A hero for Everynerd

 You can have your Simone Biles, your Suni Lee, even your Brody Malone or Frederick Richard. America's new fave isn't any of them.

See that guy over there in the black horn-rimmed glasses?

No, he's not the team statistician. 

No, he's not the student manager.

No, he's not (choose one) Millhouse from "The Simpsons," Robert Carradine from "Revenge of the Nerds" or Sheldon from "Young Sheldon."

His name is Stephen Nedoroscik, and the other night he became an American Olympic hero.

He became an Olympic hero even though some people thought he didn't belong on the U.S. men's gymnastics team, and not because he looked like Millhouse or Robert Carradine or Young Sheldon. They thought he shouldn't be on the team because he was only good at one thing, even though he was really, really good at that one thing.

Stephen Nedoroscik, see, is something of a pommel horse savant. And when the Olympic team competition got down to cases the other night, it was Stephen Nedoroscik on the horse who was either going to seal the first medal for an American men's gymnastics team in 16 years, or blow it for them.

Pommel Nerd said "Aw, HELL, no" to the latter.

Instead, with the horse the last rotation of the meet, he did his deal. Stuck everything, put up a big number in the most clutch circumstance you could dream up, and secured the bronze for the U.S. over Ukraine.

And suddenly no one cared that Stephen Nedoroscik looked less like an Olympic gymnast than maybe any Olympic gymnast ever. Or that even his coach calls him "quirky" and "goofy." Or that he's a whiz with a 1980s fad (Rubik's Cube) and loves video games.

Nedoroscik can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than ten seconds. It only took him 45 to finish a landmark performance from the American men, who every four years play, I don't know, fourth or fifth fiddle to the glamorous American women.

Well, not this Olympiad. This Olympiad, the American -- Malone, Frederick, all the rest -- nailed every routine and stuck every landing. And even gave the country something it never gets very often, and certainly not often enough.

A hero for Everynerd. Raise those pocket protectors and slide rules high, everyone.