There were lots of potential facts you could have looked at to make more interesting points.

1) Look at the number of foreign players who are playing in the NBA (and non-North American players who are playing in the NHL, for that matter.)

2) In tennis, looking in the top eight is not really proof of anything. Getting data on the top 500 or 1000 players in the world is not that hard. Noting statistically significant trends in that would be thought-provoking. I think the rise of the Russian women and Chinese women (you may think Na Li IS Chinese women’s tennis, but two others won the Women’s Doubles title at Wimbledon) are phenomena to behold, even if I think that counting Maria Sharapova as Russian is bogus since she came to America when she was nine and really developed here. Roger Federer does not prove the dominance of Swiss tennis with his singular brilliance.

3) Being a professional athlete is still an aspiration for most strata of American society. It doesn’t have the stigma like being a “ho” (ha-ha) does. If you count the athletes who earn over $100,000 in college education by playing collegiate sports as professionals, this aspiration is held by an even wider swath of the population.

4) You could have looked at some singularities like Lithuanian basketball (compared to Estonia, Latvia, Poland), Swedish tennis (compared to the rest of Scandanavia), South Korean short-track speed skating and even the negative singularity of French golf compared to its surrounding European neighbors.

I’m sorry I didn’t see the preview of this show so I could pose those questions.

He was not the “single best player in the tournament” because his act might have cost his team the World Cup. You can be the fastest guy in a race but if you trip and fall at the end are they going to vote you the best racer?

You seem to say no big deal, just a man acting on his anger. That is part of what sports are about, controlling your anger.

I keep wondering what the reaction would have been 60 years ago if Jackie Robinson had given a head butt to any of the number of players that called him the N word.

As the old saying goes, “If you’re not willing to cheat, then that means you just don’t want it bad enough.”

Zidane was given the golden ball award based on media votes that were cast before the headbutt. (http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=373632&cc=5901) So, your comparison to his being vilified if it were baseball doesn’t hold. It would be interesting to see if he would have gotten the golden ball if they had voted after the match.

Still, he was the single best player in the tournament. There is nothing to read into the incident. It was just man who has shown a temper before, in the heat of the toughest competition in the world, acting on his anger.

Lapchick: Is racism gone?

ESPN Wednesday, July 14, 2004

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1839521&type=page2Story

Racial divide driving a wedge into soccer’s grassroots

Steven Wells finds issues of race and class still blighting the sport’s development in the United States

Friday June 17, 2005

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1508828,00.html

This is an amazing statement. If that happened in baseball he would be vilified. Instead he was given the Golden Ball.

It tells me that this is something bigger. Was Zidane giving a head butt to the country of Italy who have a reputation of dirty soccer, deserved or not. Or was it just his personal manhood he was worried about, or was it the word terrorist – and would that make it ok? I’m told he is an otherwise classy man so I wonder.

I have a feeling that that head butt will be debated for a long time.

I also believe that America is ahead of the curve when it comes to preventing racism in sports. ESPN recently did a series of reports on racism in soccer where they interviewed the heads of FIFA and held their feet to the fire. We simply would not tolerate spitting on black players and NAZI chants to happen in our stadiums.

Flags still flutter from cars and balconies, and television analysts still muse on the country’s celebratory catharsis. German normality is not yet normal enough to be ignored. In fact, it generates abnormal interest.

As did the United States’ presence here, but in this case the shadows of war were evident rather than in retreat. Bruce Arena’s team was the only one that traveled in an unmarked bus for fear of attack, and the only one that spent part of its time in Germany on a military base.

Given the widespread international view of George W. Bush’s America as a bellicose power, the comment from striker Eddie Johnson before a game against Italy that “we’re here for a war” was perhaps the least felicitous of the tournament.

Kasey Keller, the United States goalkeeper, followed up by saying the nine men left standing in the titanic group-stage confrontation with Italy had “bled today for our country and our team.”

That was true enough. But Europe lives in a post-heroic and post-militaristic culture, and many Europeans saw an ugly disfigurement of soccer in the Italy-United States match rather than those values dear to America: heart, commitment and sacrifice.

Americans *shut out* in tennis? Such was implied by your morning

promo. Were you talking about Wimbledon? Twins Bob and Mike Bryan might

beg to differ having completed a career grand slam by taking the Gentlemen’s

doubles championship. This happened despite much talkeratti pontification about

all the Americans having been eliminated and having gone home. AND, only an hour after that victory Bob Bryan teamed up with Venus for the final in mixed doubles.

And, yes the rest of the world has become more competitive.