The Olympics Boston may not want may be the Olympics Boston needs

In case you weren't aware, there has been just a little bit of snow in and around Boston in the last two weeks, and more could be on the way.

Along with the snow came failures in the region's rail and subway system, the MBTA, or "the T" for short.

"The primary problem that plagued the MBTA’s subway cars this week — and caused thousands of commuters to be stranded on Monday and Tuesday — is a familiar challenge to transit specialists that other cities solved years ago using modern technology.

Many of the stalled trains failed because their motors run on direct current, or DC, power, which malfunctions easily in light, fluffy snow like the more than 40 inches that has blanketed Boston in the past two weeks, MBTA officials say. Transit systems around the country have upgraded to newer alternating current motors, which withstand moisture far better."

The storms have been a tremendous headache, but for some, they have been an opportunity to point out what they see as the preposterous nature of Boston bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Snow stops our public transportation when it's not snowing. They think they can support the Olympics? #NoBoston2024 http://t.co/c9LOE9wI32
— Nick Pizzolato (@nickpizz) February 3, 2015

The IOC might be interested to know that the #MBTA also doesn't work when it's hot outside. #Boston2024
— Dan Kennedy (@dankennedy_nu) February 6, 2015

The first tweet is from my buddy Pizz (who is a good follow for a lot of reasons, but particularly if you're in the #NoBoston2024 crowd), and the second is from Dan Kennedy, a local journalism professor, author and media critic.

I'm fans of both of them, and they're both right about the T. It basically only runs well if the weather is like San Diego (although, from having been there, I can tell you that its rail system is far more modern than Boston's), and adding the Olympics to the current system would be an epic disaster.

However, I'd say those are less arguments against having the Olympics in Boston and better arguments for actually having them here.

Everyone knows the T is a disgrace, but no one will fix it. Why? Guess.

"You can cast a lot of blame in a lot of directions for the sad state of affairs, but the big culprit is pretty clear: state legislators, particularly those from outside Boston, who have spent the past 20 years whistling past the disaster.

They have known, for many, many years, that the state needs to spend a bunch of money on maintenance and upgrading of the MBTA. They don't care."

Also, this.

So if no one actually wants to fix the MBTA, or doesn't think they should have to be the ones to pay for it, what is it going to take for something to actually be done? It might take a large event that puts Boston on the world stage where failure would subject the city to endless ridicule and cripple its belief in being a world class city.

You know, something like ... the Olympics.

Such a thing would not be unprecedented even in recent history. The London Underground was upgraded for the 2012 Olympics, as was the Sea-to-Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler. I can only speak as a tourist, but having been to both in the last few years, I would say it was money well-spent.

There are less-scenic rides.

Are there issues with Boston's Olympic bid? Yeah. (Again, Pizz can tell you all about it.) Is it too bad that it would take something like an Olympics to actually make our state leaders do something about the awful rail system? For sure.

But is there any other way of getting it done. Barring a change of heart, I don't see any.

Bob Costas vs. Vladimir Putin ... I know who I'm picking

Last night, when NBC decided to kill some time between slopestyle qualifying runs and team figure skating short programs in its day-before-the-Opening-Ceremonies Olympic coverage -- a time clearly chosen for maximum ratings value, no doubt -- by airing a piece and discussion about Russian President Vladimir Putin, I wrote this on the Twitter machine:

Now Costas is talking about Putin. How long before "STICK TO SPORTS!" #Olympics #Sochi2014
— LastHonestSportsFan (@LastHonestSport) February 7, 2014

 I was not disappointed. Interspersed among the comments about Costas' eye malady, were comments such as these:

Bob Costas should stick to sports, not geo-politics. I know it overlaps at the moment, but Nbc olympic coverage simply isn't the venue.
— Michael Plumb (@ThePlumbline89) February 7, 2014

Bob costas already talking politics during the olympics. They literally started like 5 minutes ago. #SochiProblems
— Colin Bowen (@CeeBeaux) February 7, 2014

Good start for NBC's Olympics coverage, though I wish they'd figure out that I don't care about Bob Costas's opinions on world politics.
— Eric Goodwin (@diagonalfish) February 7, 2014

Surprise, Surprise. Bob Costas gets into politics while covering a sporting event. Costas gonna be Costas
— Justin Niedermier (@J_Niedermier42) February 7, 2014

@NBCOlympics Focus on ATHLETES, not POLITICS! Tell Bob Costas to keep his damn opinions to himself. It's about the ATHLETES.
— Sara Foster (@msbsbl) February 7, 2014

Without a doubt, these are Putin's games, a personal showcase for a man who may not be a great friend to the democratic ideals our nation holds dear, as this piece by noted left-wing loon Sen. John McCain reminds us. And let us not forget, regardless of what you think of Edward Snowden, Putin is also letting someone the United States has charged with espionage live in Russia.

But this is the guy Bob Costas isn't allowed to talk about, because he has shown unacceptable signs of liberalism in the past.



Or is Putin OK because on top of everything else, he also appears to be a raging homophobe?

Bob Costas makes me sick with his pro-gay anti-gun pro-leftist agenda. Way to bring politics into the #Olympics2014 NBC sucks!
— MaximumFreedom (@LausDeo1791) February 7, 2014

At least someone gets it.

Here's some irony. All these right-wing folks on Twitter blasting Bob Costas's politics are basically defending Putin's Russia.
— Brooklyn Quarterly (@BklynQly) February 7, 2014

An announcer who knows what matters

I'm taking a few days off from work, which is why I was looking for something to watch yesterday afternoon and came across ice dancing on Universal Sports Network.

It was the Grand Prix final from Fukuoka, Japan, and while it wouldn't necessarily have been my first choice, it was on, I can find ice dancing entertaining and Tanith Belbin was one of the announcers. I didn't actually see her on camera, but it was nice to know she was there.

So anyway, when the Canadian team of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir came out to skate, the announcer (no idea who it was, like Ben Agosto, he was the dude with Tanith Belbin and if they said his name, I missed it) made sure the viewing audience knew that Virtue and Moir had never, ever won a Grand Prix final.

In fact, he so wanted us to know that Virtue and Moir had never won this very important competition, he said it at least twice.

That would be Virtue and Moir ... the 2010 Olympic champions. Trying to build a storyline for the event you're broadcasting aside, that would be like obsessing that Sarah Hughes' resume is lacking because she never won a senior U.S. or world title.



As it turns out, Virtue and Moir have still never won a Grand Prix final. The American team of Meryl Davis and Charlie White did. (Interestingly, the introduction on YouTube to the video below also notes that Davis and White have five Grand Prix final wins, and Virtue and Moir have none.)


I sure hope Virtue and Moir can recover from the crushing disappointment as they try to defend their Olympic championship.

A-curling we will go

Ready to rock

"Are there a lot of curling-related deaths?"

This was not an altogether frivolous question, although it was a mostly sarcastic one, given that in my hand I was holding a waiver (!) in which I was to acknowledge, by my signature, that I was aware of the potential for serious injury or death while curling.

After the woman handling the paperwork reassured me that curling-related deaths are uncommon -- and that if I dropped a curling stone on my head, I was doing it wrong -- I signed the sheet allowing me to take part in the local curling club's introductory class last week.

My buddy Pizz and I sort of goaded each other into going, me by originally posting the notice for the class on my Facebook page, and him by saying he wanted to go if I did. Our friend Woody was originally going to go with us, but he couldn't make it.

I, like most of the 40-plus people in the class, was drawn to curling because of the Olympics, where every four years I watch it incessantly, becoming an "expert" just in time for the gold-medal match, whereupon I forget most of it. Not only does the game itself make for oddly compelling television, I would argue that there's another secret to its appeal ...

... You watch it and think, "I could do that." 

But could we? That's what we were there to find out.

After an explanation of how the game was played, which was supposed to be accompanied by a video but the TV was missing, we headed out onto the ice to learn the basics of pushing out of the hacks, sweeping and manipulating the stones to get the desired curl.

The good news as we got ready to start our two-end mini-game was that I seemed to be getting the hang of it. I was able to push straight out of the hack without injuring myself, and it looked like I had the hang of curling the stone. (I was somewhat familiar with the concept, having been a bowler.)

Then we started playing. On my first shot, I set my sights on the target, went through each of the steps very carefully ... and then pushed the stone left. It wasn't a horrible shot, though, safely inside the house, and for a long time it looked like it would hold up for a point for our team until our opponents put one in the center.

So that left us losing 1-0 going into the second end, and I put my second shot right down the middle ... but too short for it to count. I must confess ... I'm not real hung up on being macho, but I felt like a wimp. I hoped to get a chance to redeem myself.

I did. Our opponents were in position to score another point to clinch the match when I was chosen to take the last shot. My job was simple ... put my stone closer to the center of the house or knock the other team's unguarded stone out of the house while leaving mine in. It was a chance to be a hero for my team, or as much of one as creating a 1-1 tie would create.

And I pushed it left ... again. Way left. Left like one of my golf shots into the woods left. Left like the only chance the shot had was if someone tilted the Earth's axis like a desperate pinball player.

Before I describe what happened next, let me remind you that everyone was having a great time ... laughing, joking, hanging out, high-fiving and fist-bumping each other, sweeping with more enthusiasm than effect and yelling like the skips on TV mostly just so we could yell like the skips on TV.

And oh yeah ... none of us had ever played this game before.

So what did I do?

I cursed. Multiple times. And not the breezy "Ahhh, (expletive), that really sucked" kind of way, but the one you say and the way you say it when you're really angry. In that moment, the worst part of my competitive nature, the one that I'm not proud to say I've been told can be a little scary, came out.

All because I cost my team a game that I had never played before.

I can't help it. It's who I am.

Fortunately, it subsided fairly quickly. Pizz and I talked about the Merseyside Derby the next day (he's an Everton fan and I root for Liverpool, but neither of us were to gain bragging rights this time), I sent a text to Mrs. Last Honest at her convention to St. Louis that I made it through the evening with no injuries worse than banging my kneecap on the ice and I drove home.

Would I do it again? Sure I would. I'm no threat for the 2018 Olympics, but it was fun.

Hollander's handbooks and a trip back in time

I don't really know why the New York Times decided to publish a story today about Zander Hollander, but I'm glad they did.

"From 1971 to 1997, Hollander edited sports yearbooks, brick-like tomes known as Complete Handbooks, which in the pre-Internet era were almost holy objects to a certain type of sports-crazed youngster. Here, in one glorious place, was information — statistics, team rosters, records, schedules, predictions for the coming season and more — freed from the restrictions of newspaper column inches and far beyond what a still embryonic cable system was providing."

I was actually thinking about the Hollander handbooks not long ago, remembering for some reason the story in the 1980 handbook (like the others I had as a kid, long lost to time and cleaning, so I'm working somewhat off memory here) about Nolan Ryan being the first player to sign a contract for more than $1 million per year, and how the story about his contract and all the others totalling $1 million fit on a single page, including the box listing all of them.

Actually, thinking of the handbooks I read as a kid reminds me of how different things were ...

... how they told you about every player in the NBA, right down to the last man on the bench, and the brutal honesty about them contained in a couple short paragraphs. Now, you can find out more about any end-of-the-bench player (I chose Fab Melo of the Celtics as an example) than you could ever imagine.

... how "fantasy football" meant the stories in my friend Kenny's NFL handbooks about a team of current stars playing a collection of greats from the past, or Super Bowls years in the future, including as I recall an American team taking on one from the Soviet Union.

... how the handbook was probably the definitive preview of your favorite team's season. Now, you can find previews everywhere, like the one my friend Rob did the other day on the San Diego Chargers that he asked me to review. (I told him, "You probably could have gotten away with five versions of 'Can they stop being undisciplined dumbasses?' and been fine.")

... how enthralled I was reading the handbook for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with the picture of an Eastern European team handball player soaring above a defender to shoot or a photo of the Soviet Union's Uljana Semjonova taking a hook shot. My preteen self wondered how a woman could ever be that tall. Now, people complain when the prime-time hours of the ungodly amount available on TV or online aren't live.

Thinking of the handbooks also made me think about how there has never been a better time to be a sports fan, and how that doesn't seem like enough anymore.

There are more ways to see more sports and read more about sports than there ever has been, and much like I think of my younger self as having lived in the Dark Ages, kids today will probably think of 2013 as a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

If you're willing to spend the time and effort, and sometimes the money, you can watch just about anything you want. During the Stanley Cup finals, I had a grand old time chatting with a Blackhawks fan from Chicago, and have struck up a Twitter friendship with a New England Patriots fan who lives in Miami.

Last night, after reading a terrific piece by Alyson Footer, I had a conversation with her about it. (To be clear, the Harwell example she gives is something positive, not part of the worst anyone did to her.)

@LastHonestSport thank ya!
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport nothing that is of any significance. Couple dumb things said by men in their 80s. I've been incredibly lucky.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport when I first started out in PR, a few male reporters didn't want my help when they called. Didn't think I knew baseball.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport In late 90s, Ernie Harwell came to me for a few things when Tigers player Astros. Never forgot that. Felt like mill bucks.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

All of that is great, but I fear it has the effect of not much being special anymore. Maybe the Super Bowl (although that may be as much a cultural event as a sporting one) or a rare instance of going to a game, but because so much sports is available so often, it becomes disposable. Miss one game? There's another one on today ... or tomorrow ... or the next day.

So most importantly, thinking about the handbooks reminds me of how good we sports fans have it today.

The experience of being there

The other night, my friend Pizz wrote this on Facebook:

"The emotional connection man has to sport is just one of those things. It's the reason why, every time I go to Fenway Park I feel like a six-year-old seeing the Green Monster for the first time. And it's the reason why Adam Richman takes a moment away from eating 100 oz cheeseburgers and visiting his favorite English club and tears up.

I'm building up a knowledge and love of Everton and someday when I make my way (to) Liverpool, I'll probably have the same US in the UK moment."

I went to Yankee Stadium for the first time when I was 8 years old. I wish I could remember how I felt when I walked into the ballpark, but I can't. I do remember it was a bus trip, that we sat in the upper deck, that Doug Bird pitched for the Yankees, that a Royals player hit a home run off the foul pole (based on this box score, which I think is the right one, it would have been Clint Hurdle) and most importantly, Reggie Jackson hit one out.

I've seen a lot of sporting venues since then, mostly for games, but also on tours or walking through whatever open doors happened to present themselves, including the time I took a left turn and found myself on the darkened court at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The moment that always strikes me is when I step inside the field, court or racetrack, and the scene opens up in front of me.

It's the new Yankee Stadium, and I'm a lot older.

 

 

My first (and so far, only) time at Camden Yards. I was in awe. It was everything I was told it would be, and more.

Yet I find the stronger connections are when I can attach a place to something in particular, like when Mrs. Last Honest and I visited Lake Placid not quite two months ago. The connection isn't always a magical one, however, like realizing the Vancouver Olympic speed skating oval was in the back of a business park or the ice skating arena was tucked between a residential neighborhood and an amusement park.

There's probably a good reason why NBC stuck to indoor shots when they cut to figure skating.

But I find the strongest connection with objects; they bring what I saw, listened to or read about to life. I've lost the picture to various computer changes, but it was amazing to see the actual car that Dale Earnhardt won the 1998 Daytona 500 with at the Richard Childress Racing museum. I watched that race on television, barely able to sit the last few laps until he came to the final caution and I knew he would finally win the race.

It's the reason why I'm such a geek for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It's baseball history, right there, including the Dave Righetti no-hitter from July 4, 1983, that I was listening to on the radio and left to do something else, even though I knew he was throwing a no-hitter. (What can I say? Sometimes I'm an idiot.)

I still kick myself for leaving to this day.

Pizz is looking forward to going to Liverpool someday to see Goodison Park, although I, of course, would have him see Anfield on the proper, red side of Merseyside (something I'd like to do myself someday). Of places I haven't seen other than Anfield, the first three that come to mind that I'd like to see from the inside are the Rose Bowl, the Los Angeles Coliseum and Madison Square Garden.

But one thing about sports is that no matter the venue, no matter the time, no matter the event, something can happen that creates a memory for a lifetime, a permanent connection, when you least expect it.

The Olympics will always be in Lake Placid

Due to a death in my family, what was supposed to be a one-day trip to my hometown in upstate New York for my cousin's wedding last week turned into a three-day trip where Mrs. Last Honest and I had nothing planned for the middle day.

So we decided to make the 2 1/2-hour drive north to Lake Placid.

I had been to Lake Placid three times previously, twice for an all-star concert band when I was in high school -- in case you're interested, I played trombone -- and once about 11 years ago not long after my wife and I started dating. It's a beautiful place, but probably not that much different than a lot of Adirondack villages ...

... except for the Olympics. It's actually hard to believe the Olympics took place three hours north of where I grew up.

I stood at the top of the ski jump during my last trip, forgetting my lifelong fear of all means of elevation that involve riding along a wire, and chickened out of a bobsled ride when I heard someone say you needed to sign a waiver. (At the time, I said I didn't want to spend the $30, so while I guess the blog is called the Last Honest Sports Fan, I'm not honest all the time.)

We had also gone to the Olympic ice hockey arena, but just kind of poked our heads in the door. This time, however, we stayed, walked around, watched skaters on one of the other rinks. It was then that I was struck by the fact that the Miracle on Ice took place in the arena we were sitting in ... an arena small enough that the second level was a half-dozen rows of wooden benches.

It's not a very big arena, but you can't beat the history, and except for the seats they put behind the rails to the staircases, there's not a bad seat in the place. (I didn't bring my camera, so all the photos are from Mrs. Last Honest.)

By the way, as an example of how times have changed, in a town where one of the great sporting victories of the Cold War took place, the USA Hockey store was selling Soviet jerseys, the red ones with the CCCP across the chest.

Then we walked outside, and onto the speed skating oval, although there was no ice.

The only sport suitable on this day would be speed splashing.

Hard to believe I was on the site where Eric Heiden won five gold medals.

(As an aside, back in my pickup volleyball days, the mother of one of the neighborhood kids who showed up from time to time brought samples of some drink mix she was hawking at the time. She tried to impress me by telling me it was what Eric Heiden was drinking when he finally won a gold medal after all his previous failures. I didn't correct her; I figured it she couldn't tell the difference between Eric Heiden and Dan Jansen in her sales pitch, she deserved to lose a customer someday.)

I love how Olympic sites in Lake Placid are so accessible to the public, but to my mind, the reason why is kind of unusual ... that Lake Placid will never host an Olympics again.

I've had a few arguments with a friend of mine who insists that the Olympics could come back to Lake Placid someday, maybe with Montreal or Albany, both of which are impossibilities. The Olympics have just gotten too big for a town that had a population of 2,521 as of 2010. By comparison, Whistler, British Columbia, which hosted only a few events in conjunction with Vancouver in 2010, had 9,595.

But when we went to Vancouver in the summer of 2010, not even six months after the Olympics, the sites that weren't being modified for other use weren't open for the public to view. It's almost like they were trying to put the Olympics behind them. My wife even bought a pair of Olympic mittens with the maple leaf in the middle, which had been all the rage when we were in Toronto the year before, out of a clearance bin.



But then again, Vancouver is a bustling, awesome city that has a lot going on. The Olympics were just another event that happened there.

Meanwhile, the Olympics give Lake Placid its identity as something more than another pretty Adirondack village. For that reason, the town embraces its Olympic past, and wants to share that embrace as much as possible.

NBC has chosen to fail

I'm watching the women's gymnastics team final tonight (without spoilers, so I don't know how it ended up), and it would be hard to imagine a bigger difference from what I saw last night during the men's competition.

From the moment Al Trautwig said that Team USA "and seven other teams" would be competing until the time it was obvious the men weren't going to win anything, the team may as well have been the only ones in the arena. There was no coverage of any other team, no standings, no nothing. It took the standard USA-centric coverage to a ridiculous level.

Tonight, at least, Al, Tim Daggett and Elfie Schlegel are sort of presenting the women's competition as a sporting event, with the Americans having competition worthy of getting their routines shown and some sort of idea of how the teams related to each other.

The change actually started last night, when Daggett explained the ins and outs of the Japanese protest that ultimately led to the team getting the silver medal, right down to why the Japanese coach was carrying money (a filing fee). That was when the thought hit me ...

... NBC could do this differently, if they wanted to.

Now, I'm not saying NBC has been sabotaging its own Olympics. I'm sure the network isn't thrilled about #nbcfail. But think about some of the issues they've had:

• The tape delays. (I don't have a problem with them, but I know lots of people hate them.)
• Cutting out the 7/7 tribute because it wasn't "tailored" to an American audience.
• Too many examples of turning the usual American-centric coverage into "NBC presents Team USA featuring the London 2012 Olympics."
• Spinning for American athletes no matter what, especially in swimming, where Rowdy Gaines keeps insisting that Lane 8 is an advantage as long as an American is there, as if there's no reason why the slowest qualifier goes there, and Ryan Lochte can still do no wrong. (It's so bad that when an announcer isn't on the team, she gets called out on Twitter. Sorry Hope, I'm with Brandi on this one.)
• Spoiling results five minutes before they air.
• Hiring Ryan Seacrest, who, as Robert Blanco of USA Today put it, "seems to have tapped into the deep reservoir of disdain every annoyed sports fan has ever felt about any lightweight, extraneous sideline reporter," which, if you ask me, greatly insults every lightweight, extraneous sideline reporter. This talentless, obnoxious twit is doing nothing that can't be done by any one of the scores of NBC people in London, including the reporter the local affiliate where I live sent. But he's a shiny bauble.

Each of these, to some degree, have been intentional. These aren't things that happened to NBC. These haven't been unexpected. Somebody decided to do, or in the case of the announcers, allow, each of these things.

Whoever this somebody is, or somebodies are, I hope they don't ever go near the Olympics again.

Do you think Geno did it? It may depend on if you like him

Let me say right off the top that I hope the sexual harassment charges against Geno Auriemma aren't true.

For one, I don't think you ever want anyone to have done what he's accused of doing, but it's also because Mrs. Last Honest Sport and I are fans of him and his Connecticut women's basketball team.

When I first saw the story, I thought there was no way it could be true. Geno is a man who has coached young women for decades with no hint of scandal in how he treated them, whose top lieutenant (Chris Dailey) is a woman and who has been known for years as a friend and supporter of women coaches such as Sherri Coale, Muffet McGraw and the late Maggie Dixon, among others. He's also a married man with daughters.

("But what about his relationship with Pat Summitt?" you may be asking. I've always thought their feud -- which may be thawing -- was less about gender and more about being the big swinging whistle in women's college basketball ... a status he wanted and she wanted to keep.)

As you might expect, he has had his defenders since the news came out.

"Obviously, I don't have any idea what did or didn't happen,'' said former UConn All-American Rebecca Lobo, who has known Auriemma for more than 20 years. "But I've only ever known him to be someone of utmost character. And I think the world of him. He's always been of the highest character in every dealing that I've ever had with him or any dealing I've ever witnessed him having with somebody else."

In other precincts, there may be people whose dislike of him make them think that he absolutely could have done such a thing. For example, this. (The funny part is the admonition in the first two comments to stick to the story, as if they knew what was coming.) In the words of poster AirVol:

To me, it's hard to believe much of what people do to get themselves in trouble. Having said that, with everything we've heard or know about him, why would you have such a hard time believing it? I won't be surprised if others come forward with similar charges.

But none of us -- not Rebecca Lobo, not AirVol, not me -- knows what happened, and I've already pointed out, our opinions are easily determined by our biases. As Mrs. Last Honest Sport and I were talking about the case over dinner last night, the conversation turned to the Duke lacrosse case, where a lot of the assumption of guilt came because of the white, relatively well-off jocks appearing to be, to put it mildly, jerks.

However, being a jerk isn't criminal (phew!), and while I wouldn't have been shocked if the players had been guilty, it never did seem like there was any evidence, and the case, as we all know now, came apart.

In all likelihood, we'll see what evidence does or doesn't exist in Auriemma's case. But until then, we should probably heed the words of Mechelle Voepel.

There will be a lot of immediate speculation by people about which side they believe. These situations can be precarious for journalists, frankly. There are times when we can prudently state opinions. But there are other times when we need to let the system take its course as we try to sort out what happened.

I can say in nearly two decades of working as a journalist with Auriemma, he has never been anything but professional. In fairness, I do not interact with him in any other capacity. No one has ever told me, on or off the record, about him mistreating them in any way.

By the same token, I have not ever spoken with Hardwick. Her allegations raise very real, serious issues that women in the workforce still face in our society. Whether her case in particular actually has merit, though, must be adjudicated.

Four years later, Lindsay Whalen gets her due

When I saw that USA Basketball named the first 11 members to this year's women's Olympic basketball team, there was just one name I was looking for.

I knew Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi (still my favorite) were going to be there. There weren't a lot of surprises among the others, although I was happy to see Swin Cash back on the team. Tamika Catchings and Candace Parker were among the other obvious choices, and Maya Moore might be better than all of them someday.

But the name I was looking for was Lindsay Whalen.

I fell hard for Whalen in 2004, when her University of Minnesota team beat Duke in the Mideast Regional final. Beyond being a terrific player, she was just ... fun to watch.



So I was very excited when the Connecticut Sun swung a trade that ultimately ended up with the team drafting Whalen that year, as I went to a few games each year at the Mohegan Sun. I always enjoyed the anticipation of what would happen next as Whalen headed up the court with the ball and the play unfolded ... would she pass, pull up for a shot or head to the basket?

She and Katie Douglas made a great backcourt, and if Whalen hadn't been hurt, they would have won the 2005 WNBA championship.

And then the Sun traded Whalen, not for basketball reasons, but because she wanted to go back home to Minnesota (although at least the trade wasn't an epic hosing that the Douglas trade to her home in Indiana was).

I've maybe watched two Sun games since. I was that mad, and still am..

To my mind, the only point guard in the WNBA who's better than Whalen is Sue Bird, but there's no shame being the second-best point guard in world. Yet when it came time to name to 2008 Olympic team, she wasn't on it.

Kara Lawson was. Lawson is a pretty good player, but she's no Lindsay Whalen. She just isn't. For the past four years, whenever I've seen Lawson on ESPN, I've always thought of her as being the player who's carrying around Lindsay Whalen's Olympic gold medal.

So when I scanned the list and found Whalen's name on it, I was happy. Now she'll get a chance for that gold medal she should have had four years ago.

How many of your spouses analyze figure skating scores, huh?

We're big Johnny Weir fans in this house. Between his skating and his not really giving a crap about what people think of him, he's too entertaining for words.

Plus, if Johnny Weir didn't exist to skate to Lady Gaga, or Lady Gaga didn't exist to give Johnny Weir music to skate to, we'd have to invent one or the other.



We were hoping to see the now newly married Weir perform that routine during the exhibition at the Vancouver Olympics two years ago, but no luck. As my wife and I watched, we were convinced he got hosed by the judges, but she went out and did a statistical analysis of it. (I'll spare you the chart with the scores.)

"According to the scores:

In the short program, only Lysacek, Plushenko, Takahashi and Oda had more points in executed elements.  Weir’s only error was to go off on the wrong edge on his triple flip, which lost him 1.2 points.

In the long program, only Lysacek, Plushenko, and Oda had more points in executed elements.  And Oda was only slightly better (.02 points), and ultimately lost 3 points for losing his skate and falling down.   Weir’s only two errors were going off the wrong edge on his triple flip again, which lost him 1.2 points, and flubbing one spin, which cost him .54 points.

However, here is where things get interesting.

In the short program:

·         His choreography score was tied with Oda for last among the top 7 skaters. 

·         His transitions score was third from last among the top 7 skaters.  Only Plushenko and Oda were worse.

·         His interpretation score was second from last among the top 7 skaters.   Only Oda was worse.

·         His performance/execution and skating skills scores were last among the top 7 skaters. 

As a result, his artistic elements score was the second to last score among the top 7 skaters.  Only Oda was worse.

In the long program:

·         His choreography score was second from last among the top 7 skaters.  Only Oda was worse.

·         His transitions, interpretation and skating skills score were last among the top 7 skaters.

·         His performance/execution score was tied with Oda for last among the top 7 skaters. 

As a result, again, his artistic elements score was the second to last score among the top 7 skaters.  Only Oda was worse, and Oda ended up ultimately in 7^th place.

So if you looked at this competition on paper, without seeing the performances, you would conclude that Johnny Weir was an athletic skater with no artistic skills.  In nine out of 10 total categories in artistic elements, his score was worse than Plushenko’s – Plushenko, a skater who is constantly criticized for having no artistic skills.

Yet the criticism of Weir is always exactly the opposite.

Bottom line:  they couldn’t get him on technical elements, so they nailed him on artistic stuff, and denied him the bronze medal he should have won."

This is why I have the best wife.