The US and Italy squared off tonight in match that started off with a strong American side attacking into an Italian defense that was simply absorbing everything. The Italy that played Ghana using the midfield was gone and the classic counter-attacking Azurri style was back. Though the Americans controlled the run of the play for the first 20 minutes, Italy capitalized on a perfectly executed set play to hammer a headball past star goalkeeper Casey Keller. The US deflated slightly after that,... [More]

Angola vs. MexicoThough there’s been some supremely good football in the first week of the world cup, there has also been some disappointing football. And then there’s the Angola-Mexico match. Now that was so bad, it was funny. The Angolans outclassed the Mexicans throughout most of the match, mostly due to their ability to string two whole passes together where the Mexicans were managing at most one. Mexico must have gotten the mistaken notion that they were good just because they consistently beat the USA.... [More]

Lance ArmstrongThe article Armstong cleared of doping charges (Sports Illustrated) brings a sigh of relief to anyone still biting their nails over whether Lance cheated when he won his first Tour de France. The conclusion of this latest bout of shipping 7–year-old samples of Lance’s urine around Europe comes not with exoneration of any wrongdoing, but of the inapplicability of the given evidence. Since it cannot be proved that the samples were not tampered with, they cannot be used as evidence. Furthermore, any results of tests... [More]

The article, Build It, Or Else (Weekly Standard) is about public funding of private gain in an arena other than the military. Sports teams have been playing the “stadium hopping, city-hopping” game for several decades now and its only getting worse. The most recent and egregious instance is Washington D.C. “issuing $535 million in bonds to build [a] stadium” for the Montreal Expos, which are moving in as soon as it is complete. The article lists a litany of other stadiums, from baseball and football stadiums to... [More]

The Olympics can be a harsh mistress:

Swiss Men’s Hockey Team Shocks Canada

Coming only two days after their stunning upset of the world champion Czech Republic, 3-2, the Swiss team shut out the defending Olympic champions in a hard-fought battle.

Japan upsets Canada in women’s curling

Curling is more popular in Canada than hockey, if you can believe that. The women’s team is favored to win the Olympics again this year; they lost to Japan today.

‘Nuff said.

Last night saw the Olympics pairs figure skating final unfold in Torino. Unusually, things were going quite well and there had been only one judging anomoly for most of the evening. That one occurred when a Russian couple mysteriously got enough points to maintain their 8th place position over a 9th place Polish couple that outshone them completely. Figure skating is complicated to judge and the most unnoticable things (like which edge you’re using and so on) are quite hard and get marked... [More]

Let’s break tradition and start off with good news first.

Non-US coverage is quite good

Whereas many of you in the States might be suffering from the same wonderful NBC (prime-time … I’ll get to that) coverage, those in other parts of the world are faring a bit better. Has NBC Turned The Olympics Into Will And Greece? is a discussion that runs the gamut of complaints about NBC coverage. There are the stories of crass commercialism:

• Athletes not allowed to carry or display any brands that... [More]

If you’ve been watching the World Cup, setting your alarm for 2:30 in the morning and dragging yourself out of bed to watch Andreas Cantor scream at you in Spanish on Univision, you’ve seen a lot of questionable refereeing. Probably the most often-miscalled play is offsides, in which the linesman always seems to err for the defense.

There have been other game-changing calls, though. Probably the first was in the first round of games in the group stage, in which Turkey was robbed of a tie and a... [More]

FIFA World Cup News is reporting that Rivaldo fined for fake injury, which occurred (or didn’t, in fact) during Brazil’s match against Turkey. Apparently, the fine was assessed in lieu of an outright ban from the tournament, as FIFA is admanant about preventing fakery from dominating soccer. From the looks of some matches, this is almost definitely a losing battle, as there has been quite a bit of excess flailing and extreme acrobatics again this year.

“Rivaldo admitted after the match that he... [More]”

Real Madrid won the European Champion’s Cup for the ninth time on Wednesday, on a goal from Zinedine Zidane that was simply amazing. Goal.com (UK version) has Zidane wonder-strike clinches Real´s ninth European Cup, which has the best coverage I could find.

“Roberto Carlos sent a speculative looping cross into the area and the French international midfielder showed wonderful balance and composure to lash an unstoppable volley into the top corner.”

I didn’t find a video, but this is pretty... [More]

Zoloft

So, now that we’ve all learned how to become Olympic champions (eat at McDonald’s, drink Budweiser and chug Zoloft, which, by the way, shouldn’t be a surprising sponsor of the Olympics, since Study Finds Utah Leads Nation in Antidepressant Use). Mark Morford reports in Numerous Mormons On Prozac that Utah has twice the national average in anti-depressant usage.

<q>Other states with high antidepressant use were Maine and Oregon. Utah’s rate of antidepressant use was twice the rate of... [More]

The LA Times has another Olympics story, called Want to Sire an Olympic Hopeful?…, with a humorous look at creating your very own Olympic athlete that you can cheer for in some embarassing way that NBC will be sure to zoom in on way too close and broadcast to the nation for what seems like several painfully long minutes.

<q>The Olympic Games depress me, so I am glad they are over. I don’t need to be reminded every four winters that I married a woman who comes from a family of oafs, which... [More]

Steven Bradbury: A mastermind in the sport of short-track speedskating, he was well-positioned in the men’s 1,000 final, way behind the pack, waiting patiently for the other four competitors to wipe out so he could cruise home for the gold. My kind of Olympic champion. The wily Aussie is now forever a part of the sporting lexicon: Whenever an athlete succeeds through nothing more than dumb luck, it’s now called “pulling a Bradbury.”

Wayne Gretzky: He snubbed Patrick Roy, he left Joe Thornton... [More]

In a little-reported press conference before the Olympics, SatireWire reports that Bush Asks Non-U.S. Olympians to Unite…

<q> … We have a problem because the enemies of justice, the enemies of liberty and prosperity, would like nothing more than to see America’s weaknesses exploited. They would like nothing more than to celebrate our humiliation on the international stage that is the Olympics. You must not let this happen. You must help us strike another blow against the forces of tyranny... [More]

CNN/Sports Illustrated has the latest on Simon Ammann in Gold Again…. Switzerland has changed gears in the winter Olympics from the ski hills to the ski-jumping hills. Simon Ammann comes out of nowhere to take both of the individual events in the ski-jump, the K90 and the k120.

<q>The 20-year-old Swiss, who looks as if he could pass for 14, joined Finland’s Matti Nykanen as the only jumpers to win events on both hills in the same Winter Olympics. Nykanen did it in Calgary in 1988. …... [More]