Lance cheats, Francesa rants, and what Lolo teaches us: Lunch Trey
Don't forget to eat your vegetables on today's Lunch Trey...
Lance Armstrong has decided not to fight the doping charges leveled against him by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He'll have to cede his seven Tour de France wins -- and the respect of the world -- as a result. Yahoo!'s Les Carpenter points out that, if he had had a case, Armstrong would have continued to battle to clear his name, which means he's guilty and his achievements tainted. Had just about enough banned-substances bad news in the sports headlines lately? Me too. On the plus side, it's led to some interesting insights; SI's Michael Rosenberg posits that, in the end, we don't really care that Lance cheated. And on Grantland Network's podcast The Triangle, Jonah Keri spoke to Brian Kenny about why fans seem to take baseball doping so much more personally.
VIDEO: Letterman wowed by Serena's red dress
You can give that a listen in the car, or you can try to find Mike Francesa's ten-minute rant after yet another anemic-hitting Mets loss yesterday afternoon. Francesa bellowed to the point of losing his voice about the lack of professionalism and how the team should refund the money of the "eight people" who showed up to the game. I'm a Mets fan; on the merits, I don't disagree with the guy. It's been a pretty choppy lap to swim since the All-Star Break. But at the same time, it's the Mets. You get this upset every time they look like a T-ball team, you'll give yourself a heart attack, bro. Amuse yourself by changing the lyrics to "Meet The Mets," like I do. ("Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, step right up and beat the Mets!") Or gaze upon this hilarious animated GIF of Terry Collins in despair.
And finally, ESPNW's Kate Fagan says that, although we've already started to forget many of the big headlines from the Olympics, we shouldn't forget a few of the ugly lessons we learned from the Lolo Jones coverage -- specifically, the double standard still applied to female athletes in terms of their looks:
Jones offered the example of U.S. teammate David Oliver, who took the silver medal in the 110-meter hurdles in Beijing, and then, in advance of London, secured a number of marketing deals, including this commercial with Coca-Cola. But Oliver failed to make this year's Olympic team. "He's very good-looking," Jones pointed out. "He was on magazine covers, and on some of them he was shirtless. And nobody ripped him apart when he didn't make the team. I made the team and finished fourth, and I was ripped to shreds because I had marketing deals. If a female is good-looking, it totally decreases her credibility. Now she's not a good athlete -- she's only good in these track meets because she's good-looking."
