As the Vancouver Winter Olympics approach, I become distinctly aware of the fact that network television is conspiratorially trying to vault certain athletes onto a certain pedestal. I’m not referring to different earthly minerals here, but I’m thinking more along the lines of brainwashing the public to believe that certain dudes in sterilizing tights happen to be God’s gift to ice skating aficionados. After years of analyzing Bob “I Only Work Leap Years” Costa’s special reports on NBC about specific athletes, I think I’ve built a pretty comprehensive list of qualities that a gymnast, speed skater, and–Jesus help us all if this ever happens–curler must possess to make it big into the collective consciousness.

Have the name of a Greek god. This one’s pretty obvious. How many gold medalists do you know named Andy Stitzer? Partly the doing of NBC’s prescient obsession with him the year of the Salt Lake City Games, Apolo Ohno definitely benefited from his dad totally freeloading on a pompous and possibly super traumatic naming decision. It’s unsurprising that the Olympic Committee granted him the gold medal even though he finished one of his races second–the man can bend people at sheer will, especially with hair like that. And it doesn’t really matter that Ohno wasn’t named specifically after the god, because really, who can focus on that when your last name is an exclamation in itself? We can all only stop hating him for him winning the genetic lottery when we find out how many times he was beat up in grade school before he started working out for future retribution. (I hope it’s a lot.)

Be a super-dee-duper All-American do-gooder. Pie-eating nationalists will always be predictably easy to please–you give them a wholesome, hardworkin’ teenager from the midwest just hoping to bring some honor to the heartland and they’ll stop being pissed that “My Name is Earl” won’t be the regularly scheduled programming for two weeks. That’s why all of the blond, freckle-faced youngin’s from Texas get all the attention during these two weeks every single time. Shawn Johnson, Sasha Cohen, that one chick who was actually really crappy at diving and yet got more camera time than the non-American gold medalist–they all had one creepy thing in common, and that was America’s capitalization on their patriotic cuteness and absurdly happy-go-lucky cheeriness. With their scarily vehement “GO USA!” chants captured on film for eternity, they might as well have been wearing eagle-emblazoned letter jackets onto the podium. Can we please just lay it all out? Because basically, Paul and Morgan Hamm are just two short dudes in tights wearing some ugly-ass primary colors.

Double the trouble is too much to handle.

Read more qualifications (or maybe disqualifications) after the jump.

Use as many “stoked’s” and/or “brah’s” in your interviews as possible. “Any medal would be good. A big gold one even better.” “My goal that day was to get a sunburn. That’s all I wanted.” And the best one: “Where would one find a Fabio cutout?” Yes, these words were all physically spoken by Shaun White.

I love lamp!

Engage unabashedly in douchebaggery out of the arena. Learn the best from Michael Phelps for this one. To be fair (and generous), cocking a baseball cap sideways and being stupid enough to get caught with a bong is probably the best way he knew how to celebrate depleting the earth of gold for centuries to come. Congrats, Phelpers! You’ve won our hearts AND our respect!

Say nope to dope, kids.

Have great hair. Did I mention that Apolo Ohno has great hair?

Shaun! Over here! We've found Fabio.

Compete on Dancing With the Stars in between consecutive Olympics and dance a lot of tango in tight pants. I forget where I was going with this.

Oh, right.

I know I’m making it really vague who I’ll be rooting for this time around, but I like to keep things a surprise. GO CANADA!

*(you know, minus the whole being born, naturally endowed with the biceps of a raging roid abuser thing.)

Photos courtesy of The Evolution of Jeremiah, Athlebrities, Celebrity Justice, Detroit Buckeye, and TV Guide.