According to the BBC, “Federal prosecutors in the United States have dropped their investigation into allegations of doping at a professional cycle racing team which is partly owned by Lance Armstrong.”

This was the right choice, even though the circumstantial evidence suggests that Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs (ie. all of his main rivals were busted for doping). Nothing is gained from an inquiry into Armstrong’s team, or into possible doping by Armstrong for the simple reasons that 1) people were not hurt by Armstrong’s possible doping and 2) Armstrong has retired. Pursuing him now only wastes U.S. taxpayer dollars that could be spend going after the kind of criminals that hurt people.

…and learn to bike like a man:

If you have ever wondered if people take ping pong too seriously, the answer is yes:

The weight of the evidence shows that A-Rod is better in the postseason. Here are the numbers:

Batting average:
Rodriguez – .277
Jeter – .307

On-base percentage:
Rodriguez – .386
Jeter – .374

Slugging percentage:
Rodriguez – .498
Jeter – .465

OPS:
Rodriguez – .884
Jeter – .839

Runs/RBIs per game:
Rodriguez – 1.22
Jeter – 1.09

I’ve disliked the NCAA ever since 1993 when I read The Hundred Yard Lie by Rick Telander. The NCAA claims to protect collegiate athletes, but instead the NCAA protects itself (while making hundreds of millions of dollars a year) while prohibiting the athletes themselves from making money. It’s just wrong.

Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly wrote about The Hundred Yard Lie in 1989:

The crux of the problem, he argues, is hypocrisy–on the part of colleges, which claim they are producing “student athletes,” when they are cheating players academically; coaches, who assert they are building character when, instead, they care only about winning; boosters, who help colleges “buy” the best talent; and the NCAA, which produces little but sanctimonious platitudes in defense of a corrupt system. Telander’s plans to remedy matters include establishing professional teams of 18-to-22-year-old non-students, headquartered at colleges, with no undergraduates allowed on the teams. His righteous indignation is infectious and potent.

That was more than 20 years ago. Gene Wojciechowski was fired up about the NCAA in April of this year:

The NCAA isn’t just broken, it’s borderline useless. It has been paper-shredded into so many confetti strips that you can’t recognize what it was or what it’s supposed to be. It is the show poodle of bureaucracies — big hair, no substance.

The undertow of recruiting scandals, betting scandals, one-and-dones, academic hypocrisy, quick-fix prep schools, demigod coaches, weenie university presidents, bottom-line athletic directors, street agents, AAU vermin, oily parents and on-the-take players has pulled the NCAA under. Its arm floaties aren’t enough to keep it above water.

Seriously, has there been a more depressing time in college athletics than the last five years? Check that; the last five months?

Still some people didn’t get the message that Telander told 20 years ago recently. ESPN’s Jeff MacGregor is now seeing the light:

Until last week, it was possible to think of the NCAA as something other than a protection racket. No longer.

The extraordinary Taylor Branch cover story in the October issue of The Atlantic lays out in precise and killing inventory the mortal sins of the NCAA. Frank Deford called it “the most important article ever written about college sports.” I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now. Please read it.

The Branch article — likely sourced and reported with the same grave rigor he brings to his book-length histories, and along with months of bad news based on reporting from other sources on other fronts — might mean that a kind of cultural critical mass has finally been reached. The NCAA is about to collapse. At least in our esteem. It is now understood, even by the most obtuse and earnest members of the sporting press that not only does the National Collegiate Athletic Association fail to prevent corruption, it requires it.

In that way, there’s no going back.

And while it is well known among regular readers of this column that I suffer institutions and bureaucracies (even the one employing me) without patience or charity, I approach today’s subject with as much fairness and disinterest as I can. Because the evidence against the NCAA needs no embellishment. The argument against it as any kind of operative force for good is overwhelming.

From Ohio State to the University of Miami; from Reggie Bush to Cam Newton to Jim Tressel; from Yahoo! Sports to the Columbia Journalism Review to a hundred other outlets in just the past few weeks (see sidebar for links and stories), consensus has been reached. Euthanize the NCAA. Blow it up. Tear it down. Cut it loose. The NCAA is a fire department staffed by arsonists.

It’s a “clearinghouse” that brokers the sale of college-age athletic services to broadcasters and shoe companies for money. Sound familiar?

MacGregor’s line that the NCAA is a clearinghouse that brokers the sale of college-age athletic services to broadcasters and shoe companies for money really resonates. Why should the college athletes be forced to play without pay (except for scholarships) when the NCAA makes hundreds of millions of dollars off their services. It is just wrong.

The Desert 2011 from Matt Pitcher on Vimeo.

Jonah Keri has a good article in Grantland explaining pitching stats. A quarter of a billion dollars were spent on Mike Hampton, Denny Neagle, and Barry Zito and if only general managers understood this article, they wouldn’t have spent those kind of crazy dollars on declining pitchers.

The WSJ has a nice write up about why people love Jens Voigt—the long and short of it is this—Jens has an incredible ability to suffer and who doesn’t respect that?

But Voigt is cycling’s beloved superfreak, a cult object on two wheels. Cycling fans can be combative—they will argue about riders, teams, doping charges, seat angles, handlebar tape, frame materials, the coffee, and then the handlebar tape some more—but Jens is a rare point of agreement. Everybody loves Jens.

Voigt is adored because he rides a bike like it’s his last day on it. He is full gas, always. A race like the Tour de France can be maddeningly conservative—riders at the top of the standings watch each other, cover attacks, avoid risks, do just enough to cling to their position.

But Jens? Jens pummels the race. He rides like he’s fleeing a bank heist. He rides like he’s got a paper route with 100,000 papers. Voigt on a bike is a boxing match—relentless, confrontational, jabbing, punching, attacking.

Over his long career, Voigt has won big races, including Tour stages. But that’s not why he recently got 40,000 followers in a couple days after opening his Twitter account, or why there’s a jensvoigtfacts.com website with Chuck Norris-type tributes. (“Sharks have a Jens Voigt Week.”)

It’s Voigt’s suffering that clinches his popularity. Cycling fetishizes pain—the more agony a rider can withstand, the more his or her legend grows. Voigt is a beautiful sufferer, sometimes a comical one. “Shut up, legs!” he’s known to bark when the agony begins. (It’s become his catch phrase, his “Make My Day.”) Stories about Voigt’s grit are abundant. The time he rode two stages of the Tour of California with a broken hand. The time he crashed, destroyed his own bike and had to borrow a tiny yellow kid’s bike with toe clip pedals to finish the race.

There are some people, like me, who look a this and think of everything that could go wrong. But other people just think of everything that could go right.