- Floyd Landis, you’re not too bright, are you? Every single governing and authoritative body that has rendered any sort of decision on your doping case in the 2006 Tour de France has come to the decision that you are guilty of using performance enhancers, yet you continue to insist that you are innocent and that everyone else is just wrong. Yet there’s Floyd, vowing to appeal the most recent decision against him and the one that officially forced him to forfeit his Tour win. He explained to ESPN.com on Wednesday that his decision to appeal an arbitration panel's split vote against him in his doping case was easy "once I got myself together and made sure I had the energy to do it.” Let’s hope that he didn’t get the energy to appeal the same way he got the “energy” to win the Tour de France. On his Floyd Fairness Fund (try not to laugh uncontrollably while reading that site name) website, he stated his intention to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to overturn the ruling of a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency arbitration panel that upheld his positive steroid test and stripped him of his 2006 Tour de France title. “Knowing that the accusations against me are simply wrong, and having risked all my energy and resources -- including those of my family, friends and supporters -- to show clearly that I won the 2006 Tour de France fair and square, I will continue to fight for what I know is right,” Landis wrote on his site. “Doping in sport seems to continue to get worse under the current anti-doping system, and this is only a part of the huge amount of proof that the WADA/USADA system needs a total overhaul. I will continue to work to clear my name and fight for change in the name of fairness and justice. No matter the final outcome of my case, there must be change in the current system if athletes can ever hope to compete on a level playing field and return to the joy and inspiration that sport can bring all of us.” Oh, I see, you’re fighting for all athletes in the sport of cycling, Floyd. That’s why you keep appealing and appealing, because you want to ensure fairness for all your fellow cyclists. It’s a shame you didn’t think of that before you cheated them and the sport of cycling by competing while on performance enhancers. Also, props for trying to do an advance spin job on your appeal to the CAS by saying that you have only “a little bit of hope” that the CAS, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland and the last resort for accused athletes in the anti-doping appeals process, will overturn the ruling that Landis has labeled as "contradictory and nonsensical.” In other words, “I’m going to appeal but don’t be surprised if I lose because those meanies on the court are biased against me. Just because I lose this appeal and have lost every other appeal to this point and had multiple tests come up positive for performance enhancers, that doesn’t mean I’m dirty.” Sure thing, Floyd, sure thing……
- Bob Barker might be gone from the airwaves, but the residual effect from his decades at the helm of The Price is Right is far from over. Barker has once again been sued by a former Price is Right model, although this time it isn't for the same sexual harassment allegations that have been levied against the silver-haired octogenarian in years gone by. This time, the charges against Barker are discrimination, which if you read between the lines and do a little digging means that Bob-O made some unwanted advances toward XXXXX, the woman filing the lawsuit, and when she rejected him, he discriminated against her, allegedly. I know that a lot of fans of Barker and of the show will side with him automatically on this because they think of him as the warm, friendly old guy who was entertaining to watch and seems like such a great guy, but you’ll have to excuse me for leaning toward believing the plaintiff in this one instead of Bob Barker. Just because he had a successful run as the host of a popular show doesn’t mean he wasn’t a lecherous, perverted dude who groped, fondled, hit on and slept with the models who worked alongside him all those years. There are so many stories, lawsuits and allegations claiming the same sort of behavior claimed in this new lawsuit for there not to be some factual basis. To what degree Bob Barker was hands on, so to speak, with the showcase models I don’t know, but they didn’t have blond bombshells on the show just for ratings purposes, if you catch my drift. I would say B. Barker had some input into the type of women who were chosen to be models on the show and he probably took advantage of having so many hot girls around him day in, day out. Drew Carey needs to be sure he doesn’t try to mimic Barker’s act, though, because I don’t think women are that eager to be hit on and felt up by a bespectacled, overweight, crude, crass, soccer-loving C-list comedian.
- If this were five or six years ago, a threat by Mariano Rivera that he might not re-sign with the Yankees if manager Joe Torre is not brought back as the team’s manager would be a big concern for the entire franchise. That same threat made in 2007, when Rivera is nearing his 38th birthday and doesn’t have the same gas on his fastball that he used to, is still something to consider but not a decisive factor in the debate on Torre’s future with the Yanks. Rivera is a beloved legend in the Bronx, but he’s not the sort of dominant superstar whose wishes can save a manager in peril of losing his job. Personally, I think he re-signs with New York regardless of who the manager is, because who really wants to spend the last two or three years of their career grinding it out with a franchise they have no history with and no connection to just to chase those law few millions? Do you really want to go out like Joe Montana with the Chiefs, Joe Namath with the Rams or Johnny Unitas with the Chargers? The fans in a new city will take all of two seconds to turn on Rivera if he falters because they don’t have any memories of him as the dominant, lights-out closer winning world titles with their team. In sharing his feelings about Torre’s probable dismissal, Rivera stated that, "I don't feel good about it. I don't see why they're even thinking [about letting Torre go]. I wish he's back, definitely. If you ask me what I would want, I want him back." Umm, but no one did ask your opinion, Mo. As for why they want to let him go, you should know better than anyone that George Steinbrenner expects, unrealistically, world titles every year and to fail to win one for seven years running is really going to piss him off. Whether it’s realistic or not, he expects his hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries paid to players to net him five or six titles per decade and if the manager he has can't bring that result, he believes he can find someone else who will. As for your leaving if Torre doesn’t return, Mo, do what you want but you are going to be making that decision because Torre is not coming back. "It might do a lot of it," Rivera said when speaking of Torre’s possible departure. "I mean, I've been with Joe for so many years, and the kind of person he has been for me and for my teammates, it's been great. The thing is that I don't see why they have to put him in this position." When asked about how he would handle his impending free agency, he made it clear that he wasn’t going to automatically resign with New York. “I'm going to be open to hear all offers,” said Rivera, who wants a multiyear contract. “The Yankees had the opportunity and didn't do nothing with it.” Wherever you go, Mariano, here’s hoping you use some of your new contract money to take a few English lessons. Aside from that, know that nowhere else will you be as beloved as you are in New York, so chase the big money with the knowledge that if you make a bad decision, that money might be about the only positive thing you end up with from the next 2-3 years.
- Some of the most heinous, inexcusable crimes are committed for the dumbest reasons, that’s just a fact. Just a few years ago, a Yankee fan fatally stabbed his brother because he wouldn’t give him his Yankee hat. At the beginning of the current semester at the University of Arizona, one freshman girl beat her new roommate, a girl she had known for less than a week, to death because she thought the roommate had been stealing from her. As pointless and unjustified as those things are, though, it’s hard to argue that they are as moronic as the story of William Antonio Serrano, 22, who stabbed his roommate to death because he told Serrano that he had smelly feet. The two of them were drinking and apparently the mixture of alcohol and the insinuation that his feet had a foul odor was enough to set Serrano off. He grabbed a knife and stabbed his roomie several times. The roommate, who was not identified by police, died shortly and now Serrano sits in a Houston prison facing murder charges. Yeah, because that’s a reason to go, someone saying that your feet stink. Good thing he didn’t say you have bad breath too, eh Serrano? Had he done that, you probably would have skipped the knife and gone straight for the garage to get a sledgehammer to cave his head in with. Granted, guys who are fueled up and pushing the legal limit don’t make the best decisions, but how do you go from zero to murder in less than a minute just because your roommate, someone you know and presumably like at least a little bit, says your feet smell bad? Was punching him in the face not an option? How about throwing some of his clothes in the dumpster or pouring his beer down the drain? Now he’s dead, his family has lost their son and brother and you’re headed for a long stint in prison because you couldn’t stomach an insult about your foot odor. As always, hope that was worth it.
- What, Gen. Than Shwe, you can’t make time in your busy schedule of brutal oppression and abuse of your citizens to meet with imprisoned democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi personally? Appointing a Cabinet official to “coordinate contacts” with her seems like, I don’t know, a chicken sh*t move. It looks a lot like you not wanting to waste your time meeting with the woman and sending a flunkie to do your work. It says to everyone that it’s really not important and nothing is going to result from you meeting with San Suu Kyi, so why bother doing it yourself? Oh, but you’re taking the threats, sanctions and reprimands from the rest of the world seriously and are open to possible changes in how you govern, sure you are. Meanwhile, the troops patrolling the streets of Yangon, enforcing the rule that no more than five people can gather together and making sure that anyone who shows the slightest inclination to protest is shot or beaten down, those troops are still being harassed and bothered by members of the anti-government movement, according to student activists in the country. Still, it feels like there needs to be a major spark or instigator to restart the dissidence in Myanmar, because right now, scattered harassment of the military notwithstanding, this conflict has bogged down and any change to the state of the government in the country still seems a ways off.
- It’s ironic that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can come to the United States and speak at Columbia University without much more than mild unrest in the auditorium, yet he can speak at Tehran University in his own country and a brawl breaks out in the audience. The brawl came courtesy of 100 students who staged a protest during the president’s speech, calling him a dictator and fighting with students loyal to the man for whom “dictator” might be too kind of a description. Hats off to the 100 students with the testicular fortitude to stand up and speak out against a man who would have no problem with making them “disappear” for daring to oppose him publicly. The other pervasive irony in this situation is the topic of Ahmadinejad’s speech, which was the pitfalls of Western-style democracy. How a man who is a brutal dictator hailed by many as this generation’s Hitler or Mussolini can speak out about a form of government with which he has no direct experience, I don’t know. It would be like W. speaking out against the pitfalls of an honest, responsible, forthright government or the problems with making sure you have actual justification and evidence to back you up when you decide to start a major war. Anyhow, someone needs to check on those students who staged the protest during Ahmadinejad’s speech, just to make sure they’re not lying in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in the back of their head.
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