Five-Ringed Circus, Day Six: Boxing is at it again!

That collective orgasm you're hearing is from NBC.  Days like today are indications of why they don't give a screw if #NBCFail.

*groan*

That said, there's still some stuff which can be written about:

• As usual, boxing has gone up in flames again.  The official sanctioning body has already had to reverse the result of one match, throw out one referee, suspend another, and send home a "technical official" (someone who handles non-refereeing/judging administration).  Turkmenistan's Ishanguly Meretnyyazov is gone after his bizarre handling of a match which had to have the result reversed because the ref didn't know a knockdown from anything else.  Frank Scharmach of Germany has been suspended for five days for a disqualification ruling (more, probably his conduct during the process) in another match, and a technical official from Azerbaijan is also done.  Business as usual in one of the most political sports in the entire Summer Games.
• Well, the US medal haul just went exponential today, as six gold medals have squared the count with China at 18 apiece, and the US leads the total count with 37, to China's 35.  However, the official table still has China on the top, because, after the tie in golds, China has 11 silver medals to the USA's 9.  And track and field starts tomorrow...
• Well, we know how much a gold medal is going to be officially worth, as we found out how much the tax man is also getting out of all this.  The USOC is paying every gold medal winner $25,000, silver getting $15,000, bronze getting $10,000.  Here's the kicker:  You're not only paying upwards of 35% on that amount for Federal taxes, you're also paying for the medal itself.  A couple bucks for bronze, but a gold will set you back to the IRS over $200!!  I guess it's not enough to have worked so hard and won "for your country", the IRS still wants it's fucking cut of the action!

Another example of how completely out of check the Cult of Football is...

Rick Reilly's latest ESPN piece.

(Hat-tip to various parties who tipped me off on it!)

So let's start this off with an e-mail that a football coach sent to his (I presume, prospective) players, and Reilly basically asks us to guess (though the title of the article on the browser-bar tips it off!) what level this guy is coaching at...

"My objectives are simple," the coach wrote. "We need to become better, tougher and more aggressive blockers, tacklers and runners. … Tackle football isn't for everybody. It takes a certain mindset, an aggressive or killer instinct if you will …" 

OK, you'd figure, at least a high school program with a pedigree and an eliminative training camp -- as in, not everyone who tries out for the team is going to be allowed to practice and actually be on the team once the season starts.

"Killer Instinct"...

Look, when my brother (next oldest) was on the football team in our small-Wisconsin high school (his senior year was the one year the team was any good until the micro-schools were separated off in the early-2000's), the defense was called "The Swarm".  That was a matter of pride, NOT "killer instinct" in the age of football and concussions and early-dementia/suicides/murder being tied together.

The coach continues:

"Think of your team! The summer camp sessions will be short, but intense. Pre-season conditioning will be intense. In-season practices will be intense. … Mental and physical toughness are also requirements. We must get tougher and through hard work, we will. "

This is beginning to border on a religious rite, given this mentality.

I almost expect, by the end of this, a "CAN I GET AN A-MEN????" out of this letter...

"Players practice full throttle unless they are injured. … It's about team! If you don't love being a Bulldog and can't whole heartedly commit, you are in the wrong place. … You are either getting better or getting worse. We need to get better and it will take serious commitment. … This e-mail is meant to set expectations. No surprises, full steam ahead. Thanks and Go Bulldogs!"

I can understand this mentality if the community, especially in football, believed it MIGHT be slacking as far as players taking off plays and having bad attitudes go.  And even then, maybe high school at best...

But no, this isn't for a high school team.

This wasn't even for one of those Florida youth teams in which games are being wagered on.  Reilly says it himself:

"This email was sent to 8-year-olds."

EIGHT YEAR OLDS!!!

These kids are fucking EIGHT!!!!

This is the kind of attitude that we are trying to instill on our football cult as young as eight.

"Not everybody belongs on the field."

"You give your all until they have to literally scrape you off the grass with a spatula..."

"Or go the fuck home like the pussy you are..."

That's what this idiot coach is saying!  He's basically going to use his intense practices to winnow out 8 year-olds (who will then, in the community, probably be deemed unfit for far more than football!!!) who just can't take the heat.

As I said, I could understand if there was a reputation of slackers and drugs and alcohol in the high school community and that a coach was brought in to whip the community's boys into some degree of shape and discipline.  Even THEN, some of this is excessive.

But this is for EIGHT YEAR OLDS???

EIGHT?

Second-graders???

According to one parent, who asked anonymity so (his son wasn't retaliated against):

• Games were on Saturdays
• Friday nights were often full practices in pads (for many, this was their first year in pads), and the practices were over two hours in length!!
• By the ends of games, the players were often quite tired!

19 families got the e-mail.

Seven families quit the team upon it's receipt.

One wonders how they will be retaliated against in the community because of this!

The state?

TEXAS.  Where football, and kickline drill-team harems, rule the day.

These are the words of the coach, Camron Miller, 36 and admittedly fat:

""I don't regret sending it," says Miller, who insists only two of the seven families who quit did it because of his gung-holier-than-thou fervor. "Intensity is not a bad thing. Some of the best coaches -- and teachers -- I've ever had, were intense. … That email was needed.""

Are we effectively publicly telling these boys at EIGHT YEARS OLD, Mr. Miller, that their only purpose of existence in "Don't Mess With Tex-as" is to be The Big Man On Campus on the football team.

At eight?

What's going to happen when your intensity kills a second-grader?

HUH?

Because that's where this is going to head.  Three two-hour practices a week?  For these kids?

"Look, this is a competitive football league," Miller says. "We were a flag football team at 5 and 6 [years old] and then last year, at 7, we didn't make the transition very well. We won two games. We needed to ramp it up."

There's your first fucking mistake.  OK, keep score if you must.

BUT THESE KIDS ARE EIGHT!

When I was around that age, we won more games than anyone else in T-Ball.  I, in my own mind, crowned our team champs of the local league.  You know what that got me?  No one else knew, OR CARED!  I probably helped myself to a little extra ice cream after the family restaurant closed.

But that was about the extent of it.

Or is that just it?  Their only purpose, for being born in the Great State of Tex-as, is to be either a football player or get abused to the point that they spend 20 hours a day in the fetal position?

Oh my God, Mr. Miller...  Who do you think you are kidding here???

He's not the only one, by the way...  Another coach in his league in Frisco, Texas, was actually caught telling his players to hit players on the other team in the face.

Again, at about eight years old!!!

I'll close this ridiculousness with a paragraph from Reilly from near the end of the article. 

"We are amped up to ramp up in this country. We have ramped up the intensity in football from Pee Wees to pros. We have freshman high school quarterbacks who are considered "behind" if they don't have their own offseason skills coach. We had no less than six high school players die of heat exhaustion last season during summer training drills. We have NFL assistant coaches such as Gregg Williams of the New Orleans Saints ranting at his players to injure people in a playoff game."

I begin to wonder how many of these kids are there to make their parents money, in one way or another...  This is what makes coaches like Mr. Miller scary.

F-RC, Day Five, Part II: Badminton-Gate. Four Teams sent home.

Pending appeals, the Badminton World Federation, the sanctioning body for world badminton (and, remember, each sport is governed by it's individual sanctioning body) has expelled from the tournament the 8 athletes involved in the match-fixing yesterday:

• Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang (China)
• Both South Korean womens' doubles teams:  Jung Kyung Eun and Kim Ha Na, as well as Ha Jung Eun and Kim Min Jung
• and Greysia Polii and Meiliana Jeuhari (Indonesia).

Five-Ringed Circus: Day Five US Team worth the hype at all?

Consistent theme all over the Games in the first five days for the Red, White, and Blue:

• Mens' gymnastics team event
• Lochte in at least one swim
• Phelps in several, including a butterfly race he hadn't lost since 2003
• Today, the top-ranked archer in the world (USA) loses in the round of 16
• The fencer who carried the flag lost.  She'd won two gold medals in previous games.

It's clear, from what I'm seeing, that China will top the official medal table again on gold medals.

But if the United States does not pick up some more unexpected medals, they're probably going to lose the total too.  And then the questions are going to start coming:  Why?

Could a number of these other USA athletes be getting involved in the "Rule 40" controversy we've been talking about?

Or could a lot of these Americans just be getting too comfortable?  Maybe that's where the Communists have it right...

F-RC, Day Four, Part II: Badminton-Gate Spreads

The story in badminton is growing by the hour.

Now, we get word that a second match in the badminton tournament was polluted.  And, in fact, the sanctioning body for the sport IS getting involved, charging all four teams in both matches with failure to put forth their best effort at all times.

A Chinese pair and a South Korean pair were involved in the match I told you about earlier.  Another South Korean pair and an Indonesian pair were involved in the second match.  The second match was, in fact, disqualified by the referee until the teams protested.

No word yet on sanctions, but I would have to believe expulsion from the Games is a real possibility.

Two more reasons we need to keep hammering Penn State for exactly what they did...

Coddle, enable, and promote child rape and pedophilia...

• That former teacher/Ben-Gal captain who was arrested for wanting to have sex with a student is now being referred to in the blog-o-sphere as a "female Sandusky".

Let that process.

The boy involved was 17 at the time.  Now, any questions on statuatory rape or the crimes of a teacher fucking her own student are all fine and good.

But to call her the "female Sandusky" is just dumb.

Why?

He's 17.  For all we know, he'd have gladly done it.

Especially if she had provided him pictures, I think the only non-consensual party may well have been the law.

Which is fine, for which she will and should be punished.

But how many 17 year-olds would've been the hero of the school if the boys knew that the teacher was a professional football cheerleader and he got a round with her?

I mean, "female Sandusky"?

Seriously??

If I were 17 and had gotten electronic communications from my teacher, it'd have been wrong as all crap, but, barring that...

Story #2 as to why we need to keep hammering PSU for child rape, pedophilia, etc.

• The cult appears to remain in full blossom at Happy Valley!  The school held a pep rally for the team.

ESPN article comments:

"You "Anti Penn State" haters made this a Penn State vs The World scenario and now that's what you are seeing!"

Fuck Penn State.  Fuck their fans, fuck their cult, and fuck their college.

If you're so happy to see this become that kind of a war-like situation, you won't like where it ends.

"Future Headline -

PSU alumni and students start witch hunt for all victims to avenge their football team and coach."

Wouldn't be shocked to see one or more of the victims offed.


"The problem with dumbhead PS fans is that they don't understand that their football program was allowed to be corrupted by an old ogre of a man, abetted by an administration with the spine of a jellyfish, egged on by a town that greedily sucks money from football games, and a clueless student and alumni base who would rather make excuses and ignore criminal activity so they can watch their dull team year in and year out. The whole Penn State community is to blame for this mess."

And that's why, frankly, I have nothing against seeing the entire institution shut down.


Anyone who supports PSU football, especially now, becomes part of the problem instead of part of the solution.  This went all the way to the Governor of Pennsylvania, people...


The community does not support the victims, because the culture, sans only two of the coaches and a few administrators, STILL EXISTS.

Five-Ringed Circus: Day Four A water-polo incident, an openly-thrown match, and the Chinese swimmer story rages...

Humble pie, side of crow, sent to my address, please.  The girls kicked ass, enjoy your tour, yadda yadda yadda...

Bleh.

Anyhow:

• China still leads the medal count after four days.   Both nations have 23 medals, China has 13 golds to the USA's 9.  China will add at least two more to this, as they have gold and silver in their national sport, table tennis, in a match which half a billion people will watch when it takes place.  It will be the seventh consecutive gold medal in women's table-tennis for the Chinese.  Table-tennis and badminton will probably be where China will rack upwards of 16 medals uncontested by the United States.  (Of course, if you must, the track and field competition starts soon, where China will not be much a factor.)
• The IOC, on the same day that China's Ye Shiwen won the 200m individual medley in the fastest time ever recorded outside of a polyurethane "super-suit"/technical suit (which rewrote the record books so blatantly, they were banned at the end of 2009!), stated openly that Shiwen's drug test taken after the 400m IM was clean.  In fact, IOC Spokesman Mark Adams went so far as to state that people like me "need to get real here.''

Oh really, Mr. Adams?  So it is in no way suspicious when, in the same event, the women's champion outsplits the men's champion at the same comparable time in the competition in their respective events?  (For those who missed it, Shiwen's split for the final 50 meters of her race was faster than Ryan Lochte's split for the same final 50 meters of his race when he won the Olympic gold medal in the same event.)

If you honestly want me to believe that Ye Shiwen is clean, I've got about the same lovely piece of swampland to sell you (in Omaha, NE) that I would for believing the same of Michael Phelps!

• Speaking of the badminton, we have an open match-fixing scandal to report.  The badminton tournament has been plunged into controversy as the final group match of two doubles teams was being thrown by both teams to prearrange better draws for each.  This enraged the fans and the match referee so much that he stopped the match and warned both sides officially.  It is unknown whether the Chinese and South Korean teams involved will be sanctioned or even expelled, but this simply was similar to the practice which used to take place in similar group-stage situations in soccer tournaments.
• The water polo tournament was the scene of another controversy today as Croatia defeated Spain in pool play 8-7.  Ivan Perez Vargas of Spain thought he had scored the tying goal with five seconds left, and the replays appeared to agree with him.  The referees disallowed the goal, and Spain vehemently protested it's loss.  This may well simply make Spain's road in the knockout phase a bit harder, but they are still pipped to advance.
• One from yesterday:  A scoring snafu (or something else?) changed the order of finish on the mens' gymnastics team results.  At the end of all the scoring, China had won, Britain was second, Ukraine was third, and Japan was fourth.  Then, all of a sudden, a protest had been lodged on the pommel horse score of the all-around favorite, Japan's superstar Kohei Uchimura.  The mistake was so egregious that, when the scores were recalculated, Japan had sprung all the way to second, Britain third, Ukraine off the podium!

The matter in question is whether the clumsy exit (Kohei has had significant problems in these Games, and this was no exception!) from the horse was a dismount (which would only grant a penalty) or a fall (which would nullify his routine completely).  After several minutes (and, almost assuredly, because of his status within the sport), it was ruled that he had (though badly) dismounted, instead of fallen.  The Ukraine coach was not pleased:

“When you think about athletics (track and field), 100 meters is just 100 meters — it’s how you ran it,” said Ukraine coach Yuliy Kuksenkov. “Sometimes in gymnastics, it’s 95 meters or 105 meters.”

• In closing for this post, in the "Theatre of the Absurd" Department:  Paul McCartney was, in fact, compensated for his performance at the Opening Ceremonies.
• He was paid one stinking British Pound.
• I don't think he minds the experience.  :)