It is disorienting enough that Bob Costas is not around to preside over the Olympic happenings in South Korea this time around, but would you believe me if I told you there was a time when the Olympics were on ... a different network?

If you're a millennial reading this article on our website, you might be stunned to believe that NBC did not always have a vise grip on the Olympic rings. After all, Jim McKay calmly guided the viewing audience through the Munich hostage crisis on ABC, which also aired the Miracle on Ice from Lake Placid (on tape delay, in 1980 when you could get away with that).

However, some of my first Olympic memories are of a weird, wild trilogy known as the Olympics on CBS. The Tiffany Network had the rights to three Winter Olympics in the 1990s: Albertville in 1992, Lillehammer in 1994 and Nagano in 1998.

In 1986, the International Olympic Committee decided to boost the profile of the Winter Games by getting them out of the shadow of the summer version, so there were Winter Games two years apart once, though they were both in Europe and both in the same time zone, so it's not your fault if you get mixed up.

CBS made some interesting programming decisions (they had the MLB playoffs in the early 90s too), perhaps none more interesting than giving the primetime co-anchoring duties to "CBS This Morning" anchor Paula Zahn and ... former St. Louis Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver?

Yup, Tim McCarver, who we all came to know and love working the World Series with fellow crowd favorite Joe Buck over at Fox.

In a YouTube clip of the Albertville Opening Ceremony, the Memphis-born McCarver narrates that the flame was lit at Mount Olympus (wrong) while Zahn describes French soccer legend Michel Platini as the final 'torch-barrier.' It wasn't the only thing that looked silly - each delegation in the Parade of Nations was marked by a woman in a human snow globe outfit and the majestic Olympic torch was barely 16 inches long.

The whole thing went so well that, before the end of 1992, CBS announced that the prime time gig for 1994 was going to Greg Gumbel. But that's not why you remember the 1994 Winter Olympics.

You probably remember the 1994 Winter Olympics for exactly two people: Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. Providing the narration of that sordid escapade: Duluth-born Verne Lundquist, or as fans of Southeastern Conference football came to call him, "Uncle Verne."

The short program of the ladies' Olympic figure skating competition drew a 48.5 rating and a 64 share. Drop those ratings in 2017 and the only four broadcasts on a single network to get a higher rating would all be NFL playoff games.

With Tonya and Nancy in the past and Nagano 15 hours ahead of Duluth, their ratings needed all the prayers they could get, so CBS set up camp next door to the Zenkoji Temple. They brought their specialist in such affairs: Jim Nantz, describing the Buddhist temple in the city's center with the sort of hushed tones once reserved solely for Butler Cabin at Augusta National Golf Club.

To balance it out, they had Gus Johnson do the luge and bobsled events, well before he became famous for the overcaffeinated style that's made him a household name today.

Since Feb. 22, 1998, the Olympic rings have been fully under NBC's control and will be through 2032, so no one will be getting Tamara Kline's majestic Olympic theme out of the music archive any time soon. Then again, they won't be getting Tim McCarver out either