'Who asked YOU?'

You hate not to give Tour de France champion Floyd Landis the benefit of the doubt, but with all the talk these days about steroids and preformance enhancing drugs, allegations that his urine came back with high levels of testosterone must result in a collective sigh of disappointment.

Landis became a media darling, competing in the grueling bike race with a hip that seemed to degenerate with each mile. His comeback from eight minutes behind to vault into and maintain the lead is the stuff of made-for-TV movies.

Austin Murphy writes about it in a Sports Illustrated on-line extra. "He knows how bad this looks," Murphy writes, "and told me, 'I wouldn't hold it against somebody if they don't believe me.' I don't know what to believe. "

William C. Rhoden makes it the topic of his column in today's New York Times ("Just when fans allow themselves to feel warm and fuzzy about an apparent heroic sports performance, we get punched in our collective stomachs by yet another steroid scandal," although technically this doesn't seem to be the case.).

The "Sports Nut" column on Slate.com posits, "Wait, aren't all pro cyclists cheaters?"

Undoubtedly many more articles will delve into this situation.

What's next? Will some enterprising reporter discover that Tiger Woods is on something? How about the next poker champion? Perhaps he will show high levels of decaffinated products that make him extremely calm, resulting in a super poker face that will net him victory.

Jimmy Durante used to sing a song that included the line, "Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, and still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?" As I get older, that's pretty much the way I feel about following sports.

Great news!

Spotbit is back.

The site that offered digital versions of popular magazine and ran afoul of niggling copyright laws shut down for several weeks while it looked for material.

Now instead of US News and World Report and Macleans, there are such icons of publishing as Bak (from Turkey), GPS World, and Chunse, which appears to be a Chinese men's magazine.

Yippee!

King Kaufman, sports guy for Salon.com, wrote a post-column about the slow murder of sports by television. For years, networks -- and more recently cable TV -- have insisted on starting games later and later. And let's be clear here, the broadcast industry calls the shots, not the other way around.

The All-Star Game, which went on the air on FOX at 8 p.m. Eastern time, didn't actually begin, according to Kaufman, until 8:43, even though the first pitch was "scheduled" for 8:20.

"Man, it must stink to be a baseball-loving kid in the Eastern and Central time zones," he wrote in his July 12 column. "When I started caring about baseball my bedtime was 8:30. As late as middle school I was supposed to be in bed by 10. If I'd grown up on the East Coast instead of the West and Fox had existed and had the baseball contract back then, I'd have never seen beyond the fourth inning of a big game." (See the rest of his column here).

That's one part of the equation. The other is the tradition of the network to use the opportunity to plug its shows ad nasuem. Oh, look, there's Tooth E. Actor, star of host network's upcoming prime time flop, in the stands, munching on a hot dog. And there's T.A. Starlet (who wouldn't know a baseball from a boomerang if her personal assistant hadn't spent 12 hours briefing her on it), desperately trying to resurrect her career, with host network's gratingly annoying eye candy reporter with no sports background whatsoever. Now let's look at that grand slam home run on instant replay, because we missed it due to the interview/plug.

And it's not just baseball that's guilty. Look at the recent NBA playoffs. And hockey. No, wait forget about hockey. The NFL does it right for the most part, keeping their important games in the daytime (except, of course, for the Super Bowl).

I caught the final inning of the game, in which the AL came from behind with two runs for the 3-2 victory. What amazed me was the stillness of the crowd. You would think it was an August game in the stadium of a last-place team.

TV and sports pundits constantly grouse about losing future fans, but, like the weather, no one does anything about it. Until some sports bigwig with some cajones starts putting his foot down, they shouldn't cry over the fact that their losing the next generation.

You're standing in line to buy a good ol' American cup of coffee and the person in front of you, with seemingly nothing better to do, stares at the fifty different types of beverages, trying to decide what he wants to drink.

Now move the same scenario to a fats food joint (not a typo, by the way). Why does the person ordering right before you wait until he gets to the front of the line to choose his meal? McDonalds! Hamburgers! Burger King! Hamburgers! Wendy's....

Granted there are more choices than there used to be, but I always thought the whole philosophy behind these restaurants was that offering a limited menu got the customer out of there faster.