for primetime, which means delaying them several hours, especially for people on the West Coast.

This obviously makes sense for NBC, because the most people watch at primetime (hence the name) and therefore NBC gets the most money and publicity for the Games at that time. NBC doesn’t care if the couch potato has to wait longer and risk hearing the results.

I care, though. In an age where the majority of people have some sort of VCR, TiVo or DVR, everyone has a chance to watch the Olympics when they happen, and not just at primetime. Especially on weekends like this past one, NBC could get tons of viewers at noon for an event without having to delay coverage until eight.    This is not a revolutionary concept, either. Take ESPN’s coverage of the Australian Open. Sure, it’s a smaller event than the Olympics, but it’s still a Grand Slam. ESPN showed live coverage AND tape delayed coverage so that intense fans and casual fans could watch it when they desired.

The Winter Olympics are in Vancouver, not Sydney, so live coverage would be at 3 p.m. instead of 3 a.m. People all over the country would love to watch the events live, and those that could not could either record them or watch them in primetime on tape delay.

NBC has many networks showing the Olympics (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, etc.), so it’s not as though it wouldn’t have enough space to show live and tape delayed events. And NBC would not lose any viewers or money by showing more events live, because viewers would still be watching NBC.

So come on, NBC. Don’t you want to be my friend too?