The Rio 2016 Summer Olympics wrapped up today. The final few medals handed out, the typical Closing Ceremonies chaos the great migration to the airport in the morning …

Here are 10 topics about these Games, the future Games, and the people involved in it all.

[Read more →]

What will I stay up all night to watch on TV?

Not much.

Not the NFL. Not the NBA. Not even Major League Baseball.

The World Cup? Maybe the Super Bowl.

The Summer Olympics?

As it turns out … absolutely … if the track meet is going on.

[Read more →]

Apparently, USA Track and Field doesn’t care that it cannot come up with sprint-relay teams who can get a baton around a track.

Any time the U.S. has a quartet of sprinters — male or female — running in a major event, American fans who have been paying attention know they may soon need to cover their eyes.

(Eight years ago, at Beijing 2008, I saw both the men’s and women’s sprint relay team fail to complete the three handoffs, throwing away medals in the process, and driving me to distraction.)

And here we are, eight years later, and apparently no one in USAT&F seems to notice the embarrassing mess that is its relay teams.

Because the men screwed it up tonight, and had to give up what appeared to have been a bronze-medal finish … coming one day after the women dropped the baton in qualifying.

[Read more →]

I was critical of the U.S. women’s basketball team yesterday. It underwhelmed me in a semifinal victory over France.

Then I saw the men play Spain tonight …

And they were just as ragged as were the women … while playing significantly more competent opposition. Which means they are in a much more dangerous situation.

A Spain team led by 36-year-old Pau Gasol (23 points) lost by only six, 82-76, to a team including Kevin Durant, Boogie Cousins, Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson. Oh, and Carmelo Anthony, zero championships, who apparently considers this team his — which would explain a lot.

Next up? The gold-medal game against Serbia — the team the Yanks beat by all of three points in pool play. The Serbia that was shooting, at the buzzer, to send their game with the U.S. into overtime.

Have a look at the box; it was a close-run thing.

Anyway, be warned:

[Read more →]

I have seen more than a little women’s basketball.

I covered WNBA games. I traveled to Arizona to sit down with Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury. I reported on women’s college basketball games and more than a few girls prep basketball games.

I covered the U.S. women’s team in an Olympics or three.

But over the past half dozen years, without planning to do so, I pretty much checked out on women’s hoops. Much of that was about working in the UAE, where the women’s game hardly exists.

So, for a change of pace, I watched the U.S. women defeat France in the women’s semifinals at Rio 2016 tonight, their 48th consecutive victory in Olympic play.

I was not impressed.

[Read more →]

We’re all Olympics critics, aren’t we? Well, many of us. And sometimes we feel like we’re just crabbing about something or other all the time and maybe we should do something about it.

So, today, nothing but kind thoughts. Really. None of this is satire. This is just niceness for the sake of changing up things.

[Read more →]

Forty years ago today I walked into a newsroom for the first time as a full-time professional journalist.

That was a very long time ago, and even longer in the context of print journalism’s modern era — where the only certainty has been change.

Looking back, we can see at least three significant eras in newspapers over that 40 years, which is a lot, given that the industry had not changed radically over the previous 75 years. Not since the telephone.

The three eras my contemporaries and I worked through:

[Read more →]

The greatest upset at Rio 2016, so far?

As we head into Day 12 of the Summer Games, Great Britain is second in the medals table — at least, the table ordered by gold-medals-won — and ahead of China.

There it is: United States, 26 gold medals; Great Britain, second with 16 gold medals; China third with 15 gold medals.

Wha-at?!?

That would be the China that won 51 golds at Beijing 2008 and 38 at London 2012.

This would be the Britain that won exactly one gold medal at Atlanta 1996, 36th in the standings.

As one social media user from China put it: “You kidding me?”

What is going on?

[Read more →]

I was in the stadium when Usain Bolt of Jamaica won his first Olympic gold medal — at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing 2008.

He is up to seven Olympic golds now, including three successive 100-meter triumphs, and I’m getting tired of him and the formulaic post-race routine he has been inflicting on us for most of a decade now.

It is not enough for Bolt to accept the accolades of the crowd, when he wins the 100-meter dash and the unofficial title of “world’s fastest human”. Oh, no.

He also has to do a leisurely (like, half-hour) lap of the stadium, kissing babies, stopping and picking up or dropping off Jamaican flags … while broadcast anchors rhapsodize about his greatness and love of track and “godlike” abilities. (That was the word used on the BBC: “Godlike”.)

I saw this one on television, sort of a lucky break — just waking up at 3:15 a.m., French time — 10 minutes before the 100-meter final was to go off over in Rio.

I watched the finalists come in, through the tunnel the track federation has decided (correctly) helps amp up the excitement in the stadium. Fourth out, Justin Gatlin, the American. Booed. Usain Bolt sixth out. Cheered avidly.

And then Usain Bolt did what Usain Bolt does.

[Read more →]

Back in December, as long-shots Leicester City led the English Premier League, most of world football figured they would fade badly.

Those swollen ranks included Gary Lineker, the host of the BBC review show Match of the Day.

Lineker was so sure Leicester would fall back into the pack that he vowed to host MotD in his underwear if they won the Premier League championship.

Leicester City won the Premier League by 10 points, ignoring Lineker as well as oddsmakers who had installed them as 5,000-to-1 shots, before the start of the season, to become champions.

Leaving Lineker — who no doubt figured he was more likely to be elected prime minister than be on the wrong side of his Leicester vow — to own up to his promise.

And tonight, in the first “Match of the Day” broadcast of the 2016-17 season, the former England and Leicester forward gritted his teeth and did his “cold open” in Leicester City-branded underwear — as can be seen in this video.

[Read more →]