Having seen about as much Michael Phelps in this Olympics as any good American needs, I felt like it was time to investigate a few of the lesser-known sports toiling in near-obscurity in the American coverage of the Beijing games.

These five sports — badminton, archery, track cycling, water polo, and trampoline — have certainly aired now and then. But you can't really appreciate their fine points until you sit down and watch them carefully, with as open a mind as you can have after hearing the greatness of your country and the importance of its particular victories driven into your skull for more than a week.

Badminton: Feathers and 'Ffffoo'
I have to admit, I didn't really realize there was Olympic badminton. I associate badminton with the breathless competitive spirit of the sunlight-dappled front yard of the house where I grew up. Tuning in, I assumed that Olympic badminton would bear the same resemblance to ordinary badminton that Olympic table tennis bears to drunken college ping-pong — that is to say, not much.

I certainly could play badminton against the lowest-ranked elite badminton player in the entire world and not score a point in six months. Still, my ability to sink into the speed and excitement of it all was reduced by my discovery that the shuttlecock is made of goose feathers. For drop shots, it works just fine, but an overhead slam just isn't the same when you're slamming a wad of feathers.

In contrast to the crack of the bat in baseball or the sharp pop of the ball off a tennis racquet, when you exert all the force you can muster against a shuttlecock, it makes a soft, sighing, distinctly un-sport-like noise. A noise like...”Fffffoo.”

Archery: It always looks the same
Other than the letdown over the lack of a “archer's relative with an apple on his head” event, there are two major problems with watching archery on television.

Slide show   Emotional moments Many Olympians celebrated their first medals on day two. more photos

First, elite players seemingly get one of two scores almost every time they shoot. In the entire gold-medal final in men's singles, in which South Korea's Park Kyung-Mo and Ukraine's Victor Ruban shot 12 arrows each, only one shot of the 24 wasn't worth either nine or 10 points — Park scored an eight on his penultimate arrow, which is how he lost. Not to tell the archery authorities how to live, but if the whole class is getting either an A or a B, it's time to redraw the curve.

The bigger problem, though, is that a guy shooting an arrow looks the same every time, whether he's going to hit the precise geometric center of the target or accidentally shoot somebody's souvenir bag in the seventh row of the grandstand. The only thing that looks different to the untrained eye is the shot of the arrow hitting the target.

I can see whether one guy swims faster than another guy; I can (and do) use my total lack of gymnastics knowledge to second-guess professional judges about whose floor routine was more graceful, and I can tell when a softball player gets a good hit. Idly waiting to see where the arrow happens to land is more like watching suitcases be opened on “Deal Or No Deal.”

Trampoline: 'That person is bouncing very high'
It surprises me that Olympic trampoline hasn't taken off. It's so much like the wildly popular gymnastics that NBC actually called in the gymnastics commentators, who did their best to act like they understand the fine points of competitive trampoline.

Hans Deryk / Reuters Huge air! GIANT AIR! Trampoline sends its commentators scurrying for a thesaurus.

Poor veteran commentator Tim Daggett found himself saying “huge air” and “giant air” far too often, which means somebody needs to sit him down with a thesaurus for a brainstorming session about other ways to say “that person is bouncing very high.”

Trampoline looks like a cross between gymnastics and diving, and it turns out that moving around on the trampoline as you bounce is bad. Because it's a deduction, not because you increase your risk of flying off the trampoline and winding up as a pile of shattered bones.

My favorite personality of the trampoline competition was eighteen-year-old American Erin Blanchard, who, the announcers said, had been “burned out” on competitive trampoline, but then returned to appear in the Olympics. Eighteen years old, and she's already had time for a burnout and a comeback in the sport of competitive trampoline. I don't think she will have any trouble figuring out what to write her college essay about.

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