Let me begin with a short comment on Danica Patrick and her appearance in the Indy 500. The folks running Indy and the IRL rode Patrick as a publicity vehicle about as hard as they could all last week. She was more overexposed than Paris Hilton for a while there. It was an interesting and different publicity angle for the race; Patrick is young and attractive and female; that is an entirely new “slant” for the Indy 500 which is an event that used to be huge and is now fighting desperately to hold onto a status that allows it to be worthy of some coverage on Page One – Sports in major papers around the country. Patrick finished fourth in the race which is the best finish by a woman ever; that's nice. Ratings for the Indy 500 were up more than 40% from last year to a respectable 6.6. Now here is the problem:

What do the folks from IRL/Indy 500 do for an encore? Quick, name the next IRL race? OK, then name the next IRL race of importance outside the neighborhood where it will be held? OK, then tell me how many more IRL races there will be this year?

They built some momentum for a sport that is in decline and now the next opportunity they have for positive publicity is about a year into the future…

TJ Simers had this observation about the Indy 500 in the Los Angeles Times. Let all the folks who get angry with me when I make a snarky comment about certain women's pro sporting endeavors take note; I am not the only person in the world who “still doesn't get it”:

“The Indianapolis 500 has an attractive woman driving one of the cars today, and she's expected to attract a large TV audience. Too bad the WNBA hasn't thought of doing the same thing.”

There was a track meet in Hengelo in The Netherlands over the weekend and Marion Jones was invited to attend. Remember, Jones has been tested for performance enhancing drugs lots of times and she has passed every test. Nonetheless, she carries the stigma of BALCO on her back. Her performance on Sunday did not do anything to relieve suspicions in the minds of people who think she may have been juicing. Jones finished second in the 100-meter dash; that sounds like a solid performance for a 29-year-old sprinter, no? Well it was the time of the race that makes it look as if she is a shadow of her former self.

Jones' best 100-meter time is 10.65 seconds. The winner of the race ran 11.15 seconds – a full half second slower than Jones' best time. In the 100-meter dash, a win by 0.1 seconds is considered convincing. Jones ran 11.29 on Sunday or 0.64 seconds slower than her best time. OK, maybe she's still rounding into form; maybe she's past her peak athletic performance time based simply on advancing age; maybe she 's past her peak athletic performance time based on the fact that she has borne a child. All those things are possible. And it is also possible that she is no longer getting or taking some kind of BALCO concoction that produced that 10.65 time in a race. You just can't tell…

Two columnists decided to use Memorial Day as the basis for a column about sports and society using Pat Tillman as a vehicle to make the point. Each took a different tack, but both columns are well worth reading. There was one by Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel and one written by Gene Collier in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The college football coach's poll will reveal how each member voted in the final poll of the season in an attempt to dispel rumors that some of the voting may not be strictly based on performance. The reality of the situation is that the college coaches are uniquely a bunch of people ill prepared to participate in such a poll if you want the poll to reflect reality. Football coaches are monomaniacal about their team and their season and their next opponent. The thought that these folks would take time out of their schedules to actually watch several teams in the top 20 play on a week-to-week basis so that they could form a learned opinion about which team was better than the others is ludicrous. So, the best you can hope for is that the coach himself will do the voting based on what he sees on SportsCenter and hears from the talking heads on TV. There cannot be an informed basis for the voting and there never will be. So, the revelation of how each coach voted in the final poll is nice, but it does not bring to the results of the poll any more expertise than you would get if you did a poll of men who wear black denim jeans and drink Bud Light - - and revealed how each member of that poll voted.

I read somewhere that the folks who run horseracing in the US have decided to try to create some media interest in turf racing. They are trying to create something called The Grand Slam of Grass, which will be four turf races spread out over time with a multi-million dollar prize going to any horse that can sweep all four races. While I'm not sitting here stunned by the brilliance and novelty of such an idea, I have to say that it certainly can't hurt to try. And maybe the way they should kick off their publicity campaign for The Grand Slam of Grass is to get Ricky Williams to be the spokesperson for the event…

Meanwhile in Russia, pig racing is reportedly a sport with a growing interest. Ananova.com has a story that talks about an organization known as the “Federation of Sport Pig Breeders”; folks, I couldn't make something like that up. When you're at the horse races and your key horse finishes seventh in a field of eight, you scream at it to prepare for the glue factory. I imagine at the pig races that losers get to meet “The Sausage Machine”…

Finally, here is an observation from Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel:

“The next Star Wars' movie will focus on Shawn Bradley. Episode IV: Revenge of the Stiff.”

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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