OLYMPIC DRAMA ALREADY

Coin Flip? Really?: As if it isn’t bad enough that we choose a team for the Olympics that are held every four years with the results from one race, now we will potentially be using a coin flip to break a tie for third.  It has always seemed a bit absurd to me that we pick an Olympic team based not on an athlete’s body of work over a period of time, but instead on the results from the Olympic trials held over the course of a couple of weeks.  I know it's a tough call and a difficult decision on the part of USOC officials, but it seems to me that there is some kind of middle ground.

Penalty Kicks? Really? If soccer is ever going to take hold as a spectator sport in the United States, whether live or on TV, using penalty kicks to decide a match in the World Cup ad other international tournaments will have to be changed.  Don't get me wrong, I get the beauty of the game and appreciate the movement and strategy. But for most Americans, it's like using a game of HORSE or a free throw shooting contest to decide the NBA championship.  In a country where the game clocks measure tenths of a second, it is hard to accept a sport where the officials seemingly arbitrarily decide the amount of stoppage time, have no obligation to explain controversial calls and limit the game because the players may be getting exhausted.  Try telling that to the NHL players who go 3 or 4 overtimes in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  Isn't conditioning part of the sport? if a team is fatigued, then they will be at a competitive disadvantage.  Let the game be decided by playing until a team scores.  That's right, a team, through utilizing strategy and execution. Not because a goalie guesses the wrong way 4 out of 5 times. Might as well flip a coin..........

Where have all of the Yanks Gone?: Not Wimbledon, that's for sure, at least inthe locker room.  And if there weren't many there to begin the tournament, there are a lot less after the first round.  Whatever the USTA is doing is really not working.  I'm beginning to think I dreamed the whole Courier, Chang, Sampras and Agassi era.  And the Williams sisters may have come to the end of their run.  But there really hasn't been much depth for a long time on either side of the draw. I mean, if the Dallas TV series is back after all these years, maybe those guys didn't really retire or lose steam and they'll show up at the US Open, just as good as they used to be.  That's the deal, it was all just a dream.

NBA Draft: Otherwise known as the University of Kentucky freshman graduation ceremony.  Why don't we just give the Bobcats the UK championship team and see how quickly Michael Jordan can screw it up?  Can there ever have been a better player and a worse front office exec?  He'd be better off putting the faces of players on a Roulette wheel and taking the first five that hit.  The NBA can stop a legitimate trade that would have made the Lakers a true championship competitor, but it can't run a guy out of the game whose incompetency is ruining a franchise.  If this was a major market team, the story may be a lot different.