In the Gee, Ya Think? Department, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has decided that perhaps he was a tad too lenient in the recent Ray Rice domestic abuse case.
Now those who commit assault of any kind, battery or an act of domestic violence will be suspended for six games without pay. A second offense will result in at least a year suspension.
Clearly, Goodell has seen the handwriting on the wall, and no, I don’t mean the evil of Baltimore Raven Ray Rice dragging his fiancée (now wife) Janay Palmer unconscious out of an Atlantic City elevator after beating her or the blame-the-victim farce of the Ravens’ press conference, in which Palmer also apologized for her role in the incident.
No, the penmanship Goodell has seen in his mind is on all those credit card receipts for season tickets. With fans up in arms over the assault, Goodell can’t afford a defection, no matter how popular football is. So let’s not hand the NFL any humanitarian awards just yet. ...
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Read MoreEach August, I breathlessly await the arrival of the gazillion-page September Vogue, not for the fashion, silly, but to answer the question that flits among my neurons all summer: Who will editrix Anna Wintour anoint as her new TB (tennis boyfriend)?
For as I said in a post on this site last winter about Maureen Dowd, RGIII and Jane Austen, an accomplished woman of good fortune must be in want of a PB (pretend boyfriend).
Or, in Anna’s case, a PTB or just TB. As we all know, Anna – who has featured many, mostly male tennis stars in the pages of Vogue – has been pretend-dating Roger Federer – aka Feddy Bear – for years, sending racks and racks of clothes over to his hotel suite when he’s in town for the US Open, presumably while Mrs. Fed looks the other sartorial way.
Then in 2011, Anna’s journalistic instincts got the better of her and she decided to play the hot hand...
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Read MoreThere’s so much going on in swimming and tennis right now that my head is spinning. So let’s plunge right in, shall we?
Down Under, Michael Phelps was back in a big way at the Pan Pacific Championships, winning gold in the 100 butterly, 4 X200 and medley relays and silvers in the 200 IM and the 4X100 relay.
It’s a measure of just how talented the 29-year-old is that he can take a year and a half off and already come back this far. You have to credit part of that to luck, fate, Providence, whatever, particularly when you consider that Missy Franklin, the darling of the last Olympics and worlds, missed Pan Pacific with a sore back – at age 19. Indeed, the pictures of Phelps smiling on the medal stand, looking at his gold medal for the 100 fly, in which Ryan Lochte finished second (seems like old times) said it all.
This has been a good moment for “old timers.” Federinas, along with the press, have practically anointed a resilient Roger Federer winner of this year’s US Open, which gets underway in earnest Monday, Aug. 25.
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Read MoreThere will be no Rafanole this year at the US Open, which gets underway Saturday with “Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day” at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow, Queens, N.Y.
The big news is that defending champ Rafael Nadal has pulled out due to the wrist injury that kept him out of the early portion of the hard-court season. There appears to be a pattern here: Rafa plays lights out to ace the clay-court season, peaks at the French Open, cries when they hand him the umpteenth trophy at Roland Garros in Paris, flames out at Wimbledon, gets injured, takes some time off and starts the whole cycle again.
This would seem to favor Novak Djokovic, but wait. After a trifecta of Ws (Wimby championship, world No. 1 ranking and wedding to longtime love Jelena Ristic), Nole burned out of tournaments at Toronto and Cincinnati. The New York Times, which seems to have no enthusiasm for Nole, noted that he’s been “fending off charges” that he hasn’t been practicing much since the wedding. Fending off charges? Really? Is he a criminal? What’s next, blame the wife?
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Read MoreThe U.S. national championships have been a disappointing meet for fans of Phelpte, the Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte rivalry. (Also known as Phlochte, which sounds better.)
Anyway, Phelpte, Phlochte, it boiled down to the same thing: Phelps finished second in the 100 butterfly, perhaps his signature event; sixth in the 100 back and seventh in the 100 free. Lochte was second in the 100 free and third in the 200 back.
The only time the old rivalry kicked in was in the 200 IM, in which Lochte bested Phelps, with both posting among the fastest times in the world this year. They didn’t race next to each other, however, in the center of the pool, eyeballing each other as they used to, matching stroke for stroke, breath for breath. Instead they were in outside lanes, where mere mortals dwell.
"I guess we can say this is kind of our off-year," Lochte said of himself and Phelps. "Well, I can say that." (Love Ryan, and the way he can defer to Michael in friendship while still holding his own.)
Bottom line...
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Read MoreOvershadowed by the World Cup and Wimbledon – OK, and LeBron James returning to Cleveland and baseball’s All-Star Game and lots of other sporting events/news – the recent Bulldog Grand Slam at the University of Georgia in Athens nonetheless had a pleasure all its own, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte testing each other in a pool once more.
Is there a more pleasant rivalry? Look at the pictures from wherever, whenever they meet. They’re like two buddies who can pick up the threads of a conversation over distances and time.
“It never gets old,” Lochte says in the teamusa.org piece of swimming against his rival. “I love it. He’s the toughest racer I’ve ever had to go up against. No matter what stroke, what event, he’ll race you to the end. It’s a challenge to race against him and I’m always up for a challenge. Win or lose, no matter what, at the end of the race, we’re still going to be friends. We’re not going to hold a grudge, so, I love it.”
It helps that swimming is a relatively marginal sport, except at Olympic time – Phelps and Lochte are basically swimming to get in shape for Nationals in August – and that Phelpte are teammates as well. Whereas Rafanole are competitors locked in a continuing battle for titles and trophies attached to big prize money. Although I’m not convinced that Rafa and Nole aren’t so chummy anymore.
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Read MoreOK, true story: Several weeks ago during the French Open, I had a dream in which I saw Novak Djokovic – dressed in blazing white, legs spread in typical Nole-Gumby fashion – leaning forward on a grass court, butt up in the air as he drew a white line on the green with his racket and wept.
“My God,” I thought to myself, “he’s going to win Wimbledon this year.”
Which he did, defeating Roger Federer 6-7 (7), 6-4, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-4 in the battle of the fertile male tennis titans. (Feddy and wife Mirka recently welcomed their second set of twins, while Nole and fiancée Jelena Ristic are expecting their first child this fall. So they have a bit of catching up to do in that tournament.)
It was no easy victory, but then for our dear Nole (pronounced "no-LAY"), it never is, is it?
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