This weekend I traveled up to Cleveland with my 8-year old son to see a Cleveland Indians game. While sitting there watching the Tribe get trounced by the Reds, I wondered if there will come a day when ballpark seats will need to be made 8-inches wider. I couldn’t help but notice how many people there were not just over-weight, but grossly so.

At what point will we stop encouraging people to loose weight overall and just start making everything bigger?

I will say though, that the irony was not lost on me seeing some rather obese women wearing Indians jersey’s that said “SIZEMORE” on the back.

Us Llamas have been taking in as much World Cup Soccer/Football as we can. But to me, it looks like the most important skill is not dribbling, shooting, or even scoring.

The most important skill appears to be falling down on the ground and rolling around like a kid every time you are bumped.

Technorati Tags: world cup soccer

After winning the school’s first NCAA Football National Championship in 35 years, University of Texas football coach Mack Brown asked his new champions to keep the title in perspective. “I don’t want this,”he told the Longhorns after the Rose Bowl, “to be the best thing that ever happens in your life.”

With Ricky Williams’ return to pro football last night amid the requisite talk show lashings, I wondered what’s worse: an athlete who can’t play with the team because he or she gets suspended for taking steroids or an athlete who, at the last minute, simply decides he or she doesn’t want to play with the team?

Now that I invoked the hot-name-of-the-moment to get your attention, you should know something about her — she sucks. Like The Phantom Menace, she doesn’t live up to the hype, not by a long shot.

This is the post I should have written, but didn’t: http://www.slate.com/id/2120160/

It details the sorry state of open wheel racing and why Danica Patrick isn’t any good after all better than I could have — and I’m actually a fan of open wheel racing.

It also shows you why so many real fans of open wheel racing have migrated over to Formula 1.

University of Oklahoma head baseball coach Larry Cochell resigned Sunday after it was reported that he used racial epithets while ‘praising’ an African-American outfielder.

In two separate, un-taped interviews with ESPN, Cochell apparently, in describing freshman infielder Joe Dunigan said, “There’s no n—– in him.” The network informed Oklahoma that Cochell had used such racially-charged language.

If racism is born of ignorance, as is the generally accepted belief, is Cochell ignorant merely for using such language to describe a player, is he ignorant for thinking it acceptable to use language that if used by an African-American might have been acceptable, is he ignorant for thinking such a distinction truly exists, is racial tension a thing of the past that can be made light of, or something else?

The NCAA just added a 12th game to college football’s regular season and claimed its decision wasn’t based on money. This is the same organization that resists adding an end-of-season playoffs because it’s worried about how it will affect its student-athletes’ academic careers.

A 10-game regular season with an 8-team playoff would create, at most, a 13-game season for the champion and runner-up while allowing college football to crown a true national champion. But the NCAA won’t create a playoff system because it’s too worried about losing bowl money, yet fans are supposed to believe this same organization isn’t selling out the student-athletes it allegedly loves for an extra week’s worth of TV and ticket income.

This is the greatest weekend in sports. Bar none. Don’t try to argue. I’ve done the math on this. (Even without St. Patrick’s Day kicking off the madness of March, it would be the pinnacle of quality sports overload.) And don’t forget: a 12 always upsets a five, but a 13 rarely wins. Ball in!

I get Olympic fever each time. If I could tape my eyelids open Tom & Jerry style, I would. You do remember that cat and mouse cartoon from the early 80s, don’t you? Anyhow, a few things came to my mind while I was watching the sports orgy we call the Olympiad.

First of all… Misty May. This last week her name was the third most searched for phase on search engines. I’m guessing everyone was trying to find out if she’s a lesbian or not. If I was a bettin’ man, I’d say yes.

I mean, did you see that gold medal celebration? That straddle hug in the sand followed by that ass slap had a soft-core, direct-to-DVD porn style quality to it. Wonderfully delicious, I tell you. The whole week of Women’s Beach Volleyball, pictures of those skimpy suits dominated Yahoo! News’s Most Popular listing.

But the part I really enjoyed was watching the sports that only get TV time once every four years. I didn’t care about the men’s basketball Dream Team, even when Haiti nearly beat them. I can watch basketball 35 weeks a year. But you only get to see trampoline gymnastics at the Olympics. Yes, trampoline gymnastics. People on trampolines, jumping 40 feet in the air with a high potential to wipe out–just the type of sport I like to watch. I think the more spectacular the wipe out the more bonus points you should get.

I did feel though, that the idea behind the Silver medal is flawed. For many sports, the person who looses the Gold medal match gets the Silver. And another match gives the Bronze to a winner. In other words, the Silver medal is the loser’s medal. The person who wins the Bronze gets to tell their grandkids about how they trained hard, got to the Olympics, and beat their opponent to win the Bronze. The person with the Silver gets to tell their grandkids they got it when Sparky McToot of Crapistan beat his ass in Greco Roman Wrestling.

Here is how to resolve it. The loser of the Gold Medal match competes in another match for the Silver. Whoever loses the Silver Medal match competes for the Bronze. That would ensure each medal goes to a winner, not a looser. Yes it means more matches, but it’s better for everyone. We get to see more events, and McDonald’s get the chance to slap more logos on the screen.

Now that I’ve come down from my Olympic high, I can get ready for my next favorite sport–the political convention.

Do the Olympics still matter to Americans? Or do we need a Cold War enemy to make the events mean more than just being faster and stronger? Have we become so inundated with year-round athletics that the Olympics seem no more important than the World Championships? Are there not one or two athletes that the nation can adopt, like Dan and Dave, Carl Lewis, or the original Dream Team? Or is there another reason so few seem to attend and even watch the Olympics?

I don’t know the true reason or reasons, but I felt that same apathy and disinterest—until I started watching. When I saw the American softball team beat Canada with the mercy rule, I got excited. And I don’t care much for softball. When I saw some skinny, 19-year-old kid from Turkey set an Olympic and Junior World record in weight-lifting, I couldn’t wait to see the next event.

The joy and heartache Olympic athletes undergo is contagious. And I’m glad I’ve started watching. I’ll never see the Men’s 50M Rifle winner after the games conclude. The Women’s Water Polo team will never be on TV again. But right now, while the Olympics are on, I enjoy seeing athletes who, for the most part, aren’t overpaid or coddled. People who truly have a passion for what they doing and strive to be the best, no matter the circumstances.

So, maybe the ad I’ve seen during The Games is true. When people say athletes shouldn’t be role models, maybe they’re talking about the wrong athletes.