Is it me, or are the refs in Columbia-Ecuador doing a really horrible job? I’m watching with the sound off, but it looks like there was a red card on a flop that was a complete travesty of justice, a goalkeeper ‘injury’ chewing up ten minutes of clock, and then a yellow card on a tackle where the defender was between the ball and the other guy, got kicked, and then was given a yellow card for his trouble.

Regarding the red card, I had vague hopes that at the half the officials would look at the play again and realize that the guy they’d tossed from the game was innocent, and the guy who flopped should be ejected, and all would be made right for the second 45 minutes. That’s not the way things work, however.

I don’t follow the sport closely enough to know whether this game has World Cup implications, but I suspect it does, and Ecuador has a right to be pissed off. Except… Columbia seems to be the better team, flopping and bad calls notwithstanding. Not all the terrible calls have been in their favor, either. So the outcome is looking like it should, but the process of getting there has been terrible.

The shitty calls go both ways. After I typed the above, I watched a play just outside the penalty box, where a Columbian beat the defender and was then tripped. “Now that’s a yellow card,” I said to myself. The ref jogged over, pulled the yellow card out of his pocket, and held it up in the face of the guy who got tripped. Obviously the ref was sensitive to dives after the previous tragedy, but in this case he called diving on a guy who would have had a shot on goal if he kept his feet.

Columbia probably should win, but they have no right to be proud of the way they did it.

I’m not a good skier, but I’ve got my planks* on and I’m starting to slide down the slippery slope.

A week ago, the Sports Yak World was abuzz: Ray Lewis, football icon, about to play his last game, was implicated for using illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

Wait, no, that’s not quite it. The drugs are perfectly legal for you and me. They are against NFL rules, however.

There had already been whispers and speculation about Lewis. He’d had a severe injury, one that even his younger peers take months to recover from, and he was back on the field in a few weeks. Folks were looking at him with suspicious eyes even before a guy came out and said he’d sold Ray-Ray the stuff. The guy even has a tape of a phone conversation where Lewis asks for the substance.

The restricted product? Deer antler spray. Yep.

Quick chemistry lesson as I understand it (don’t be basing a thesis on this): Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is a chemical that is proving a valuable therapy for overcoming injuries, particularly in the elderly. In the body, HGH becomes IGF-1. Deer antler spray contains IGF-1. Snake oil salesmen have started selling deer antler spray to suckers and athletes. There’s no actual evidence that it works. (Ray-Ray also bought requested magic stickers. Seriously.) [Edit: I’m pretty sure Lewis got the stuff for free — the snake-oil salesman was hoping for an endorsement.]

But, given the slice of evidence presented to me, it’s pretty clear Ray Lewis (who denies everything) knowingly used a chemical specifically banned by the NFL to hasten his healing. That was cheating. Ray Lewis cheated, and he just won a Super Bowl.

Now, I’m not a Ray Lewis fan. Not at all. Weaseling out of a double-murder charge by testifying against your friends is not going to win your way into my heart. (He has been, since, a publicly stellar dude. If that’s the real Ray-Ray, if he really did learn from his past, then the God he talks about will welcome him.) I’m not a Ray Lewis fan, but I have to ask: Whom did he cheat?

He sure as hell didn’t cheat his fans. Remember, what we’re talking about here is that he used a safe method (well, a derivative of a safe method) to heal faster. Whom did he cheat?

I think we need to step back and look at why performance-enhancing drugs were banned in the first place. There are two arguments in favor of banning the use of PED’s: fairness and safety.

Let’s tackle the easy one first. Kids were (are) hurting themselves taking steroids. Athletes were (are) putting dangerous amounts of stuff into their bodies and paying for a couple of years of excellence with a lifetime of kidney failure. This is a very bad thing. For that reason I agree that anabolic steroids should be kept out of sports.

But what if the drug is safe? What if there’s no benefit to taking a crap-ton, but a little in the right place helps you heal faster? Isn’t healing good?

So then we get to fairness. In the cycling world there was (is) a practice of drawing blood from an athlete, spinning out the red cells, and on race day pumping that super-concentrate back into the rider’s system. This is quite obviously not something we have to worry about high school kids doing to get an edge at Saturday’s track meet. At least not yet. But safety isn’t an issue here (assuming proper procedures). The practice is banned on the grounds of fairness.

Presumably the fairness argument is based on finances; less-affluent bike riders can’t afford the expensive treatment. But I’ll tell you this, kids: in the races where blood doping happens, ALL the riders have the money to do it. And, probably, they all do it.

So, overall, I’m not buying the fairness argument, and that undercuts a lot of the current policies. An athlete should be able (encouraged!) to use all that science has to offer to recover from an injury faster, as long as the kids watching in the stands won’t be hurt trying to follow the example.

Free the Antlers!

One prominent athlete failed a steroid test after taking deer antler spray. Turns out his spray had methyltestosterone (or something like that) in there. My guess: the deer antler potion salesman decided to add a little something that actually worked into his version of the spray. If we free the antlers, athletes won’t have to buy the stuff from shady guys selling the antler juice out of the back of a van. They’ll be able to buy refined antlers from reputable sources. Sources with something to lose if their spray turns out to be tainted.

It’s a slippery slope, but here’s the thing: I WANT my favorite athletes to enhance their performance. I want them to practice, I want them to drill, and I want them to be in the best possible physical form. When they’re hurt, I want them to heal quickly, and if they use a therapy that is safe and legal for you and me, then I say go for it. It’s not FAIR to ask them to endure recovery times longer than necessary.

Ray Lewis broke the rules, but I don’t feel cheated.

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* Considering that skiers speak a different language, you’d think there’d be more ways to say ‘skis’.

There’s Professional American Football going on on screens all around me, and once more I’m reminded that the modern instant replay rules are terrible. Theoretically refs have 90 seconds to review close plays and get the call right.

It’s never 90 seconds before the game starts again. Never. The other night there was a delay of almost thirteen minutes to move the ball one foot but otherwise have no effect. Tonight we sat through a long review to determine that it didn’t matter what the review showed, the whistle had blown. That took about five minutes, during which I was treated to images of SUV’s with big red bows on them.

When a coach throws out a flag to appeal an inconsequential play, that coach instantly earns an extra hate point in my book.

Lexus, I think, is pretty much in favor of the rules as they stand. By extension, the people Lexus gives lots of money to also like things the way they are. Pretty much everyone except the people who watch the game like things the way they are.

An aside… There’s a guy on the sidelines of every NFL game who wears a pair of optic orange oven mitts. His entire job: Hold a mitt up while the network is showing a commercial, so the refs don’t accidentally start the game.

If I was king of the NFL, I’d suspend all the instant replay bullshit until we could get down to this: Overturn the call on the field in thirty seconds or the play stands. The league can go to a minute if they pay every fan in the country a dollar.

Extra Bonus Rant: Speaking of keeping the clock moving, spiking the ball at the line of scrimmage to stop the clock is intentional grounding, and time should be run off the clock.

Man I miss hockey.