What will be your final memory of the just-completed Olympic Games?
There could be more than a few.
Kevin Durant carrying our men's basketball team to gold? Carli Lloyd being the lone U.S. women's national team soccer player standing for the pregame anthem (on their way to bronze)? The debacle that was the U.S. track and field showing, starting with the female sprinter banned for pot - and her heckling social media posts - to the deserved criticism from Carl Lewis about the men's relays?
There's also COVID-19, which wreaked havoc on these games like it has on this globe.
Will it be Simone Biles not competing or Suni Lee overachieving in her chance at greatness?
Any of those work, but moving forward the images of these Games will be replaced by the effect of these Games. Amid the gold medals and the goose-bump moments, these Summer Olympics will be remembered as the starting point of the next chapter of TV sports, and it was a rough chapter, for sure.
NBC execs have to be wringing their hands over the numbers from these Games. After all, almost all of the lowest-rated nights of Olympics coverage on record came over the past two weeks.
Last Thursday's prime-time coverage of the Olympics across all platforms averaged 13.3 million viewers, down 42%, from 2016. The previous low for any Summer Olympics night on record was 14.6 million - which happened the previous Wednesday.
In fact, the six smallest prime-time TV audiences on record - and 10 of the bottom 11, according to sportsmediawatch.com - have come from these Games, and here's betting Friday and Saturday will add to those numbers.
There are a slew of factors at play here. The 13-hour time difference. The COVID-related absence of fans and the emotion and energy they bring. The backlash over protests and political statements, too.
Still, these Games - with the live-action streaming on Peacock+ used as a lure to entice subscribers - will be remembered as the launching pad for the emphasis on and the network's desire for more digital sports viewing.
Despite all the hurdles and obstacles, NBC clearly had every intention to walk into the streaming age. Strike that, it is sprinting into the streaming age.
Since the last Summer Olympics, there are 20 million fewer cable subscribers. Finding ways to reach viewers beyond the box - and get your advertisers to said viewers - becomes every bit as important as the TV numbers.
NBC made some mistakes. If you searched your TV system for "Tokyo" over the past two weeks, you got one of the "Fast and Furious" movies. NBC moved the most popular sports behind the Peacock paywall. NBC wrongly assumed that we'd search until we found what we were looking for.
Still, those mistakes - no matter the self-inflicted damage in the numbers as we speak - could be viewed as much as growing pains as terminal ratings moving forward. Especially with the starting dates of the looming college football season.
NBC is planning Notre Dame's season opener to be streaming only, and the SEC is planning at least one football game from each member to be on ESPN+ or SEC Network+, which means fans will go to the game, get the online pass or not see it in real time.
For all of its missteps and ratings travesties, NBC will get a chance to do better on the Winter Olympics - which happen in just six months.
And perhaps these are not mistakes as much as they are growing pains to the future of sports viewing.
Because whether we know it not, we're already paddling downstream on that one, friends.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.
View other columns by Jay Greeson
Jay Greeson