The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

This is why women shouldn't be sports commentators...

I don't care for Christine Brennan, a sports writer for USA Today, just in general. She is one of those shrill women in sports for whom it is always an us versus them mentality, in this case men versus women. She is especially inane in her commentary today.

American gymnist Paul Hamm was awarded a gold medal in the Olympics after a remarkable comeback. Now it turns out that a scoring error cost the Chinese gymnist the gold medal and Brennan is calling on Hamm to give the medal back. A couple of points. Do you suppose if the situation were reversed, would the Chinese gymnist give back the gold? Not bloody likely unless he wanted to face a few years in a re-education camp. Second, how many games and titles have been won and lost based on human error? I still seethe over a game (I think in 1990) between Michigan and Michigan State. Michigan was behind but driving towards the end zone. On fourth down, Desmond Howard beat his defender BADLY and was poised to catch the go-ahead touchdown pass. It was falling right into his hands and he NEVER dropped passes like that. The Spartan DB, who really had no choice, dragged him down by the jersey from behind. Blatant pass interference. Pass falls incomplete. RIGHT IN FRONT OF A REF!!! I mean literally the guy was right there. No flag. Michigan loses. You think the MSU coaches watched the film and offered to forfeit the game after the fact? Heck no! Nor should they. Human error is a part of the game. Even with instant replay calls still get messed up. Finally, gymnastics is all subjective anyway. A different panel of judges may have scored the event completely differently. It is like figure skating in that respect. In track, the guy who crosses the line first wins. In basketball the team who scores the most point wins. Who knows what the difference between winners and losers in gymanstics or figure skating.

I think this has a lot more to do with sports writers pretending to be deep thinkers and jumping on the journalistic bash America mentality. Jim Caple of ESPN.com takes a number of cheap shots at the Americans in his column today, praising the Iraqi soccer team at the expense of President Bush, even quoting one Iraqi who said he would be fighting the Americans if he weren't so darn busy playing soccer. What a patriot! You could just see Patrick Henry in his shoes "Give me liberty or give me death, as long as it doesn't interfere with my softball game!" What a blowhard. He wouldn't even be playing if we hadn't freed his country and as soon as they can reign in the terorrists we will be out of there.

Yes, as Caple points out, the NBA players on the USA Basketball team are playing shamefully but that is not an indictment of the US in general, rather the state of US basketball. As of this morning, the USA has 58 total medal, 10 more than second place China, of which 21 are gold, one fewer than the Chinese. We are doing great in these Olympics but all these pseudo-intellectual sports writers can do is bash America. Go back to writing pithy game recaps Jimmie boy, your political commentary betrays your utter ignorance.