To investigate whether political assertions were interjected into American sports coverage of the 1984 Olympic games and which direction those assertions took, a study examined the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the games in its award-winning special supplement sections. The "Times" included these special supplements in its papers from July 22, six days before the games began, to August 14, one day after the Olympic games concluded. All stories that were greater than four square inches, including all graphics and headlines, were examined. Each of the 899 stories was coded for the date, page, headline, square column inches, graphics, source of story, type of sport(s), primary nation-actor(s), whether the story contained political assertions, and whether it was treated as a standard sports-news story, feature, or column. It was found that the large majority of stories did not contain political assertions. Nevertheless, among those stories that did interject political assertions into sports coverage, most of the assertions evaluated the impact of the Soviet-led boycott of the Olympic games, suggesting that the boycott was politically successful. (HOD)