Sorry Brian, But You Brought This Upon Yourself

Before I get into Alicia Sacramone being the biggest choker in women's gymnastics history (whatever that means) let's quickly analyze that all things considered, she is Brian Urlacher's sister. Or him. Either way, they look exactly the same, and their neck is the same size.

I can rag on Sacramone for the following reasons: first because she's twenty, in college and just like I can rag on any college athlete for choking, I can do the same to her whereas getting all over a sixteen year old isn't very nice, or in the case of the Chinese, a twelve year old. Secondly, because I was actually watching gymnastics.

Look, I am no expert in gymnastics. But I do know that this Sacramone fell, twice, and basically cost her American teammates the gold after the Beijing Middle School team left the door wide open for them. So the question, I suppose, becomes, did the Americans deserve to be in the gold medal fight anyway? I mean, I don't know.

But from what I can tell, gymnastics is rigged. This new scoring system basically gives everyone a head start, which is absurd. The Olympics is about giving your best performance, leaving it all out there, and seeing if you are the best. The new scoring system doesn't do that. It allows someone to be rewarded for choosing something harder to do, before they take to the mat. The difficulty should be rolled into the final score, not given a pre-determined amount. And then you get the crazy Chinese who do these ultra sophisticated moves, don't execute them and still get huge scores just because they were hard. Not to mention, when they don't execute, they still get monster scores. Look, it's rigged.

The Olympics have been pretty strong though. I mean, I actually got to watch TEAM HANDBALL the other day. I didn't know what to do with myself and when it was on the next morning, I really didn't know what was happening. I thought I was dreaming. Team Handball is probably the best sport ever and I'm glad it's getting air time. Even the other day at lunch I overheard someone telling a fellow patron about it's amazingness. Watch it, YouTube it, do something, but check this game out. It rocks.

And then there is this swimmer from America. He's absolutely amazing. But we knew that. He really hasn't had any business losing any of his races that he's been in, except that 4x100 free relay, which was without question, the best sporting event I've watched in years. I would love to know just how many Americans, sitting on their couch watching that and when the Americans out-touched the Frogs, jumped out, fist pumped and yelled, "YES!" I wonder who Johnny Depp was rooting for?

The American team is doing just fine, heading into the track and field events, where the Chinese aren't going to be as strong. The badmintons and ping pongs won't be as much of a factor in the overall medal count then. As long as we can keep Urlacher on the sidelines, we should be alright.