I couldn't agree more with your take on Shaun White, but you missed the best part. After he wins the gold and his family mobs him, he gets all choked up and then sweetly jokes about it during the interview.

His description of the Olympics as "the X games times 10" was pretty classic too.

It's too bad Shaun White was overshadowed by Michelle Kwan. I don't know much about these Olympics, but I doubt there's a more dominant athlete at these games. He's won every event he's entered this year, including sweeping the X Games.

He's also a great personality. He's goofy, but still sincere. The interview with him after he won and his family mobbed him was a classic. The way he was choking up and laughing about it without dismissing it was sweet.

White's comment about the Olympics being like the X Games times 10 was pretty funny. But the X Games is still a bigger deal to snowboarders than the Olympics--especially since the Olympics are so behind the times with their events. Slopstyle is the premiere event in snowboarding. It's way more interesting, creative, and prestigious among boarders than the half-pipe.

Instead of adding slopstyle, this year the Olympics adds boarder-cross, which the X Games dropped several years ago. White has won the last 3 X Games slopstyles, and 2 out of 3 half-pipes.

I suspect King is still bitter about the trainwrech of a season the Giants foisted on us last year. There's nothing like spring training to seperate the half-full people from the half-empty.

On King's side, Neikro and Feliz were painful to watch in the 2nd half last year, and both still haven't proved they're everyday players. I like Matt Morris but he looks like another one-year-too-late Sabean signing. Durham has already developed a new ailment--plantar fascitis.

Noah Lowry dominated after the break, Matt Cain is still raw but his arm is the stuff of legends, the bullpen has some exciting young arms in Accardo and Munter, Benitez is supposed to be in great shape. Steve Finley is the exactly the sort of fourth starter the Giants need when Barry and/or Moises go down.

But who knows how long the old men will stay healthy and which of the youngsters will prove to be major leaguers. One thing I know, is that for some reason Steve Finley has always bugged me, and I'm not looking forward to rooting for him.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the great revelation of the first two rounds: free, live streaming video of the games! How wonderful was it be freed from CBS's determination of which game we should watch? I completely agree with everyone about the greatness of CBS's conservative coverage, EXCEPT when it comes to switching among the games when it gets down to crunch time.

During Friday's late games, I once again had the image of CBS managing this critical task by giving a senile grandpa a remote control. I was watching the games at a bar, and can’t recall which games it was. But several times we threw peanuts at the plasma screen when they interrupted an play in a fairly close game with 3 or 5 minutes to go, and jumped to time-out huddles where the whole country knew the trailing team was going to foul as soon as the ball was inbounded.

I can just hear grandpa saying "well, hold on now, we don't want miss the inbound. Now where is that confounded quick-view button . . . ."

I'm amazed that soccer hasn't discovered modern statistics yet. Soccernet has something called "Top Rated Players" sorted by position, but they don't explain the formula!

fifaworldcup.yahoo.com has some interesting stuff like corners, crosses, fast breaks, short and long passes, and tackles committed and suffered. The short vs. long passes give an interesting perspective on the countries' styles of play.

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/stats/index.html

But where is possession time for sides and players? Things like steals, turnovers, and percentage of successful passes for sides and players should be simple enough to tabulate.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see an NFL-style halftime breakdown of a handful of stats? Or maybe something like how Ronaldo averages 50 touches and 5 minutes of possession time, but he only had 10 and 1 in the first half? Or that the U.S. is completing 73% of their passes, compared to the their 82% rate in qualifying?

In the World Cup, the small sample sizes and varying quality of opponents might make a lot of this meaningless, but over a 38 match club season, there's got to be some useful information in there.

Say what you will about stats, but I assume you can trust the odds makers in soccer as much as in any other sport. Here's one site that shows the odds of the U.S. winning at +190 (or almost 2-1) while Ghana is +125 (5-4) and Italy is even money to beat the Czechs: www.online-gambling-insider.com/

Both the Czechs and the Ghanaians will be without their two top strikers. The U.S. will be missing Masteroni and Pope, but I don't they're as critical loses, although Masteroni did have a great first half against Italy.

And I'm shocked by this quote from Pavel Nedved:

"We do not have the points, we play against the strongest opponent in the group, we have lost two more players. Now a miracle must happen.

"I do not think our chances are big. We have got into a situation where we have to win promotion against the strongest team."

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=371798&cc=3888

That's loser talk! I don't think I've ever heard such a negative comment from a superstar before a game.

Now if Arena will just turn Eddie Johnson loose for 90 minutes in a 4-4-2, hopefully we'll see the explosive U.S. attack from 2002.