If you are an avid sports fan, undoubtedly, you watch ESPN's SportsCenter. Reflecting its primary focus on entertainment, rather than sports, the folks at ESPN are conducting yet another unscientific and haphazard fan voting contest-Title Town, USA.

 Whatever happened to the multi-sport high school athlete?

It took a computer scientists to discover baseball's newest secret weapon, but can anyone really use this weapon is the real question.

During this past weekend's (July 17-20) State Farm Classic LPGA Tournament, Michele Wie was disqualified for violating one of golf's inane rules governing when and where the players sign their scorecards. Upon finding out she had been disqualified, Sue Witters, the LPGA's director of tournament competition commented that "She (Wie) was like a little kid after you tell them there's no Santa Claus."  

The National Football League has once again gone that extra mile-a mile towards the absolutely ridiculous perhaps-when earlier this week it was announced they've hired "experts" to review game film and determine if players are flashing street gang signs during on-field celebrations.

In the coming school year about fifty thousand student athletes at some four hundred Texas high schools will be tested for steroids. This is the second part of the six million dollar steroid testing project pushed by Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst and approved by the 2007 Legislature. The first round, just completed a few weeks back, cost over a million dollars and saw 10,000 kids pissing in cups. The results: two kids were caught. But were they really caught?

Japanese game shows have been satirized by a variety of long-running American television shows such as "The Simpsons" and "Saturday Night Live." Americans found these parodies to be amusing despite little knowledge of actual Japanese game shows. Finally, ABC decided to take advantage of this form of popular culture by airing "I Survived a Japanese Game Show." So, what took so long?

During the years I lived in California, my daily rituals often involved a fifty mile car drive. No, I wasn't commuting to work and back, I was simply going surfing. Not that there's anything special about such trip, fans of action sports have long known that much gasoline is burnt getting to and from the places where play takes place. 

Dara Torres broke all stereotypical thinking over the weekend. At 41, she has the world in awe as she beat her own record from only a couple of decades earlier. . . Both men and women look up to her and wonder: she was 17 in her first Olympics and she's ready for the next, 24 years later.

As the calendar turns to July, athletes from around the globe finish their preparations for next month's Summer Olympics, that quadrennial exercise in unabashed jingoism in which fans on every continent tune in to root in unqualified terms for their fellow countrymen and women. What to make, then, of the curious case of the 2004 U.S. men’s basketball team, the team that Americans loved to hate?

Wimbledon. A few hours ago, after an hour and forty-two minutes of tennis, the fifth seeded Elena Dementieva hit a forehand shot straight into the net and Venus Williams took the match and will soon meet sister Serena in the finals.

It is always somewhat telling to witness an embarrassed youngster turn to the sidelines during a game and tell their parent to be quiet or calm down and in essence suggest that “this isn’t about you.”

A few days ago, I was on the phone with a good friend and fellow die-hard sports fan. He lives in Boston. Predictably, he was trying to rub my nose in the recent Celtics triumph over the Lakers, talking all sorts of trash and asking me if I was having the nightmares yet.

Reflecting on the Willie Randolph saga and decency in sports

I am still marveling at Tiger Wood's incredible victory at the US. Open. His physical and mental toughness is practically unparalleled in professional sports. Yet, I wonder whether his victory was worth the cost.

 George Carlin passed away early this morning. He was truly a pioneer in observational humor and many of his skits will live on for years to come.

The late and legendary American sportscaster Haywood Hale Broun is perhaps best remembered for his psychological insights into our games. His most familiar aphorism: "Sports don't build character. They reveal it," is certainly what coaches call "bulletin board material," meaning it's the kind of thing a coach can write up on the team bulletin board for motivation purposes. But after watching the Celtics trounce the Lakers in the six sorry (sorry, that is, from the Laker's perspective) games that passed for this year's NBA finals, a different quote comes to mind.

Tim Russert was a master connector and communicator who embodied what many coaches would like to be.

In the past few days, we have seen two phenomenal sports performances. First, Tiger Woods, limping along after surgery survives 5 days of golf to outlast and outplay the game's best players. He drains a series of impossible putts to keep himself in contention and wins the US Open. Then, a few nights later, the Boston Celtics complete an improbable turnaround, making them the NBA Champions. In this entry, I just want to get out some of the basic theories of why people choke and excel under pressure to give us a grounding for future discussions.

It may not be a question of how far you fall, but how you land that really counts. But the fact of the matter is baseball, after being thrown over the cliff performance-enhancing substances last year, has fallen a little too far and landed a little too awkwardly.