Dope on dope on dope ...

Coincidentally, the reports that Lance Armstrong is mulling a confession for a career-long and systematic doping regimen that helped him win the Tour de France seven times as well as an Olympic medal and plenty of other races, comes just as I finished reading teammate Tyler Hamilton’s book chronicling those years.

Obviously, Armstrong’s admission is too little, too late. But, with anything involving Armstrong one has to look for a Machiavellian plan at work. What is the endgame for a guy who spent two decades attempting to destroy any one who told the truth? It can’t be that he simply wants to race triathlons or marathons again, could it? He can do that any time or anywhere.

Does he really need attention that badly?

An admission is a bit surprising because there are so many obstacles for Armstrong to leap over. For instance, if he admits to doping all those years, he’s wide open to an array of lawsuits. Over the years Armstrong successfully sued or received settlements from entities that claimed he doped. If it comes out that he actually did everything as reported by the likes of Hamilton and Floyd Landis, there’s going to be a long line of folks trying to get some money.

Armstrong also would be open to federal perjury charges in Landis’ whistle-blower suit against the US Postal racing team. In other words, in order to admit to doping, Armstrong would have to be reassured that he would not lose all of his money nor spend time in jail.

Bigger than everything is the fact that with an admission, Armstrong would have to apologize to A LOT of people. He destroyed careers, ruined businesses and shattered credibility. In every personal relationship, Armstrong was a nuclear bomb—he was a friend for a minute and then devastating the next.

Lance Armstrong is the Bernie Madoff of sports.

Nevertheless, the book Hamilton wrote with Daniel Coyle is fascinating. Most amazing is how much time, energy and money pro riders put into doping. Considering the best riders were paid a salary similar to a veteran situational lefty in the major leagues, it seems as if the primary goal of many was to do drugs.

Here are the biggest takeaways from the book:

• Armstrong wasn’t good enough

Oh sure, he won the Tour de France seven straight years in an era in which most riders were doing all the same things. But how many would he have won if he and all the other riders were clean? What if Jan Ullrich wasn’t suspended for a non-performance enhancing drug like ecstasy?

This isn’t suggesting that Armstrong wasn’t a good bike racer. However, I don’t know if he was as talented as Ullrich or Bjarne Riis or Ivan Basso or Iban Mayo or Alexander Vinokourov or any number of the top riders of his day.

In other words, the drugs worked.

• Everyone who left Lance got popped

Yep, every time a top lieutenant left Armstrong to be The Man on another team, they somehow tested positive. Moreover, they tested positive under extraordinary circumstances. Obviously there was Hamilton and Landis as the biggest names, but what about Roberto Heras? Or, how was it that the biggest threats to Armstrong’s supremacy all met the same fate yet he always seemed to be one step ahead?

Mayo, Basso, Riis, Vinokourov, Ullrich, Hamilton, Landis, etc., etc., etc., all got nailed. Every single one of them.

Everyone got it except for one guy ...

Curious.

• My hematocrit must be too low

I’m running 10 miles a day and I’m tired … where’s the Aleve or Ibuprofen? Anyone see my rest-day blood?

Back to Lance …

More than five years ago, I spoke with Landis about Armstrong and possible secrets he might be hiding. At first the question was couched that perhaps Armstrong, one of the most famous athletes in the world, had a secret tattoo or webbed feet or something relatively benign. Instead, the response from Landis seemed to indicate that Armstrong was a jerk. Re-reading the question and answer after so many have come forward about Armstrong’s alleged doping is fascinating.

“I don’t think I know anything that anyone else knows. People have perceptions of him that might not be very accurate, but I don’t know any details that they wouldn’t know. The guy is obsessed. With whatever he does he is obsessed, and whatever he does he wants to be the best at it.

“Ultimately, he doesn’t have a lot of close friends because of it and he winds up not being the nicest guy. But that doesn’t make him a doper. That doesn’t make him a cheater. It might make him someone you don’t want to be around, but that doesn’t mean he took advantage of anyone else or that he deserves the harassment some people are giving him, like in the Walsh book.”

Not even three years later Landis said that in addition to not being a nice person, Armstrong was indeed a doper and a cheater… just like all the rest of them.

Finally coming clean

NEW YORK — Let’s just get it out of the way at the top… Lance Armstrong is going down and he is going down hard. It’s not unreasonable to believe that jail time could be involved for the seven-time Tour de France champion when the government concludes its investigation.

See, the United States federal government does not like it when a person lies to them. It is quirky that way.

But the thing the government dislikes the most is when it doesn’t get a cut of what it believes it has coming. You know, it wants to wet its beak with a tiny bit of the proceeds as tribute for signing off on that whole Bill of Rights thing. Freedom isn’t free, as they say. It costs a mandated percentage of your yearly income unless you make so much money that you can pay an accountant to talk them down.

Think about it… when Michael Vick went to jail for nearly two years it wasn’t so much as for the dog fighting ring he was operating as it was because he didn’t pay a royalty. He served 21 months in prison for felony conspiracy in interstate commerce, which is a fancy way of saying he didn’t cut the government a slice.

What does this have to do with Lance Armstrong? Well, everything, of course. If the guy was riding for a team sponsored by the United States Postal Service, a government agency, and used the equipment supplied to him to sell for performance-enhancing drugs, well, that’s trouble. In fact, it was alleged last year by his former wing man, Floyd Landis, that Team USPS funded its drug habit by selling its equipment. This was realized, according to the accusations, when Landis wanted a training bike and couldn’t get one.

That training bike was injected as EPO.

Regardless, that’s not what this is all about. When word came out that Armstrong’s closest teammates, George Hincappie and Tyler Hamilton, testified for the federal grand jury it was pretty damning. It meant that the United States feels it had been defrauded.

Of course no one is really thinking about this as a case of fraud, though that’s clearly the undercurrent of the latest bit of cycling and doping news. After all, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond called it at the very beginning. In 2001, shortly before Armstrong threatened to defame LeMond, the first American to win the Tour said:

"If Armstrong's clean, it's the greatest comeback. And if he's not, then it's the greatest fraud."

Actually, LeMond got it both right. Armstrong created both the greatest comeback and perpetrated the greatest fraud. His fight against cancer and the Livestrong campaign very could be the greatest and/or most important foundation founded by an athlete. It’s meaningful work that helps millions and worthy of respect and support.

Who cares if the face of the organization is a fraud, arrogant and vindictive? Or who cares that the seven-time Tour de France champion was the most powerful man in the sport and able to circumvent everything all while pulling the strings of other athletes’ livelihoods and reputations?

Case in point was the time when LeMond was critical of Armstrong’s work with renowned physician/charlatan, Dr. Michele Ferrari. Essentially, LeMond was told to never open his mouth.

"[Armstrong] basically said 'I could find 10 people that will say you took EPO'... The week after, I got multiple people that were on Lance ... Lance's camp, basically saying 'you better be quiet,' and I was quiet for three years. I have a business ... I have bikes that are sold ... and I was told that my sales might not be doing too well if ... just the publicity, the negative publicity."

Armstrong knows all too well about negative publicity. He knows it almost as well as he understands how to bend public opinion with arguments based solely on semantics, public relations and twisted facts that can never been proven. Claims of doping have followed Armstrong for more than a decade, seemingly starting with writer David Walsh who has authored several books detailing systematic and organizational doping. Through all of that, Armstrong’s minions remained steadfast in their defense of him and moved to discredit the writer when all along they knew what was going on. Perhaps the first of the inner circle to call Armstrong a doper was Betsy Andreu, wife of former teammate Frankie Andreu.

Betsy claimed she heard Armstrong tell his doctors in 1996 while undergoing cancer treatment that he took EPO, human growth hormone and steroids. Armstrong claimed that Betsy Andreu confused this with post-chemotherapy treatments where he took the drugs to help boost his red blood cells. However, in 2006 Andreu admitted that he used EPO during the 1999 Tour de France when he was riding as the “super domestique” for Armstrong on the USPS team.

It was shortly after Andreu’s admission that I spoke with Landis about Armstrong and possible secrets he might be hiding. At first the question was couched that perhaps Armstrong, one of the most famous athletes in the world, had a secret tattoo or webbed feet or something relatively benign. Instead, the response from Landis seemed to indicate that Armstrong was a jerk. Re-reading the question and answer after so many have come forward about Armstrong’s alleged doping is fascinating.

“I don’t think I know anything that anyone else knows. People have perceptions of him that might not be very accurate, but I don’t know any details that they wouldn’t know. The guy is obsessed. With whatever he does he is obsessed, and whatever he does he wants to be the best at it.

“Ultimately, he doesn’t have a lot of close friends because of it and he winds up not being the nicest guy. But that doesn’t make him a doper. That doesn’t make him a cheater. It might make him someone you don’t want to be around, but that doesn’t mean he took advantage of anyone else or that he deserves the harassment some people are giving him, like in the Walsh book.”

Not even three years later Landis said that in addition to not being a nice person, Armstrong was indeed a doper and a cheater and very well could deserve some harassment.

Doping is the name of the game
It would be tough to find any rational person to believe Armstrong’s fairy tale these days. Though he is still admired and folks still steadfastly support his cancer foundation, his continued claims that he did not dope during the course of his seven victories in the Tour de France is laughable.

The fact remains that Armstrong likely passed the drug tests because he knew how to work the system very well. The old parallel is that doping in cycling is like stealing signs or throwing spitballs in baseball—it’s only cheating if someone gets caught.

Still, to some who were clean and not quite able to reach that level of the ultra elites, it’s understandable to see why doping is offensive. If all it takes is hard training mixed with some chemistry as opposed to hard work, yeah, it stinks.

But that doesn’t make those who are clean any less naïve. The fact is cycling has always been a living chemistry lab where riders were never shy about finding an edge even if it spat in the face of the spirit of the sport. Maybe it’s human nature to cheat?

The first documented case of doping in cycling dates back to 1886 where the drugs of choice were cocaine, caffeine and strychnine. In 1896, a rider named Choppy Warburton was banned from the sport after claims of massive doping in that years' Bordeaux–Paris race. As a coach, ol’ Choppy was accused of implementing doping programs for his charges. A quick Google search of Choppy and early doping cases reveals this nugget:

“Choppy has been firmly identified as the instigator of drug-taking in the sport [cycling] in the 19th century.”

As early as the 1930s, doping in cycling was so complete that to combat it the Tour de France organizers informed the riders that they would no longer supply drugs. Still, race organizers could not have been too serious since the first anti-doping law in France did not come until the 1960s.

Regardless, it wasn’t until the past decade where the sport instituted tougher tests and even went so far as to suspend riders even when they had not flunked tests. At the same time, the measures taken on by the anti-doping agencies are both inept and draconian often seeming that the testers want to suspend as many athletes as possible to make up for lost time.

Even so, no one believes that the sport will ever really be clean. There will always be something to drink, eat, absorb or inject for the rider looking for an edge or maybe, simply, survival. The adage is that the dopers will always be one step ahead of the testers. Perhaps even there is something so new that it can’t be detected by any blood, urine or DNA test.

Then again, maybe not. Perhaps someone like Armstrong is both a hero and a villain? He very well could be the model and the cautionary tale.

Could Floyd Landis be the modern day Joe Jackson?

Apparently, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, it does make a sound. It’s the same thing as in a bike race when a guy rides faster than everyone else only when he passes the finish line he gets a different type of award.

The difference is that it costs… everything.

So with that, Floyd Landis, one of the sports world’s greatest pariahs, ended his career as a professional bicycling racer. A native of the backwoods hinterlands of Lancaster County, approximately a hilly, 60 miles bike ride west of Philadelphia, Landis won the 2006 Tour de France only to be stripped of his title two days afterwards. Nearly five years after his greatest race, Landis was stripped of his title, his life savings, got a divorce, mourned the suicide of his father-in-law, lost teams, teammates and friends, and, on top of it all, had his career destroyed.

Landis’ victory lap turned into a book tour and benefit to raise cash for his legal defense of a failed doping test taken shortly after a seemingly heroic ride in Stage 17 of the Tour de France.

Yet after two years of racing sporadically for a handful of middling racing teams, Landis told ESPN’s Bonnie D. Ford that he had filed his papers with his former adversaries, the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and no longer has to submit to further drug testing. In other words, Landis will be treated like a U.S. citizen for a change.

According to Ford, Landis grew increasingly frustrated with re-carving a niche in the sport in which he devoted his life. He spent 2009 riding for the U.S.-based United Healthcare team before he was released from his contract, stating that he wished to race in the longer, European stage races which suit his strengths. Landis latched on with Rock Racing only to see the team fail to gain a pro racing license, before finding a spot with the Bahati Foundation Cycling Team with the hope of racing the Tour of California.

However, when Landis decided to reveal his sordid history with doping, and revealed the alleged dopers in his sport—including Lance Armstrong—he was without a team again.

“I’ve spent five years trying to get back to a place that I can never really go back to, and it’s causing more stress than is worth it," Landis told Ford. “There must be more to life than this.”

But does that eliminate Landis from more witch hunts where he is both the hunted and the hunter? Far from it. Landis’ allegations against Armstrong, his inner circle, cycling officials and race directors of the alleged systematic, drug-aided run of Tour de France victories, were toxic enough to draw an investigation from federal prosecutors. A U.S. Justice Department-backed grand jury in Los Angeles has subpoenaed several of Landis’ and Armstrong’s teammates and fellow riders.

Just to prove he wasn’t kidding around, Landis filed a “whistle-blower” lawsuit last September and has met with federal investigators and doping officials.

In other words, Landis may not be riding his bike in races any more, but he won’t be far from the spotlight. Since the investigation into the doping allegations comes from Landis’ and Armstrong’s days of riding with the U.S. Postal Service team, a government agency whose funds are considered public, could be deemed as fraud or conspiracy against the United States. Undoubtedly, there are many folks—especially Armstrong—who are anxiously awaiting the results of the grand jury.

About the suit, a spokesman for Armstrong told The Wall Street Journal:

“By his own admission, he is a serial liar, an epic cheater, and a swindler who raised and took almost a million dollars from his loyal fans based on his lies. What remains a complete mystery is why the government would devote a penny of the taxpayer’s money to help Floyd Landis further his vile, cheating ambitions. And all aimed directly at Lance Armstrong, a man who earned every victory and passed every test while working for cancer survivors all over the world.”

No, Landis did not respond with, “Takes one to know one.”

The Armstrong camp has been quick to point out that the most-decorated racer in the history of the sport has never tested positive or been penalized for doping. They do not point out that positive tests never have been documented against baseball stars Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire or Jose Canseco. Landis says he was caught in a positive test because of an error by the lab, so take it all for what it’s worth.

“I’m relatively sure this sport cannot be fixed, but that’s not my job, that's not my fight,” Landis told Ford of the impetus behind his retirement, one he mulled for months before finally filing the paperwork.

“I don't want it to come across that I'm quitting because I'm bitter,” Landis added.

Nevertheless, the Landis saga is just about over. Sure, he’ll definitely return to the spotlight if the grand jury returns with an indictment against Armstrong or other cyclists, but otherwise, a story that began in glory and perseverance has ended amidst sadness and anger.

In a way, the end of Landis’ career could turn out to be like the end of disgraced baseball star Joe Jackson. Though Landis was never officially banned from his sport, his tiff with Armstrong and the cyclist union have effectively blacklisted him from employment on a team that could race in the European circuit. Still, Landis rode in the U.S. and every once in a while turned up for a mountain bike race, including the Leadville 100 in Colorado.

Legend has it that Joe Jackson used to turn up in small little towns far from the glory of the major leagues with a pseudonym just because he loved to play so much. Of course there was no television in those days so even the most ardent baseball fan could have been unaware what Jackson looked like. In our oversaturated media age, though, Landis doesn’t have that sort of luxury… but that doesn’t mean he can’t show up unannounced to a weekend race in any town in the country just to go for a ride.

Guys at the highest level of the sport have trouble giving it up so easily and at age 35, with a surgically repaired hip and a passion for the sport, Landis could be the ultimate vagabond racer. He’s been riding a lot, Landis told Ford.

“I've been riding my bike a lot, trying to figure out life, which is the same reason I did it to start with, so I've come full circle. I'll always ride my bike. But I'll never start on a line on a road and try to get to another line on a road faster than another guy. That's over.”

Over for now as he  just rides in peace in the mountains that ring his home in Southern California…

That is until the posse from France captures and extradites him.

photos from ROAD Magazine and Recovox News.

Nothing has changed except for everything

Nothing has changed. Up is not down, black is not white and there are no dogs sleeping with cats. The earth still spins on its axis and righteous indignation is still the rallying cry for losers.

The truth—a very mysterious and sordid concept these days—is still very plain. Today’s revelations notwithstanding, a cooked case is still crispy and charred just so.

But yes, I still believe that if Floyd Landis and his failed drug test from Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France were presented on the same standards of the rule of law, it would have been thrown out of court. I also believe that if Landis were a baseball player, a football player, a golfer or any other pro athlete outside of cycling, he would be on the field right now. Like anyone else in elite sports, Landis probably was not-guilty though he was never innocent.

Maybe this is where that righteous indignation line can be reinserted. After all, everybody gets screwed at one time or another. There’s no sense whining about it and I still do not care if Landis was cocktailing HgH with winstrol and deer urine all while freezing his rest-day blood in a hyperbaric chamber. The fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution still exists. We all own it, but not if you like to ride a bike, win races or have your blood tested at the Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage in Châtenay-Malabry. 

Those guys…

Then again, a lot of us look pretty stupid right now.

The above section is what hasn’t changed. The part that has changed is everything else. One of the most incredible days of the Tour de France and exciting sports day I have ever seen is more than just a little tainted. Oh sure, Landis still says he did not use the synthetic testosterone he tested positive for (according to that French lab) during that fateful 17th Stage in 2006, but according to admissions published on ESPN.com by Bonnie Ford today, Landis used testosterone in previous editions of the Tour de France as well as HgH during the 2006 season.

In other words… never mind.

Oh, Landis came clean finally, unburdening himself in e-mails to cycling and doping officials and in an interview with Ford in which he claims to have started a systematic doping program in June of 2002 when he joined up with the U.S. Postal Service team. That team, of course, was the vestige of Lance Armstrong and his hand-picked manager, Johan Bruyneel, and it’s where Landis said he leaned all about the hows and whys of performance-enhancing drug use. It wasn’t just old fashioned steroids and syringes, either. Nope, Landis appeared to be more than just a dabbler.

He says he used EPO, a drug so effective it not only improves performance quickly, but it also has the potential to kill a guy if not used properly. He also admitted to using female hormones, diabetes medication and the tried-and-true blood doping, which is when a person removes some of his own blood and stashes it in a freezer only to re-inject it when seeking a boost. That’s some old-school stuff right there.

“I don't feel guilty at all about having doped. I did what I did because that's what we (cyclists) did and it was a choice I had to make after 10 years or 12 years of hard work to get there; and that was a decision I had to make to make the next step,” Landis told Ford. “My choices were, do it and see if I can win, or don't do it and I tell people I just don't want to do that, and I decided to do it.”

Certainly that’s not a statement we hear too many athletes make, let alone one who spent three years and approximately $2 million of his own money attempting to appeal his doping ban. Making the admission even more compelling is the fact that Landis says Armstrong—and many other of the top U.S. riders—were complicit and drug users just like him.

The accusations, of course, are where people start to take notice. It’s one thing to admit that you have done something wrong, but to point out the failings of others is something significant. There’s a word for people who do those types of things and that word is, “rat.” We’ll get to the rat thing in a moment.

Nevertheless, one rider who Landis says was a doper was Dave Zabriskie, who is currently leading the Tour of California. Zabriskie was a roommate and training partner with Landis in Spain. It was in Girona, Spain, the training base for Armstrong and Landis, where it is said one of the world’s most famous athletes kept his blood in a freezer for doping. It’s also there where Bruyneel is said to have schooled Landis on the use of steroid patches, blood doping and human growth hormone.

Kind of like your readin', ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmatic of doping.

The bombshell is the stuff about Armstrong, but that goes without saying. Armstrong has long been accused and suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs in order to become the most decorated cyclist in the history of the sport, but he always fought back tenaciously pointing out that like Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds, he never tested positive for drug use.

But no other rider has ever levied accusations against Armstrong, especially one as intimate to him as Landis. It’s one thing to hear whispers of Armstrong dumping Landis’ “rest-day blood” down a sink during the Tour de France to prove some sort of angry point, but it’s another completely to read the words of one of Armstrong’s closest teammates saying that he got drugs directly from him.

Landis told Ford that he gave Dr. Michele Ferrari, Armstrong’s personal trainer, $10,000 in cash for a season’s worth of doping. Six years ago Ferrari was convicted of fraud and lost his medical license in Italy, and Landis says the doctor personally extracted and re-injected his blood for him. Landis also said he and Armstrong discussed the efficacy of the then-newly developed test for EPO in 2002.

“I didn't wish to take the risks on my own and especially since it was fairly clear that his advice was endorsed by Lance himself,” Landis told Ford. “And therefore Johan and the other guys that knew of it and were involved—working with him, they'd understand the risks that I was taking as well and therefore trust me.”

Trust. That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Why, after all these years, does the guy talk about this now? After years of refusing to cooperate or name names—you know, steadfastly choosing not to be a rat—why is Landis ratting out the old gang? After all, before he had everything to lose and yet kept his mouth shut. At least we think he kept his mouth shut though Armstrong told reporters in California this morning that he had been receiving “harassing” messages from Landis for quite some time.

Still, this morning Armstrong never said, “Floyd is a liar.” He also did not say, “I didn’t do it.” Maybe that’s beside the point.

"It's our word against his word," Armstrong said instead. "I like our word. We like our credibility. Floyd lost his credibility a long time ago."

What about Armstrong or the cycling union? Do they have any credibility? Who believes any of them at this point anymore? Armstrong might like his credibility, but it's not like Landis is the only person saying the seven-time Tour champion is a doper.

That list is long and varied.

But really… why now? Landis says he doesn’t expect anyone to believe him and it’s almost impossible for him to become a bigger pariah than he already is. The money is gone, his wife left, and his book is nothing more than a bunch of paper with words on them that are meaningless. Worse, he had to call up his mom in Lancaster County and tell her the truth.

What good is that going to do now? No team is going to hire him, the money isn’t going to come back and divorce is like toothpaste already out of the tube. When Armstrong said this morning that Landis has no credibility, it’s difficult to counter. That’s especially true when Landis admits that he does even have concrete proof and there is no paper trail or smoking gun—just some names, dates and details.

Truth? Who knows?

“I want to clear my conscience,” Landis told Ford. “I don't want to be part of the problem anymore.

“With the benefit of hindsight and a somewhat different perspective, I made some misjudgments. And of course, I can sit here and say all day long, ‘If I could do it again I'd do something different,’ but I just don't have that choice.”

No, there’s always a choice. Just because the world is a rat race doesn’t mean a guy has to be a rat. Just because a guy likes to ride his bike and play sports doesn’t mean he has to prostitute himself. Life is full of choices and a man lucky enough to have the mind to make a conscious choice is hard to feel sorry for.

But that doesn’t answer the question…

Why? Why now?

No, nothing has changed, aside, of course, for everything.

International Man of Mystery

Here we go again…

Just when we thought Floyd Landis could go hole up in his Unabomber-like shed behind a car wash in some desolate Southern California mountain town, it comes out today that he’s a wanted man. Unfortunately for Floyd, the summons isn’t from an international racing team like Lance Armstrong’s Team RadioShack or Alberto Contador’s Team Astana.

No, this time a French judge has issued an international arrest warrant for the disgraced 2006 Tour de France champ and Lancaster County, Pa. native. According to the reports, judge Thomas Cassuto wants to question Landis about a supposed computer-hacking incident at the French Chatenay-Malabry laboratory. That was the lab that reportedly committed more than 200 procedural and protocol errors when testing Landis’ positive sample in 2006.

Since Landis’ two-year ban, the lab is no longer used by the cycling union (UCI) and a possible reduction in grant money from the French government puts the lab’s future in doubt.

So maybe with extinction hanging over its head, the brass at the lab decided to go after one of the biggest pariahs in the history of sports? Or maybe there’s something to it? After all, nearly a year ago the French newspaper L'Express reported information that had been obtained from the alleged computer hacking was sent to a Canadian lab from a computer registered to Landis’ coach, Arnie Baker. A subsequent report by The New York Times showed, “No evidence has surfaced to connect Mr. Landis or Dr. Baker to the hacking, and each has denied any involvement.”

But when French judges (or any judge, for that matter) makes up his mind that something needs to happen, well by golly, something happens. Who cares how trumped up the charges might be or if the judge is even allowed to issue an international arrest warrant because when it comes out to be all BS, it isn’t the judge or the lab that has to deal with the fallout. It’s Floyd.

Man, they must really hate it when Americans win that bike race.

Meanwhile, it’s kind of interesting that Landis has become to the French what Charles Barkley is to Milwaukee. You know how it always seemed as if the Milwaukee police were sitting at the airport waiting for Sir Chuck to show up so they could slap the cuffs on him and take him downtown for brawling in a city bar. However, when some dude was living in the center of the town and near a large university where he holed up in an apartment and killed and ate people, well, they had no idea how to get that guy.

So some wacky French judge can issue an International arrest warrant for Floyd Landis for alleged computer hacking a drug lab that lied about and railroaded him, but when it comes to handing over murderers like Ira Einhorn or an alleged pedophile/rapist like Roman Polanski, or even drumming up support for convicted cop killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, well, the French will stand up for them.

A guy who revealed the incompetence and hypocrisy of the French-supported drug lab, well, throw the book at that guy.

How dare he point out their crappy practices.

Since there is an international arrest warrant out for Landis, we have to ask…

Is there a reward? Will there be “Wanted” posters hanging up at the post office? If so, I’m thinking about putting together a posse to take him down and turn him in. He shouldn’t be too hard to find riding his bike up in the mountains… he’s quick though.

We might need to set up an ambush.

Post-script: after the writing of this, France's anti-doping chief Pierre Bordry had mistakenly described the arrest warrant as international. The warrant is only applicable on French soil, but it is possible in such cases to issue an international warrant at a later date if needed. I say we still go after him. Posse coming together.

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Floyd and Lance... Together again?

When we last checked in with Floyd Landis, he was preparing for a three-point shootout with Utah Jazz guard, Deron Williams. Obviously, Williams won but that had less to do with the fact that he has shot better than 36 percent from long range during his NBA career and more to do with the fact that Floyd was a Mennonite from Lancaster County who wasn’t allowed to wear shorts when he was a kid.

Besides, everyone knows that Mennonite kids are like Hakeem Olajuwon in the low post. And this is just mean:

Of course Landis had to squeeze in the showdown against Williams between a full slate of races for the domestic bicycling racing squad, Team OUCH, in his first year back following serious hip surgery and his suspension during the 2006 Tour de France. Yet after just one season with OUCH (and a full year of serious training), Landis left OUCH for Rock Racing because he hoped to ride in more challenging races in Europe.

It was a bold move for a couple of reasons. One is that in eight races last year, Landis cracked the top 10 just twice and when racing against an international field in the Tour of California he finished a respectable 23rd.

Those results don’t exactly make the top teams clamor to sign him up, but it wasn’t horrible. Horrible, I imagine, is Floyd shooting three-pointers against an NBA All-Star.

Another reason the departure from OUCH was bold was because Rock Racing wasn’t exactly the most stable team around. Not only did it have a bit of an outlaw image with the black kits complete with the skull and bones insignia, but also because it ended up becoming a home for a few star-crossed riders like Tyler Hamilton and Oscar Sevilla.

In a sense Landis definitely fit in with Rock, but because the International Cycling Union denied the team’s request for a license to race in Europe in 2010 it appears as if he is in an all-too familiar position called limbo.

Still, even though he doesn’t seem to have many options for racing on the big races this summer, Landis put on a Rock Racing shirt and won the time trial at the Tour of the Bahamas in a record time. Better yet, he brought out the pre-suspension trash talk after the race that everyone always (not so) secretly loved.

According to the stellar site, Twisted Spoke, Floyd said: “I was on somebody else’s road bike with clinchers and no aero clothes. Take that [bleepers].”

So does the record ride and the salty talk mean he’s ready to take on Europe? Tough question. Cycling is not like American sports where athletes who serve drug-related suspensions are welcomed back after doing the time. The Europeans hold grudges not so much because of the actual deed, but mostly because someone had the audacity to be suspected of anything.

Due process? Nah, that’s for wimpy sports where there is an actual union protecting the athletes.

No, Landis doesn’t have too many options, but that hasn’t stopped the speculation from making the rounds. He’s been mentioned as a good fit for American team BMC Racing, which projects to be a solid outfit for the Tour de France. However, the brass for BMC are the same guys (owner Andy Rihs and director John Lelangue) that ran Team Phonak the year Floyd simultaneously won and was forced to give up the victory in the Tour de France.

From Day 1, of course, Floyd has been linked as a possible grinder for his old pal Lance Armstrong and his brand new Team RadioShack. That might be nothing more than wild dreams from the press and/or fans of personalities that blend like car crashes, but after all the speculation runs its course, it always comes back to the same place…

Lance and Floyd together again?

It is almost too good to be true. Imagine if Lennon and McCartney decided to go back into the studio together after The Beatles broke up. That may be pushing it a bit, but Landis was Lance’s head hatchet man for three Tour victories. Moreover, Lance hasn’t ruled it out.

“I wouldn’t rule anything out,” Armstrong said. “He’s a great rider, a tremendous story.”

That could be nothing more than a politically correct answer because there is no indication that the two camps have discussed anything. Still, for some reason it always comes back to those two riding together for one last go-around.

We’re getting the band back together!

Again, who knows if it’s possible? Who knows if it will happen? But just know that no one has ruled it out as ridiculous. After all, by all accounts Lance is a loyal guy who remembers every slight and good deed. When the doping agencies put the screws on Landis and asked him to give up Lance, Landis refused to be a rat or lie. Instead of selling out anyone Floyd took it and paid with much more than money.

Certainly acts like that are worth something… right?

Here comes Floyd

This weekend is the big, TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Classic, the classic race that skirts through the Art Museum area, Fairmont Park and, of course, Manayunk. In some sections of town the race is a pretty good excuse to hang out and drink beer… Not that there is ever a bad excuse.

Nevertheless, ever since the race was saved by a last-minute sponsor with a fresh injection of cash (hey, now), the comings-and-goings of the big race have kind of flown beneath the radar. Makes sense, of course, since most Philadelphians are more worried about ankle surgery for Brian Westbrook a full 12 weeks before the football season rather than some unknown bike racers tearing through town.

That would be the case, of course, if they were all unknown. But they aren’t. Floyd Landis is going to be there.

We all remember Floyd, of course. His story has been told and re-told thousands of times since he won the Tour de France in 2006 only to have it stripped away after two years of arbitration hearings and appeals through the kangaroo courts conducted by USADA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Since then Floyd has racked up $2 million in legal bills, according to reports. He moved at of his home in Murrietta, Calif. to shack up and train in a cabin in Idyllwild, a small town located in the San Jacinto Mountains south of Los Angeles.

He has a mortgage, had hip-replacement surgery, served a two-year suspension and gotten divorced. Now, he has been named in an international arrest warrant for hacking into the computer at France’s Chatenay-Malabry anti-doping lab. That’s the same lab that produced more than 200 procedural and protocol errors when testing his urine sample following the now infamous Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Floyd’s doctor Arnie Baker is named in the warrant as well.

And yet there he is riding in races against competitors that weren’t close to his level a little more than three years ago. Back then, he said, he was “in the best shape of” his life. These days he trains and races simply because he likes to ride his bike.

As he told VeloNews in January:

“I don’t feel in any way I am coming back to race to prove anything to anyone, or to myself for that matter. I enjoy racing for the same reason the majority of people race their bikes, whether it’s on a professional level or any other level. I think the sport deserves to have the best riders in the best races. For that reason I think this year is going to be better than it has been in a long time.”

Dime-store psychology aside, riding the bike might be the only thing that makes sense in Floyd’s life these days. In fact, before the racing season began there was talk of Floyd joining a major team and racing in the 2010 Tour de France.

But as the season developed, Floyd hasn’t won any races. He’s had some crashes and strong attacks, but hasn’t been a major threat in the final standings. Hey, racing is hard and chances are he’ll be a threat soon, but in the meantime he’s coming to Philly because he likes to ride his bike…

Kind of like the folks out in Manayunk who like to drink beer.

***

Speaking of Floyd, Brett Myers had hip surgery today in New York City with hot-shot surgeon Dr. Bryan Kelly administering.

Incidentally, after he decided to have surgery Myers told me he saw pictures of his pitching before and after the injury. In one, his right leg was as high as his right shoulder in his follow through, but in the post-injury photo, his range of motion was noticeably shorter.

The surgery should be good for Myers to regain his flexibility and with it, his velocity.

***

Speaking of Floyd, J.C. Romero returned last night for the first time after serving a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.

Interesting: in MLB, 50 games for a positive test.

In cycling, two years for a positive test.

Lance and Landis: Together again?

It’s probably not a coincidence that the news about Floyd Landis’ possible return to cycling in 2009 came the same time as the sport was focused on the return of an even more well-known rider. The reports that Landis is negotiating a deal to ride with Health Net-Maxxis in ’09 kind of slips under the radar a bit when everyone starts talking about Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, of course, announced that he was coming out retirement earlier this week with the goal to win his eighth Tour de France. However, most of the speculation wasn’t that Armstrong was returning to enhance his legacy or because the competitive juices still flowed. Instead, many speculated, Armstrong had grown tired hearing the doubts that he doped to win his seven yellow jerseys.

The doubts linger despite the fact that Armstrong never tested positive in any of the hundreds of drug tests he took. Of course that’s not the greatest defense considering Barry Bonds or Marion Jones never tested positive either even though the evidence appears to prove the contrary. Conversely, Landis did, indeed, test positive after the famous 17th stage of the 2006 Tour de France, though the results leave plenty of doubt.

The doping issue isn’t going to go away no matter what. Not for Floyd, not for Lance, not for anyone. Actually, it doesn’t even matter that Armstrong says he is going to undergo the most rigorous drug-testing protocol ever devised and post the results on the web for all to deconstruct as they wish – the court of public opinion never allows an appeal.

Sigh!

Regardless, one might believe that it will be an interesting season in the peloton with Lance and Landis heading back in the saddle. However, don’t expect to see Landis racing in France – or even in the European races – next year. Health Net-Maxxis, owned by the Momentum Sports Group and set to change its title sponsor, is strictly a domestic team. That means it is likely Landis will race in events like the Tour of Georgia, as well as the three-race Commerce Bank series held in Allentown, Reading and Philadelphia.

Yes, there’s a very good chance we will see Landis take on The Manayunk Wall next summer.

But after riding for elite teams like Armstrong’s U.S. Postal squad and as the team leader for Phonak, a drop to a domestic team (even a top flight one like Health Net-Maxxis) might seem like some as a personification of Landis’ fall from grace. The speculation is the reasons for Landis likely joining Health Net-Maxxis isn’t as simple as rust, age and punishment from serving a two-year suspension. If Landis were to join an elite Europe-based team, it’s very likely that the Tour de France would not extend an invitation to that team just for spite. That’s just how they operate.

Besides, a year of good will on the U.S. circuit can go a long way. Landis can work himself back into elite-level racing shape without the rigors of international travel and scrutiny.

Plus, Landis can allow his old teammate Armstrong to blaze a trail for him. If all goes well in the comeback, old doors could re-open for a handful of American riders. In fact, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that Armstrong will put the old gang back together to tear through France. Lance and Landis were a pretty formidable team not too long ago – neither man is too old for a ride down memory lane.

Of course Armstrong isn’t guaranteed a spot in the Tour next summer. It’s not crazy to think that Christian Prudhomme and his minions that head the Tour de France do not want Armstrong to race and save his sport. It wouldn’t seem as if Prudhomme could do something as dumb and arrogant as to keep Armstrong out of the race, but it wouldn’t be surprising either.

Nevertheless, published reports indicate that Armstrong will join the Astana squad – a team that did not compete in the 2008 Tour de France after top rider Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping during the surreal ’07 race. These days, though, Team Astana has new personnel, like director Johan Brunyel, who was Armstrong’s hand-picked boss of the U.S. Postal and Discovery teams.

Interestingly, a rumor that has gained some strength (and makes sense) has Armstrong buying the Astana team franchise to turn it into his own juggernaut… as if Postal and Discovery weren’t his in the first place.

Certainly if Armstrong took control of Astana, it would be very easy for him to add the riders and components he wants. Maybe by then Landis will be ready to go back to France.

A final word from Farmersville

It was quiet in Farmersville on Monday afternoon, but that was no different than any other day. Perhaps the slow moving tractor barreling down the tight, single-lane road toward the concrete bridge and Turtle Hill Road would have caused a traffic backup or at least a minor commotion had anyone else been around. Instead, it was just another typical day in the Garden Spot. A lonely picnic table along the side of the road offered homegrown raspberries and tomatoes for sale, but there was no suggested price or even a container to stash the money.

Three horses grazed in a meadow while the Conestoga Creek bubbled behind them.

A rain storm loomed over the horizon, the dark clouds easy to see over the hills flush with still-growing corn. In a month those stalks will be too tall to see anything beyond the narrow road that snakes through the countryside.

The distant muffled rumble of thunder briefly breaks up the din of chirping birds, the bustling creek and the wind quaking against the corn.

It was very quiet in Farmersville.

And yet...

There was a neat white house just off the road with a homemade sign baring a passage from Proverbs explaining that all who follow the Lord will have peace provided for them. The message is so simple and perfect that it's hard to believe that anyone could find anything other than peace from such a lovely spot on the earth. There is no intrusion. No forces pushing against nature. No breaking against the peace.

And yet...

"They will never get to the end of how much I can take," the kid who grew up in that tidy white house told the biggest sports conglomerate in the world on Monday. "I'm not happy that I'm the person who has to take this, but I would never allow myself to be treated this way and ever give up."

Could it be that a kid from Farmersville will continue to take the punishment from the government-funded bureaucracies so that they can prove its worthiness? Did the kid from Farmersville lose years from his prime and all of his money so the laboratories, corporations and government-funded bureaucracies can continue to put on shows like the Olympics without anyone questioning their integrity?

Never mind that no court in this country would ever dream of hearing a second of the case against the kid from Farmersville. But in that other world, when there is money to be made off the backs of athletes, little things like justice don't matter much.

How dare anyone question the integrity of our flawed drug tests, the Swiss-based Court for the Arbitration of Sport scolded in its ruling late Monday morning.

"I refuse to accept that the world works this way. I don't buy it," the kid from Farmersville told The Los Angeles Times.

But he's paying for it...

And then some.

Back in Farmersville on Monday afternoon, a bike rider struggles against a hill. He adjusts his gears, stands in the saddle and pushes as hard as he can on the pedals. He nods as he passes the man driving the tractor rolling down the other side of the tiny road. He looks over the corn and sees the white house with the passage from Proverbs on a homemade sign in the front yard at the crest of the hill.

Beyond the house the rain storm draws closer.

*** More: Doping case against Tour de France winner Landis is upheld (Michael A. Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times)

Landis may not race again, but he's not done fighting (Bonnie D. Ford, ESPN.com)

Wow...

Sheesh... Based on a first (quick) read of the CAS harshly-worded decision against Floyd Landis, it appeared as if he never had a chance. Bob was right. I'll have more later tonight (or tomorrow morning), but in the meantime I am going to re-post what I wrote last September when the USADA ruling came down against Floyd because it still applies.

Here it is:

Cooked Case September 20, 2007 WASHINGTON – Let’s just get it out of the way at the top…

I believe Floyd Landis got screwed. I believe that if his case were held to the same standards of the rule of law, Landis’s case would have never gone to trial. Hell, he would have never been indicted.

If Floyd Landis were a baseball player instead of a bike rider, he would still be out on the field without even the slightest threat of suspension.

But whatever. Righteous indignation is typically the rallying cry for losers. Everybody gets screwed at one time or another. However, the part in the case against Floyd that seems so… wrong is that it doesn’t seem as if he was given due process. That’s really the crux of my righteous indignation, aside from the notion that Floyd seems A LOT more believable than Dick Pound, Travis Tygart and the rest of those bureaucrats.

Look, I don’t care if Floyd was cocktailing HgH with winstrol and deer urine all while freezing his rest-day blood in a hyperbaric chamber. Due process is ESSENTIAL.

Wizened old sage Bob Ford, who has been around the loop at the Tour de France numerous times and could be the best cycling writer in the world, dropped me an e-mail minutes after I received one from Floyd’s PR representative, Pearl Piatt, to announce the arbitrator’s ruling. The subject line said it all:

“Cooked case.”

The rest of the email would have made a hell of a column, but it’s football and baseball season in Philadelphia so such things as a doping case involving a Mennonite bike rider from Lancaster County tend to get buried.

Except for here.

As Bob wrote last May:

Landis was caught by the Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage in Châtenay-Malabry, a facility in a suburb just southwest of Paris. The methods and procedures at the lab are sloppy, and the results it issues are increasingly suspect. Recently, the International Tennis Federation announced that drug tests from the French Open - held in Paris, by the way - would be shipped to a lab in Montreal rather than shuttled to Châtenay-Malabry. The ITF said it was an economic decision, but what was it going to say?

The French lab has spit out approximately three times as many positive results as other labs sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Those results, particularly the ones involving notable American cyclists, are also quickly leaked to L'Equipe, the French sports newspaper, which happens to be owned by the company that owns the Tour de France. So it's quite a racket.

Does any of this mean Floyd Landis is innocent, set up by nefarious Frenchmen who twirl their moustaches and laugh heartily at his plight? No, it does not. He may well be guilty. It means only that you can't trust the evidence.

This would be fine for Landis if his case was being heard in a court of law that adhered to innocent-until and the overriding escape hatch of reasonable doubt. Instead, his arbitration, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, will be judged by a three-man panel, and was probably decided before it began.

Each side in the case picks one arbitrator, and the third is supposed to be mutually agreed upon. That didn't happen, and the compromise member of the panel is someone who almost always rules against athletes. The decision is cooked, in other words, and Landis is done.

Floyd won the 2006 Tour de France, fairly, I think. But even for as much as I’d like to say his incredible ride in Stage 17 is still one of the most exciting days in sports I have ever seen, I’d be lying if I said it’s not a little tainted now. Yes, Floyd will probably continue to race and could one even go back to ride in the Tour de France, but it will never be the same.

And that just sucks.

Decision day

Floyd Landis learns the result of two-years spent working on his defense against doping allegations at 11 a.m. today. But will it ever really be over?

One would assume that the governing bodies would acknowledge the work of the Court for the Arbitration of Sport if it overturns the United States Anti-Doping Association's decision against Landis and restore his victory in the 2006 Tour de France. After all, one would assume that the sport bureaucracies will be quick to pat themselves on the back for nailing a “proven” doper if the appeal comes back in its favor.

Nevertheless, nearly two years after he arrived at the Champs-Élysées in the Yellow Jersey, Floyd Landis finally arrives at the finish line on Monday at 11 a.m.

Phew! What a ride…

The wise Bob Ford of The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t give Floyd much of a chance in CAS’ verdict… I don’t know. Bob is much smarter than me (which isn’t saying much), but I give Floyd a 50-50 shot.

More later…

Full plate

So I went into Starbucks this morning and ordered the big, big Sidamo coffee. Of course I mispronounced it which drew a bunch of blank stares from the baristas, before they realized what I wanted and corrected me. "Oh... you mean Sis-AH-mo."

"Yeah. Coffee."

The Sidamo brew was described on the board above the urn as "delicate yet complex." OK. But when I quipped, "Delicate yet complex... sounds like me!" I got nothing.

Blank stares.

Anyway, there is a lot going on today. To start, the struggling Phillies offense takes its road show to Arlington, Texas this evening to play the Rangers. Actually, when I write struggling offense, I really meant all-or-nothing offense. That really seems to describe the Phillies' hitters perfectly.

Need proof? Check out this stat I was e-mailed about the all-or-nothing Phillies:

The Phillies have scored 10 or more runs in eight games this season for 110 runs. In the other 72 games, the Phillies have scored 294 runs, or 4.08 runs per game.

When scoring 10 or more runs the Phillies are 8-0. In the other 72 games they are 35-37.

Feast or famine.

When was the last time a team with numbers so skewed won the World Series?

*** Meanwhile, the track portion of the Olympic Trials begins in earnest tonight in Eugene, Oregon at Hayward Field. For those who don't follow the sport (and you know who you are), holding the track trials at Hayward Field is staging the World Series in Wrigley Field, Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium rolled into one.

Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. It's an even bigger deal when one considers that the Olympic Trials are about as dramatic as it gets in sports. Think about it -- athletes get one chance once every four years to qualify for the Olympic team. If they don't finish in the top three in their event, they have to wait another four years for the next chance.

Needless to say, they bring it at the Trials.

Tonight at 9:20 p.m. the women's 10,000-meters team will be determined. But if Shalane Flanagan doesn't run away with this one, something is up. I'm also predicting that Katie McGregor and Elva Dryer will take the other two spots on the Olympic team.

What about Kara Goucher? Come on, you can't go with the chalk all the time.

*** Finally, the final appeal of the Floyd Landis case will be issued on Monday by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

At last.

*** There's more coming later today. I went to see Ted Leo and Pearl Jam in Washington last Sunday so I figured I might as write about that, too.

*** Cryptic sentence of the day:

Clips are back.

Hanging in a Tennessee river after a race...

just relaxing, cooling off and having fun. Don't they write songs about this?

photo from Recovox News

(Not so) tough as nails

It's kind of fun to see Lenny Dykstra turning up everywhere as the veritable media dynamo that he has become. By now, most folks have caught the new Lenny on HBO's Real Sports talking about his career as a day trader with Bernie Goldberg. There Lenny was again in the pages of The New Yorker (yes, The New Yorker), discussing his latest venture called The Players Club, which is a magazine aimed at professional athletes on how they can better invest their high incomes so that they don't squander it all before their playing days end.

Dykstra says it will be "the world's best magazine" and throws around such superlatives about nearly everything he has purchased as if he were out for revenge or if he had somehow been shortchanged somewhere along the line. His car, a German Maybach, is "the best car." He bought a Gulfstream plane because, "it's the best in the world and there isn't even a close second."

It doesn't stop with the big things, either. He raves about a door in his $17 million house purchased from Wayne Gretzky, as well as about the house itself and the weather in Southern California. It's all the best and more than mirrors Dykstra's style as a player that was, needless to say, all about him and "look at me." Oh sure, Dykstra wanted to win and all of that. But given a choice between running into a fence and injuring himself or remaining healthy and on the field, Dykstra always went for the short-term glory.

But that theory flies in the face of the mission behind his The Players Club. As he said in The New Yorker:

"I'm forty-four, with a lot of mileage, dude. A lot of mileage." The chaw is gone, and he hasn't had a drink in years. "When the market opens at six o'clock in the morning out here, I mean, dude, you got to be up," he says. "You get to a point in your life where, yeah, I loved baseball, but baseball's a small part. I'm going to build something that can change the fucking outcome of people's lives."

Yes, because helping multi-millionaires from separating themselves from their money is soooooo altruistic.

Anyway, in addition to Real Sports and The New Yorker, Dykstra's name has also appeared in a story in which an accounting firm is suing him for $110,000 for money owed for accounting and tax work.

Then Dykstra's name showed up a handful of times in The Mitchell Report, which didn't really come as a surprise to anyone. Yet, the Mitchell Report and Dykstra's physical health is the one issue that seemed to be glossed over during the HBO profile and the magazine story. With Goldberg, Dykstra's speech was somewhat slurred, a point exemplified in Ben McGrath's story:

His hands tremble, his back hurts, and his speech, like that of an insomniac or a stroke victim, lags slightly behind his mind. He winks without obvious intent. In his playing days, he had a term for people like this: fossils. Nothing about his physical presence any longer suggests nails, and sometimes, as if in joking recognition of this softening, he answers the phone by saying, "Thumbtacks."

But that's it. Dykstra's health, just like the depth and true worth of his financial portfolio are taken at face value. In fact, the only nuance presented in either story came from Dykstra's personality. There, Dykstra appears to be in 1993 form.

*** Meanwhile, the final stop on Floyd Landis' appeal hearing has planted itself in New York City where the case enters its third day. Landis and the USADA will present cases today and tomorrow before wrapping it all up on Monday. Then they will wait for the panel of three arbitrators with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to make a decision, which will come sometime during the calendar year... probably.

Nevertheless, there has been very little in the way of rumblings from the USADA or Landis camps, which is quite the opposite from last May's hearing. Plus, Floyd likes to talk and hasn't said anything to anyone.

But for a preview of the proceedings in NYC, here's a story from ESPN's Bonnie D. Ford.

*** I don't like to brag[1], but I went 14-for-16 in the first day of NCAA tournament selections. I tripped up on the UNLV-Kent State and West Virginia-Arizona games.

Still, it's not too bad for someone convinced that the tournament is nothing more than a lot of hot air until the second weekend begins.

*** Finally, in an interesting development, arena rock stalwarts Pearl Jam announced that they will take Ted Leo and his Pharmacists out with them for the first part of their U.S. tour, which opens in Camden, N.J. on June 19. Certainly such a decision means that Pearl Jam aims to bust their collective asses during the six dates in which Teddy Rock Star opens up the shows. After all, if Eddie Vedder and the gang give just the slightest of inches, Ted + Rx will own them.

Fortunately for the Pearl Jammers, work ethic has never been an issue. That means it will be an action-packed six shows for all involved.

Jun 19 -- Camden, N.J. -- Susquehanna Bank Center Jun 22 -- Washington, D.C. -- Verizon Center

Jun 24 -- New York, N.Y. - Madison Square Garden Jun 25 -- New York, N.Y. - Madison Square Garden

Jun 27 -- Hartford, Conn. -- Dodge Amphitheater Jun 30 -- Mansfield, Mass. -- Tweeter Center

The always interesting Kings of Leon will take over the opening duties after Ted Leo leaves the tour.

More: Ted Leo covers Rush on WFMU

---

[1] Uh, yeah I do.

Who doesn't love those hacky 'Where are they now' pieces?

Ed. note: I forgot to add on the Lance Armstrong part on Friday night... it was added Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. With the news that ex-Phillie Jon Lieber signed a one-year deal to pitch for the Cubs in 2008, it seemed like it would be a fun exercise to see what a few other former Phillies were up to these days.

But in the way of saying adios, muchacho to big Jon, it might be fair to add that his monster truck will probably go over just as well in Chicago as it did in Philadelphia. It should also be mentioned that when Lieber ruptured a tendon in his ankle while jogging off the mound that day in Cleveland last season, gravy poured out and soaked into his sock.

I'm not saying anything, I'm just sayin'.

Nevertheless, all-time favorite Doug Glanville took a break from his real-estate development business near Chicago to write an op-ed piece for The New York Times about why some ballplayers decide to use performance-enhancing drugs. Glanville, obviously, was not a PED user so he can only guess as to why players do what they do. But as an involved member of the players' union, Glanville didn't offer much in the way for solutions to the problem. That's not to say it wasn't a thoughtful story by Glanville, it's just that I think we're way past wondering why players decide to cheat. Perhaps it's time to accept the fact that with some guys if they are given an inch, they'll take a yard.

Still, it's a shame Doug isn't around anymore. I figured him for a front-office type, but maybe he's on to bigger work.

*** Elsewhere, Scott Rolen made his introductions to the Toronto baseball writers this week and from all the reports it sounded like it went over as well a Slappy White show - maybe even better than that.

According to reports Rolen joked, joshed and cajoled. Basically, he was the way he always was without the misunderstandings from certain media elements. Oh yeah, neither Larry Bowa nor Tony La Russa showed up, either. That means everyone was in a good mood.

"Hmmn, I didn't think it was going to come up. That's surprising," Rolen answered when asked about his old manager.

Better yet, when given more openings to get in his digs at La Russa, who gave a rambling and bizarre soliloquy on the affair during the Winter Meetings in Nashville last month, Rolen again took the high road.

"I'm not sure if that's healthy," he said. "I want to go back to playing baseball, I want to focus all my attention and my competition on the field. Too many times the last year, year and a half, I think that some of the competition, some of the focus was off the field, not on the field where it should stay."

Aside from that, Rolen explained how his three-year old daughter selected his uniform No. 33 for him. It's kind of a cute story... on another note, my three-year old son has chosen a new name for me -- from now on I'm Buzz Daddy Lightyear Finger. I'm going to the courthouse to have it changed next week.

*** How about this for the best story involving a former Phillie... Newly signed San Diego Padre Randy Wolf bought Slash's house in the Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills.

Yeah, that Slash.

From what I know about both guys, Randy's parties might be a little wildier. During my days on the road with Slash all we ever did was visit the local libraries and modern museums of art -- If you've seen one impressionist, you've seen them all.

Again, I'm not sayin' anything, I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, apparently the joint cost just under $6 million and is approximately 5,500-square feet. There is a pool, a gym, a chef's kitchen and if I'm not mistaken by looking at the photos, there is a lot wood... Me? I'm an oak man myself.

*** Finally, speaking of guys who know how to party, Lancasterian turned San Diego suburbanite, Floyd Landis, has a full season of racing lined up regardless of the outcome of his appeal to the CAS. According to a published report, Landis will race in the eight-race National Ultra-Endurance Series. Locally, a race is scheduled for July in State College, Pa. in a series that is described as, "old-school mountain biking."

Yeah.

Meanwhile, Floyd gave a rather revealing interview to the Velo News on Friday where the proverbial gloves came off. Then again, what else is new?

*** Speaking of cyclists and racing, Lance Armstrong is supposedly running the Boston Marathon in April. Lance qualified with a 2:59 and 2:46 in the past two New York City Marathons, which would likely put him in the starting corral as me -- not that Lance is going to have to get up super early to board a bus at the Boston Common for the long ride out to Hopkinton just so he can sit on the cold, wet grass in the Athlete's Village. Or, Lance can join the multitudes in a long wait in line for one of the port-a-potties that turn the otherwise bucolic setting into into a veritable sea of domed-lidded huts of human waste... complete with that fresh, urinal cake scent.

I wonder if Lance will take a wide-mouthed Gatorade bottle to the starting corral with him, too... you know, just in case.

Yep, that's marathoning -- there are no façades in our sport.

Anyway, it's cool that Lance is headed to Boston. Perhaps I'll re-evaluate my spring racing plans and show up, too, if I can find a place to stay... seems as if all the inns and motels are sold out that weekend.

Paying attention is hard

For the past four weeks I think I’ve spent 24 hours in one place two times. If I wasn’t at the ballpark, I was in a plane, train or automobile that was taking me to the ballpark or some baseball-related event. In those four weeks I’ve ingested enough coffee and diet coke to kill a Shetland pony. If the caffeine wouldn’t get him, the aspartame[1] likely would.

Needless to say, I have a newfound respect for the guys who travel around with the baseball team every day since the middle of February. Yeah, they get to go to the ballpark, but sometimes that’s no picnic either – work is work.

Anyway, because of the Phillies and their short run into the playoffs, I have been unable to follow too much else outside of that realm. Some of this is my fault because I’m not much a multi-tasker. And other parts are my fault because I don’t live closer to where I have to work…

Nobody forced me to move out to the sticks (well, not really forced, but really… who wants to live in Philadelphia if they have a choice?)

Part of what I missed and have not been able to get deeper into was the decision by the arbitration panel in the USADA’s case against Floyd Landis. When the decision came down I was in Washington for the four-game series at RFK Stadium against the Nationals. As I recall, that was a long day – I wrote about the decision, etc. and then took the Metro over to RFK just an hour before the first pitch (3½-to-4 hours before the first pitch is the customary time of arrival for baseball writers…) to write more about the Phillies’ push to the playoffs.

The plan, as I remember, was to ride the baseball stuff out until the end of the season and then revisit the Landis case. The trouble was the baseball season kept on going, which is a new phenomenon in Philadelphia. As a result, I fell out of touch a little bit. When people asked about the case/decision during the past few weeks, I couldn’t offer anything more eloquent than, “Huh? Who? Oh yeah… that guy. I pass his old house on my way to work. It’s quiet in that neck of the woods, and there are a lot of cornfields – apparently the corn crop has been really good this year…”

Plus, there have been a few new developments in the doping front.

Let’s get this out of the way again: Floyd Landis got screwed. I don’t know if he used PEDs and I guess I really don’t care (or maybe I do seeing as how much coffee I have been drinking lately – drugs are drugs). The point is the testing process, the screening and the entire circus that went on with the French lab, the UCI, WADA and USADA is borderline criminal and completely unethical. I know there are some good people who work at those places, but they need to reevaluate what’s going on.

Besides, if the tests are performed incorrectly, then the results are B.S.. Even the two arbitrators hand-picked by USADA to deliver the desired result by the government-funded agency alluded to this in the decision.

In fact, in a strong rebuke, the two arbitrators who ruled against Landis wrote that more sloppy work by the French lab could lead to a dismissal of a case in the future.

Shudder the thought.

Dave Zabriske, Landis’ former teammate and current pro rider, summed it up perfectly.

“That's kind of strange to me,” Zabriske told WSCN.com. “Why could it be grounds for dismissal in the future and not now?”

However, Landis’ attorney, Maurice Suh, says it wasn’t a matter of a lab doing incompetent work, though that didn’t help matters. Instead, Suh told the Associated Press that the tests did not show that Landis tested positive.

“This wasn’t a technical defense,” Suh said. “It wasn’t: ‘You didn’t do this right. You didn’t put the beaker in the right case.’ This was a case that showed that they came to the wrong result.”

Travis Tygart, the new head of the USADA, stands by the result and says it will hold up on appeal.

“This is another sad example of the crisis of character plaguing some of today's athletes, which undermines the honest accomplishments of the overwhelming majority of athletes who compete with integrity,” he said.

Yeah, but what about the testers, the arbitrators and the alphabet soup organizations that base their funding on how many pelts they can nail to the wall?

So, after much consternation, Landis – like any stubborn dude from Lancaster County – decided to appeal the decision to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. A final, binding decision is expected in February.

“I hope that the arbitrators of the case will fairly address the facts showing that the French laboratory made mistakes, which resulted in a false positive. Although the process of proving my innocence has been difficult for me and my family, I will not stop trying to prove my innocence.”

It seems as if Landis’ appeal is as much about proving his innocence as it is proving that the anti-doping system is “cynical and corrupt.”

Certainly, if anyone has paying attention to the case, it’s pretty clear that Floyd has already shown the flaws in the system. Corrupt is a good place to start. But if Floyd wants the UCI, WADA, USADA, etc. to operate within a framework of the highest standards and ethics, forget it. He’s going to lose.

He’s dealing with career bureaucrats, you know, as in: “Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job.”

Suh told WCSN.com that Floyd understands it.

“We had always embarked on this trial with the understanding that ultimately victory would be difficult,” Suh told WCSN.com. “There are so many arbitrators in the system that are against the athletes that it doesn't provide you with many options. It leaves the athletes in a difficult spot because of the small number of fair-minded arbitrators that are objective. Partisanship on part of the arbiters is a terrible thing. It doesn't give you confidence in the outcome. One of Floyd's primary goals was to expose flaws in the system and make known what some of the issues were. And we were prepared to deal with the fact that we wouldn't win.”

That’s fine, but I doubt this is a completely altruistic move – I don’t think Floyd wants to take one for the team. My guess is he wants to win.

*** Meanwhile, the new, popular argument is that Marion Jones’ admission to doping before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney also casts Landis in a bad light…

What does one case have to do with the other? Marion Jones was a notorious doper who left a trail of concrete evidence behind her. In fact, the book Game of Shadows is more damning to Jones than it is to Barry Bonds – and it nails Bonds pretty good with documentation and leaked grand jury testimony. What does Marion Jones and Barry Bonds have to do with Floyd Landis?

Are people’s attention spans that short? Is it really that difficult to pay attention?

Yes. Apparently it is.

---

[1] I’m going to name my lesion, “Donald.”

Cooked case

WASHINGTON – Let’s just get it out of the way at the top… I believe Floyd Landis got screwed. I believe that if his case were held to the same standards of the rule of law, Landis’s case would have never gone to trial. Hell, he would have never been indicted.

If Floyd Landis were a baseball player instead of a bike rider, he would still be out on the field without even the slightest threat of suspension.

But whatever. Righteous indignation is typically the rallying cry for losers. Everybody gets screwed at one time or another. However, the part in the case against Floyd that seems so… wrong is that it doesn’t seem as if he was given due process. That’s really the crux of my righteous indignation, aside from the notion that Floyd seems A LOT more believable than Dick Pound, Travis Tygart and the rest of those bureaucrats.

Look, I don’t care if Floyd was cocktailing HgH with winstrol and deer urine all while freezing his rest-day blood in a hyperbaric chamber. Due process is ESSENTIAL.

Wizened old sage Bob Ford, who has been around the loop at the Tour de France numerous times and could be the best cycling writer in the world, dropped me an e-mail minutes after I received one from Floyd’s PR representative, Pearl Piatt, to announce the arbitrator’s ruling. The subject line said it all:

“Cooked case.”

The rest of the email would have made a hell of a column, but it’s football and baseball season in Philadelphia so such things as a doping case involving a Mennonite bike rider from Lancaster County tend to get buried.

Except for here.

As Bob wrote last May:

Landis was caught by the Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage in Châtenay-Malabry, a facility in a suburb just southwest of Paris. The methods and procedures at the lab are sloppy, and the results it issues are increasingly suspect. Recently, the International Tennis Federation announced that drug tests from the French Open - held in Paris, by the way - would be shipped to a lab in Montreal rather than shuttled to Châtenay-Malabry. The ITF said it was an economic decision, but what was it going to say?

The French lab has spit out approximately three times as many positive results as other labs sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Those results, particularly the ones involving notable American cyclists, are also quickly leaked to L'Equipe, the French sports newspaper, which happens to be owned by the company that owns the Tour de France. So it's quite a racket.

Does any of this mean Floyd Landis is innocent, set up by nefarious Frenchmen who twirl their moustaches and laugh heartily at his plight? No, it does not. He may well be guilty. It means only that you can't trust the evidence.

This would be fine for Landis if his case was being heard in a court of law that adhered to innocent-until and the overriding escape hatch of reasonable doubt. Instead, his arbitration, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, will be judged by a three-man panel, and was probably decided before it began.

Each side in the case picks one arbitrator, and the third is supposed to be mutually agreed upon. That didn't happen, and the compromise member of the panel is someone who almost always rules against athletes. The decision is cooked, in other words, and Landis is done.

Floyd won the 2006 Tour de France, fairly, I think. But even for as much as I’d like to say his incredible ride in Stage 17 is still one of the most exciting days in sports I have ever seen, I’d be lying if I said it’s not a little tainted now. Yes, Floyd will probably continue to race and could one even go back to ride in the Tour de France, but it will never be the same.

And that just sucks.

USADA Rules Against Landis; Title Stripped

WASHINGTON – After more than 14 months of waging a case to clear his name while facing inscrutable uncertainty about his future, Lancaster County native Floyd Landis finally has an answer. Needless to say it was exactly what he did not want to hear.

“This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere,” Landis said in a statement. “For the Panel to find in favor of USADA when, with respect to so many issues, USADA did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case shows that this system is fundamentally flawed. I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent.”

A three-person arbitration panel, convened for the United States Anti-Doping Administration’s (USADA) hearing over Landis’ failed drug test following the 17th stage of the 2006 Tour de France, ruled 2-1 against the American cyclist. As a result of the ruling, Landis has been issued a two-year ban from sanctioned cycling races and has been stripped of his title in the 2006 Tour de France.

“The decision of the arbitrators clearly establishes that regardless of the evidence presented by the athlete of the errors of the laboratory, the conflicted and coordinated testimony of the anti-doping community, including heads of other WADA laboratories and experts who receive millions of dollars from USADA, will prevail over the evidence presented by the athlete,” Landis’s statement continued.

Yet, despite a dramatic, come-from-behind victory in the 2006 Tour de France, Landis is the first ever champion in the 104-year history of the race to lose his title.

Spanish rider Oscar Pereiro, who finished second to Landis in the 2006 Tour, will be declared the winner.

“Today's ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said. “This decision confirms for the overwhelming majority of American athletes who compete ethically that USADA is committed to protecting their right to participate on a drug-free playing field.

This is pending more legal wrangling, of course. Landis can appeal the USADA’s ruling to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which Landis is “currently weighing his future legal alternatives in pursuing his case.” Landis has a month to make his appeal.

If he chooses to take his case to the CAS, Landis will again be fighting the positive drug following the remarkable 17th stage of the 2006 Tour de France in which he had an illegal testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio. Reports are that Landis's T/E ratio was 11-to-1, which is significantly higher than the 4-to-1 allowed by rule.

Plus, during the 14 months of fighting the charges from the USADA, Landis says he has spent approximately $2 million (including approximately $1 million of his own money) in his defense. Following the presentation of his case at the public arbitration hearing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. in May, Landis continued to travel across the United States in attempt to clear his name with a presentation of his fight against the allegations as well as meet-and-greet sessions in support of his book, Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France.

Additionally, Landis published all of the information about his defense and the case on his Web site, floydfairnessfund.org.

It was during his travels across the country that Landis spoke about his defense, which centered on the contention that the testing, procedures and protocol of the French-government owned laboratory, the National Laboratory for Doping Detection (LNDD), that performed the drug test during the Tour were flawed.

In fact, Landis and his legal team pointed out over 200 procedural and protocol errors by the French lab, including some that were acknowledged in the USADA arbitration hearing in May. What’s more, the LNDD’s methods and procedures are viewed as so sloppy that the International Tennis Federation opted to have its drugs tests for French Open performed in Montreal rather than at lab mere miles away from where the tournament is held.

In the ruling, the majority of arbitrators did find areas of concern about LNDD, specifically in testing protocol.

“The Panel finds that the practices of the Lab in training its employees appears to lack the vigor the Panel would expect in the circumstances given the enormous consequences to athletes of an adverse analytical finding,” the decision said. “If such practices continue, it may well be that in the future, an error like this could result in the dismissal of a positive finding by the lab.”

But alas, in the end the arbitrators were not swayed by the evidence.

Instead, the three-man panel, which convicted Landis on a 2-1 unanimous decision, sided with the USADA’s argument that did little to challenge the cyclist’s assertions. In fact, USADA attorneys never directly asked Landis if he used synthetic testosterone, as positive tests after Stage 17 at the 2006 Tour show he did. The case of anti-doping agency, which is funded in part from U.S. taxpayer dollars, centered more on Landis’s character rather than the science involved in proving whether or not an athlete had used performance-enhancing drugs.

“The majority Panel's decision is a disappointment, but particularly so because it failed to address the joint impact of the many errors that the AFLD laboratory committed in rendering this false positive,” Landis’s attorney, Maurice Suh, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, said. “To take each of these errors singly, is to ignore the total falsity of the result. The majority panel has disregarded the testimony of Mr. Landis' experts, who are preeminent in their respective fields, without analyzing the impact of the errors on the final result. This is a miscarriage of justice.”

In its 84-page decision, the majority found the initial drug test to measure Landis' testosterone levels was not done according to World Anti-Doping Agency rules. However, the majority agreed that the carbon-isotope ratio analysis (IRMS), performed after a positive T/E test is recorded, was accurate.

But some, like Suh, have claimed that the hearing was a matter of the “circus not the science.”

In that regard, the incomplete testimony of former American cyclist Greg LeMond and the acknowledged prank phone call from Landis associate Will Geoghegan, took center stage.

“This case is really just another sad example of the crisis of character which plagues some of today’s athletes and undermines the honest achievements of all of those athletes who compete with integrity,” Tygart said. “Hopefully, some of the good that comes from this type of case is that other athletes who might be tempted to cheat will recognize that there is no honor in doping to win.”

The hearing will forever be remembered for its soap operatic nature of the aborted LeMond testimony in which the three-time Tour de France champion showed up and revealed that he had confided to Landis that he had been sexually abused as a child. Then, the night before his scheduled testimony, LeMond received a phone call from Geoghegan, posing as an “uncle,” in which he threatened to disclose the former rider’s secret if he showed up to the hearing.

Not only did LeMond show up, but he also claimed Landis had admitted he had doped. However, as written in the decision, the majority wrote that LeMond’s appearance was meaningless.

"The panel concludes that the respondent's comment to Mr. LeMond did not amount to an admission of guilt or doping," the majority wrote.

In the end, the question still remains whether or not Landis doped to win the Tour de France

Moreover, did Landis expose the anti-doping system’s testing procedures and how athletes are prosecuted? Is the system broken?

USADA will say no, and obviously, Landis’s camp will go the other way.

But the fact is the Landis case has changed the way anti-doping agencies and doping cases are viewed.

“That wasn’t even in the back of my mind, and honestly, I didn’t realize the jeopardy that athletes are in because it never crossed my mind. I had no problem giving a urine sample because I did it all the time and I assumed that the people testing it were legitimate and out to do the right thing. It never crossed my mind that it could be the way it is,” Landis explained about his trendsetting case in an interview last June. “And it’s hard for people to believe when I say it really is that bad. They think, ‘Yeah, he’s guilty. That’s why he’s trying to accuse them.’ But, even a guilty person deserves to have the evidence against him provided to him without having to spend $1 million in a year.”

It will be even more money if there is an appeal.

More on the Landis case: Panel Rules Against Landis in Doping Case; Tour de France Title Stripped

Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

USADA release (PDF)

Arbitration Ruling: USA Cycling Athlete Floyd Landis Receives Two-Year Suspension for Doping Violation (AAA Decision) September 2007 - Majority decision, 84 pages (PDF)

AAA Dissenting decision - 26 pages (PDF)

All of the other really good stuff is at TBV

We waited for this?

As Billy Bob Thornton said in the epic film, Bad Santa, “Kids… they’ll run you ragged.There have never been truer words spoken in the entire history of the cinematic arts, and the fact that it took a movie about a miserable conman and his partner who poses as Santa and his Little Helper in order to rob department stores on Christmas Eve should be of no consequence.

Kids will run you ragged. It’s so very true.

As a result of being run ragged over the last three weeks or so, I’ve had a chance to really watch the Phillies very closely on television and at the ballpark (and I’ll be tap-tap-tapping away on my little laptop from the splendor of Robert Francis Kennedy Memorial Stadium in the District of Columbia this weekend) and I gotta tell you – I’m perplexed.

The Phillies are running me ragged.

Thinking about the Phillies and their chances to make the playoffs renders the same response as my wife gets when she peppers me with three questions without pause right on top of each other. Actually, this happens at least twice a day and my response is always the same – my brow scrunches tight, my eyes narrow and then my lips move but no cognitive sounds come out of my mouth.

It’s as if my brain was a typewriter and someone pushed all of the keys at the same time.

Anyway, most folks will tell you that the Phillies’ 13-11 victory over the Cardinals in St. Louis last night was a harbinger of bad things to come. Nursing an 11-run lead into the late innings the way our pal Ken Mandel suckles a Shirley Temple, the Phillies’ bullpen turned the game into a save situation and faced a handful of at-bats in which to potential game-winning run was at the plate. Had the Phillies lost the game it would have been devastating, they say, because there are so few games remaining in the season.

How does a team deep in the throes of a pennant race bounce back from blowing an 11-0 lead?

Guess what? We’ll never know.

We’ll never know because the Phillies didn’t blow the 11-0 lead. In fact, they won the game and picked up more ground in the NL East standings to cut the Mets’ lead to 2½ games. Sure, there was the issue of the bullpen giving up 11 runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, but chances are manager Charlie Manuel will bypass relievers Clay Condrey (five runs on four hits without getting an out) and Jose Mesa (6.11 ERA) in any situation of significance during the next 12 games. With J.C. Romero, Tom Gordon and Brett Myers unavailable last night because of the heavy lifting the trio did in sweeping the Mets at Shea last weekend, the Phillies’ bullpen was asked to do nothing more than play a little matador defense.

With an 11-run lead what else were they supposed to do? You know, aside from give up 11 runs…

Though Gordon is recovering from back spasms, the Phillies seem to have everyone in place for the final 12 games. With Cole Hamels set to start tonight – though he will only throw approximately 70 pitches before he heads back to the clubhouse to rub fish oil on his arm – the rotation is as good as it is going to get. And with Myers entrenched at the back of the bullpen, along with Gordon, Romero, and Geoff Geary as the go-to relievers, everyone is reasonably healthy.

The real question is whether or not the Phillies’ pitching is good enough. Most people have doubts, though the answer will be evident in less than two weeks.

The day of reckoning It should be noted that the public relations folks that run interference for Floyd Landis have supplied me with all pertinent information to this point regarding the soon-to-be announced decision by the three-man arbitration panel in the USADA’s doping case against the Lancaster Countian and Tour de France champ. But the truth is there really isn’t anything anyone can say… at least until the big day comes.

Which will be soon, apparently.

Either way, Floyd’s people have been nothing but kind to me, which makes me feel a tiny bit bad about being a little smart-assy with them yesterday… but not that much. I kind of base my entire personality around being a jerk.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that we will know whether or not Floyd is exonerated or will face a ban and more legal wrangling by Saturday… or Sunday… absolutely by Monday.

Take your numbers and crunch them In an essay for ESPN.com, the advanced and wildly astute cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman explained that fantasy football has nothing to do with reality or football. Yet despite this – or because of this – fantasy football remains wildly popular. People, it seems, love to use non-contextual statistics to show others that they… well, I don’t know what they’re trying to prove. It’s the gambling, I guess.

Anyway, if there was a better example of how sports statistics are meaningless (aside from Barry Bonds and pretty much all of baseball and football), it was seen in Donovan McNabb’s outing against the Washington Redskins last night. By all reasonable accounts, McNabb turned in a mediocre (at best) game in the 20-12 loss. However, his 240-yards passing (on 28-for-46) looks fairly decent considering that McNabb did not throw an interception.

But McNabb wasn’t very good and his team lost the game. Do you think that fantasy football players care about that?

Of course not.

My theory is that 75 (maybe 90) percent of the folks that follow the NFL from week to week do so solely for fantasy/gambling purposes. Actually, my contention is that most people really don’t care about football aside from the folks wearing the local team’s uniform, but the fact that Kelly Holcomb is a person's bye week starter makes every smacked ass with a wireless card Doctor freaking Z.

My point is sports statistics are meaningless. They are meaningless because good players on good teams sacrifice personal glory and statistics for the good of the team. In a sense these players on good teams are a type of neo-Marxists like Steve Nash and Derek Jeter, who, despite the fact that they make hundreds of millions of dollars, wantonly distribute and share the statistical wealth to their teammates. To players like Jeter and Nash, and locally, Chase Utley, the numbers beneath their names don’t mean nearly as much as the digits in the win-loss columns.

That's the biggest reason why people, subconsciously, don't want fantasy sports to be "real."

Regardless, my personal draw to fantasy football is the incessant one-upsmanship in trying to be the most funny and the most insulting amongst the people in the league. In fact, I can’t think of any other reason to participate... well, aside from winning the league championship (like I did last season) and the ancillary benefits that go with such a thing.

Finally The burgeoning criminals behind the art-rock band, Les Savy Fav, have released a new album. It's called "Let's Stay Friends," and the masterminds at Pitchfork gave it an 8.3, which seems rather arbitrary, though I'm sure it's very meaningful.

Anyway, I uploaded three tracks from the new record on the widget on the right column. Go nuts.

'I think of Dean Moriarty...'

Ain’t nothing changed here but the prefix ahead of the day. We’re still settled in our constant state of alert, which, interestingly, kind of spices things up around here. We are nothing more than rank-and-file members of the leisure class that Plato wrote about so any type of adventure is welcomed.

Anyway, things are taking shape.

In that regard there will be no baseball or sports viewing around here for a minimum of two days. I’m taking a time out in order to waste my time on something else. Besides, all of the injuries ripping through the Phillies’ clubhouse kind of make me anxious since I’m fighting some aches and pains, too. Apparently I have some sort of inflammation of the Psoas major (or minor) muscle that makes me warm up extra long before runs and then zaps my speed after 90-minutes of running. It also hurts when I sneeze.

This, as they say, is no good.

No, I don’t need the disabled list and I seem to be responding to treatment, but it’s easy to understand why someone wouldn’t want to look at the walking wounding in red-and-white pinstripes if at all possible.

Speaking of the Psoas major, the hip flexor and the Iliotibial band, there was an fantastic story about our boy Floyd that will be out in this Sunday’s The New York Times. It’s longer than the one I wrote, and constructed how I wish I could put mine together as well.

Plus, the USADA called the Times back and not me? That’s so lame.

Oh well, you do what you can… when you are 50 percent of a staff there isn’t much time to go jetting off to places in order to write a better story. Besides, how interested are the folks in Philadelphia in anything not relating to the Eagles or Phillies?

Sigh.

Speaking of jetting off to places, the Times also had a few interesting stories about the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

For as much as I enjoyed On the Road when I was in my late teens and early 20s, I thought (and think) Dharma Bums was much better.

Still, 50 years for On the Road gives me an idea for a road epic… how about a bike race from Floyd’s old house in Farmersville to his new one in Murrieta, Calif.? By my estimate it is probably a little more than 2,600 miles from Lancaster County to Southern California, which is slightly longer than the Tour de France, but it would probably be just as good a race.

All we need are a few sponsors, some prize money and a couple of the best bike riders in the world and we’re set.

***
Finally, there was a story in the Inquirer today about former Phillies GM Ed Wade. It seems as if Ed got himself snagged in a tree on the way back to earth after a sky-diving excursion... or so they say.

If I didn't know any better I'd say that Wade, now an advance scout for the San Diego Padres, was pushed out of the plane or tried to pull off a D.B. Cooper type stunt.