NBC's $4.38 billion knockout punch

There's an old maxim in boxing. If you want to beat the champ, you have to knock him out. That's pretty much the way it was always going to play out when it came to the contest for the U.S. broadcast rights for the coming editions of the Olympic Games, which the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday awarded to NBC -- a $4.38 billion deal that stretches through the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Games.

Fox was in the game. The ESPN/ABC combination was, too.

Even so, NBC, which has televised every Summer Olympics in the United States since 1988, every Winter Games since 2002, was always the favorite, despite the resignation May 19 of Dick Ebersol. This process was always bigger than one man, no matter how towering a figure.

Eight years ago, the last time this process played out, NBC agreed to pay $2 billion for the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games. A General Electric sponsorship bumped the full package up to $2.2 billion. That time around, Fox bid $1.3 billion. ESPN offered to share revenues with the IOC but never specified dollar figures.

This time, NBC swung the knockout punch -- again.

ESPN opted to bid only for the 2014 and 2016 Games. According to Associated Press and Sports Business Daily, it offered $1.4 billion.

Fox put in a bid for 2014/16 and, as well, for 2018/20. Its two-Games bid was $1.5 billion, its four-Games bid $3.4 billion, AP and SBD reported.

NBC went big, for four Games and $4.38 billion.

What else did you expect?

As IOC president Jacques Rogge put it in a news conference Tuesday, referring to NBC, "I can say really that the Olympics are in their DNA."

The IOC, like any institution, has a comfort zone. With NBC, the IOC has enjoyed growth, prosperity and -- under Rogge's direction in particular -- financial security. While it might well have achieved those things in partnership with other networks, the fact is it is NBC that has been there through the ups, the downs, the Salt Lake scandal -- everything.

This deal anchors the IOC's finances through 2020. It figures to do the same for the U.S. Olympic Committee, which now gets 12.75 percent of the U.S. rights fee. The USOC and IOC are currently in active negotiations over the USOC's broadcast and marketing rights shares, Rogge saying the new NBC deal figures to be a "positive factor" in those talks.

Here are the numbers: NBC will pay $775 million for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia and $1.226 billion for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.

It will pay $963 million for the 2018 Winter Games and $1.418 billion for the 2020 Summer Olympics. Neither the 2018 nor 2020 site has been decided. The IOC will pick the 2018 city on July 6. Three cities are in that 2018 race: Munich; Annecy, France; and Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The IOC still hopes to reach a separate extension of the GE sponsorship, officials said Tuesday.

The IOC's relationships with NBC, beyond Ebersol, run deep indeed.

To be clear: The IOC did not structure the process so that NBC could win. Hardly. The bids were what they were. The IOC didn't tell anyone what to offer.

Nonetheless: If it was the case that the process was delayed so that there could be signs of life amid the global economic downturn, wasn't it also patently obvious that the auction was pushed back so that the Comcast/NBC merger could be fully completed?

Wasn't it equally obvious when the IOC went around dropping hints that a four-Games package would be welcomed? All those hints came after NBC lost $223 million in Vancouver. A four-Games package clearly would enable bidders for the next package to amortize costs over a longer term.

Brian Roberts, the Comcast chairman, said in that same news conference that the longer term was "strategically important" and of "great value to us." He said Comcast expects to make money on the $4.38 billion deal, calling the company's position "very comfortable."

Roberts added, "We said all along we were going to take a disciplined approach were we would have a path to profitability. By having a longer term, we were able to come out and achieve that goal."

It's far too facile, meanwhile, to say that Tuesday's deal is only about the money. To know even the first thing about the IOC and its culture is to know that.

So what else?

The IOC is actively trying to engage with young people. It last year launched a Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. It has a lively Facebook site.

NBC's deal gives it the rights to television, tablets, mobile phones, broadband -- to every platform now known or to be conceived, as Mark Lazarus, the new chairman of the NBC Sports Group, put it in that same news conference. "That's part of the value for our new company, to bring the Games to more people across more platforms," he said.

For years, the knock on NBC was that it held the good stuff back and showed it only in prime-time.

Fox and ESPN made clear they would show events live. But everyone knew NBC would be doing so, too -- that was one of the main benefits of the Comcast merger. Before, NBC had to rely on prime-time advertising sales. Now there would be considerably less financial pressure because of the added revenue stream from cable sub-fees.

Starting in 2014, Lazarus said, NBC would make every event available live, on one platform or another. Of course, the best stuff presumably will be shown again, in prime-time. Prime-time still draws families together before the big screen; that remains one of the main lures for sponsors.

Beyond that, what the Olympics are about -- what makes them different from every other property -- is story-telling. That's what Roone Arledge understood at ABC, when the Olympics first became a television event in the United States, when screens showed only black-and-white grainy pictures.

Story-telling is Ebersol's passion.

That passion has been passed on to the NBC team. It's the DNA thing Rogge talked of. It was at the core of the message delivered Tuesday to the IOC in a presentation that included Bob Costas and that, by all accounts, was simply first-rate.

"We were blown away by the presentation," Richard Carrion, the IOC's lead negotiator, said. "The passion [the NBC team] had for the Olympic Games was very impressive and very evident to all of us. They know -- they have been doing this for quite a while. We knew that they know what this is about. They know the values that are important to all of us. It was a combination of all those things.

"… We are happy to renew it."

Track and field -- going nowhere fast in the United States

A friend and I were sitting outside at a great little restaurant in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday when some dude with his shirt off, two feathers pasted to the back of his head, went riding by on a bicycle, smoke billowing around him. The feathers were black and red. Each was at least two feet long. Not sure what kind of smoke it was but many fine people in Eugene are often, you know, mellow.

Watching the dude go by, I thought, everything seemed pretty much normal in Eugene, which bills itself as Track Town USA.

It's a lovely thought, Eugene as Track Town USA, except -- really -- it's not. There's no place that's Track Town USA. It's a big problem. After this weekend's Prefontaine Classic, before the meet this weekend in New York, before the nationals back in Eugene later this month -- it's time for everyone connected to the sport to recognize that it's time for a thorough re-think.

Track and field is going nowhere fast in the United States.

It can, and must, do better -- especially because USATF, track and field's governing body, is getting $4.4 million annually in grant money from the U.S. Olympic Committee, the most any governing body is getting, and with that kind of cash comes heavy responsibility.

USA Swimming, for comparison, is doing all kinds of clever stuff. At its Olympic Trials, they're plunking down a temporary pool inside a basketball arena. They shoot off fireworks and they play cool music and they have hard bodies and, frankly, it rocks.

Track and field needs to do the same kind of out-of-the-box thinking.

For instance:

What about holding the track Trials at, say, Cowboys Stadium? Make the event an -- event. If Cowboys Stadium is good enough for the Super Bowl, it's good enough for the Trials. Okay, the 2012 Trials are set for Eugene. Beyond?

In the meantime: Why isn't there a reality-TV show where, for example, a bunch of sprinters are all living in the same house and vying for a shot at the Olympics? Surely some cable network would buy that concept.

At meets, why aren't camera crews on the infield, up close and personal, listening to the athletes grunting and breathing hard and talking smack with each other? Why not at the Trials? The cameras are right there on the floor on the basketball floor during NBA games; they're practically in the huddles during time-outs.

Track needs more personality and it needs to develop strong personalities; it needs sweat and drama dripping in high-def TV.

Frankly, the sport needs a lot more TV and, at the same time, a lot less TV. That is, it needs to be on the air a lot more but in shorter blocks.  It needs to be on regularly but  for, like, an hour. That's all. An hour. It can be done. You don't need to watch every prelim, every throw, every everything.

Track needs this kind of stuff to move past its doping-soaked past, and the sooner the better. When I got home from Eugene, I asked my youngest daughter, who's 12 -- our three kids are not big sports fans -- to name some basketball players. Shaq and Kobe and other names came right out. Football players? Tom Brady and some others. Track? "Usain Bolt and that Marion lady who went to prison."

That's what track must confront.

And this:

Eugene has a dedicated and knowledgeable group of track enthusiasts. Yes, Hayward Field is soaked in history and the University of Oregon program is traditionally one of the best.

So what?

That's a subculture even in Eugene.

You don't think so?

Check out the website of the Eugene Register-Guard, purported protector of the faith. Now click through to the sports section. Read the line at the very top of the page, where the newspaper gets to promote how it sees itself. Does it say even the first word about track and field? Nope.

It says, "Oregon Football, breaking sports updates, NCAA and Pac-12 news, prep sports."

Now let's get really real.

I am truly fond of Eugene. I saw it for the first time when I was 17, just three days after I was graduated from high school in southwestern Ohio. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before; it was love at first sight. During college at Northwestern, I came back to Oregon, to do a three-month internship at the newspaper in Bend, the Bulletin. After graduation, I tried to get a job with one of the Oregon newspapers but couldn't get any takers. My loss.

Oregon is a long way from everywhere. Eugene is farther still.

All the things that can make it charming can sometimes make it seem a lot less so when we're talking about the kind of logistics and production values associated with the major-league sports that track is competing against.

Parking around Hayward Field is difficult to begin with (by the way, thank you to Jeff Oliver for helping me out with a pass to the Pre meet -- much appreciated). It was more complicated this past weekend because it was move-out weekend at the university dorms across the street.

Those of us who have had the privilege of covering the Super Bowl had to laugh when the note went out that it would be helpful to bring our own ethernet cable to Hayward Field so as to ensure internet access. Do you really think the writers and broadcasters in Dallas this week covering the NBA Finals are being asked to bring their own cables so they can access the internet?

The New York Times was not in Eugene this weekend. Neither was the Los Angeles Times. These were just some of the other outlets not there, either: the Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated.

But then, why would an editor at any of those publications authorize the expenditure of roughly $1500 to go to Eugene?

Sports depend on stars.

Bolt wasn't in Eugene. In fact, unless something changes, he's not due to run anywhere in the United States in 2011.

Tyson Gay wasn't in Eugene. (Instead, he was in Clermont, Florida, where he ran a 9.79 100 meters in a heat in something called the NTC Sprint Series, according to Reuters. He did not compete in the final, according to official results. A YouTube video shows that he ran before a crowd of dozens.)

Tirunesh Dibaba, the distance queen from Ethiopia, appeared in Eugene. But that's all she did. She appeared. She didn't actually run, citing injury.

South Africa's Caster Semenya, the women's 800 meter world champion, made her first American appearance in Eugene, and ran. She finished second in the 800. But she inexplicably didn't show at a pre-meet news conference. After the race, she had to be tracked down to talk to reporters for two minutes and three seconds.

Galen Rupp, the American distance standout, didn't run in the 10k Friday night. He and his coach, Alberto Salazar, cited concerns about allergies -- along with the worry, further spelled out on the USATF Facebook page, that if Rupp ran and had an allergy fit he wouldn't be ready for the nationals.

That decision underscores a major part of the problem.

There are really only two meets this year that matter -- the nationals, June 23-26, and the worlds, Aug. 27-Sept. 4.

The rest has devolved, regrettably, to varying degrees of noise, and everyone knows it.

Why should fans care if the athletes, coaches, shoe companies and other sponsors -- everyone else who has a meaningful stake in the game -- make it plain that an event such as the Pre, allegedly one of the nation's top meets, is something you can skip without any real consequence because you're way more worried about the nationals?

This disconnect has manifested itself at the top leadership levels of the sport. USATF's chief executive's job has now gone unfilled for months amid the departure of Doug Logan. Now there is talk, as reported by my colleague Philip Hersh in his Chicago Tribune blog, that the USATF board wants to pluck the president and chairwoman of that board, Stephanie Hightower, and put her in the CEO job.

For real?

That didn't work for the USOC -- see the example of Stephanie Streeter -- and it's going to draw special scrutiny if that's the decision at USATF.

For those who would say, oh, it did work at other, smaller national governing bodies -- track and field is not archery or fencing. Again, USATF gets $4.4 million a year from the USOC. It is the bellwether NGB. The situation is different.

It boggles the mind that USATF seemingly can't get anyone in the entire United States to take this job. Why, a reasonable observer might ask, might that be?

For starters, all the reasons detailed above. Plus, USATF is based in Indianapolis, which on the excitement scale beats out Milwaukee because Indianapolis has the Colts and the Packers play in Green Bay but maybe doesn't out-do New York; the factions within track and field can be notoriously partisan; there are the road runners and there is USATF and it's not clear where the two communities converge, even though it seems incredibly obvious that they should; the federation holds no realistic chance of staging a world championships in the United States in the foreseeable future; and on and on.

Oh, and the other reason USATF seemingly can't get anyone in the United States to take the job is because, after the Logan experience, USATF doesn't seem to be looking too far outside the existing track community.

When it's precisely outside-the-box thinking that's needed.

It all makes you sometimes just want to think to yourself -- what, exactly, is the USOC getting in return for that $4.4 million? Relay teams that keep dropping the baton at the Olympics and world championships and -- what else?

Caster Semenya, two years later

EUGENE, Ore. -- Two years ago, I sat on press row in Berlin and watched a teen-ager from South Africa named Caster Semenya demolish the field and win the women's 800 meters at track and field's world championships. The controversy that race triggered shows no signs of abating. Zero.

The only thing that can be said that I found truly remarkable about Caster Semenya's appearance here at the Prefontaine Classic this weekend is that she didn't win.

Everything else pretty much went according to script, and unless that script changes, and changes pretty dramatically, and pretty quickly, track and field still has on its hands a major, major challenge.

To wit: what to do with Caster Semenya?

The challenge is that nobody really knows how to proceed, and everyone seems to be dancing around the matter, including apparently Semenya herself and her handlers.

She gave an interview to a columnist to the local newspaper, the Eugene Register-Guard, that was published Friday morning, then proved a no-show for a news conference that afternoon at which she had been touted as one of the featured panelists. No one knew why she didn't show. Was she -- were her people -- miffed about the column? No one knew anything.

She came in second Saturday in the 800, behind Kenia Sinclair of Jamaica. Sinclair ran 1:58.29, the best time in the world this year. Semenya crossed in 1:58.88, her best 2011 finish.

It's early in the season; the times don't matter much.

What matters more is what happened after the race.

Semenya went to a cool-down area and, appropriately, cooled down. After athletes rest up, they're supposed to walk through a tent where they meet us, their friends in the press. The meeting area is called the "mixed zone."

The way the process tends to work at a complicated meet like Pre, and especially with higher-profile athletes such as Semenya, is that reporters ask for athletes we want to talk to; the process is further complicated here because the system is really in place for American athletes and Semenya is of course not American. But it's the best we had.

Freelance writer Meri-Jo Borzilleri, covering the meet for espnW, and I put in a request for Semenya. Duly noted. We waited.

After roughly 10 minutes, we were told, oh, she left.

Meri-Jo thereupon took it upon herself to try to find Semenya, or someone who could find Semenya. Several minutes later, Meri-Jo was back, and here, just behind her, was Caster Semenya. Kudos to Meri-Jo.

The ensuing interview lasted, according to my tape recorder, two minutes and three seconds, and that included some thank-you's at the end.

I asked Semenya whether she was ready for what seems sure to be a media madhouse this summer at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea. Those championships will be the first time most of the world's press will have seen Semenya since Berlin.

This was her response: "Press to me is nothing. It's just media. You know, always media. I'm always ready for them."

Frankly, it all seems rather silly.

Semenya has, according to everyone close to the medical and legal issues in the process, been cleared to run in the women's races.

Unless and until there's reason to reconsider the judgments of experts in their fields, everybody else needs to get with the program.

Semenya is 20 years old and there has to be some human dignity about this, and the history books would reflect better on all of us if we would get about that sooner than later.

To that end, someone in South Africa -- or if it's somewhere else that's in charge of her image -- ought to recognize that she needs some media training.

She needs -- they need -- to understand there is a natural curiosity about her.

She is going to get asked questions, and in that process there are likely to be stupid questions, maybe even ugly questions. She needs to learn to deflect them and move along.

Semenya is hugely likely to win the women's 800 again this summer in Daegu. Her race is the final individual race on the entire calendar of the championships -- at 8:15 at night on Sept. 4, immediately before the last two events themselves, the men's and women's 400 relays.

What that means is that the world's press will have the better part of nine days to write about Usain Bolt, who will already have run the 100 and 200 and will be running once more in that 400 relay, and Caster Semenya, who could do so much -- before she so much as steps foot on the track for that final -- to change the way things are to the way they should, and could, be.

David Oliver, Mr. Sub-13

EUGENE, Ore. -- David Oliver knew it from the start Saturday. Literally, he knew it from the start of the 110-meter hurdles at the Pre Classic here at historic Hayward Field.

This was an entirely different race than the one three weeks ago in Shanghai. There, an ugly start had cost him the race. He'd come to Shanghai having won 18 in a row. The bronze medalist at the 2008 Beijing Games, he was the world's hottest hurdler. But just like that -- yech. He lost in Shanghai to Liu Xiang, the 2004 Olympic champion.

On such instants do races turn.

David Oliver won Saturday's 110 hurdles in 12.94 seconds, best in the world so far in 2011. Liu took second, in 13-flat.

All the work, the sweat, the grind, the stuff that nobody sees because nobody wants to see practice -- it all goes into such instants, when all anyone cares about is the gun and the flash and the color and the noise and the guy in the blocks, the one who has been putting in the time and the work, has to take all that nervous energy and redemptive energy, and pour it into focus and calm.

And doing what he knows how to do.

In Shanghai, Oliver was saying after this race Saturday in Eugene, a botched start put him out of balance. Three steps down the track -- his leg buckled.

That quick, for him the race was essentially done.

Oliver is not only professional enough, he's good enough, that he managed to recover enough to come in second in Shanghai, in 13.18. Liu winning in 13.07.

After coming home from China, Oliver said, he went home to Florida, and smoothed things out. Switching from eight to seven steps had changed his power leg; that meant a variety of adjustments, including at the start, where he was doing way too much thinking instead of simply letting his body do what it knew how to do; that's what he needed to fix after Shanghai.

In Eugene, he made it look clean and easy.

When an athlete is on his or her game, it's obvious. "I know it from the first couple of steps," Oliver said.

On Saturday, Oliver knew it.

Before yet another standout crowd here in Eugene, Liu started well. Better than Oliver, probably. But no matter.

Oliver's start was solid, so good that by the third hurdle Oliver caught Liu. The race was his.

Liu, speaking through a translator, said he was satisfied with his time Saturday but not with his speed and power, particularly the critical final third of the race. He also said his foot -- a nagging concern -- was still maybe a little sore.

"Close to the finish, I feel very bad," Liu said. "I can do better next time."

The thing is, David Oliver can do better next time, too. Though 12.94 in early June is fast, particularly for early in the season, this was not the best field he's going to face; though Liu was here,  2008 Beijing gold medalist Dayron Robles of Cuba, for instance, was not.

The U.S. nationals are back here at Hayward Field later this month. Then come the world championships in South Korea at the end of the summer.

"You can run all the 12s you want to if you don't take care of business at the championships," David Oliver said Saturday, adding a moment later for emphasis, "It's the difference between winning and being successful."

Distance Night at the Prefontaine Classic

EUGENE, Ore. -- Last year, Chris Solinsky ran his first-ever 10,000 meter race on the track. What a debut. He became the first American to break 27 minutes, finishing in 26:59.60. So when meet organizers let it drop earlier this week that Solinsky would be joining what was already an incredible field for the Pre Classic 10k here Friday night, the American track cognoscenti got all geeked up. And for good reason.

Maybe, just maybe, there might be a new American record. And at venerable Hayward Field, no less.

But no.

Instead, what was offered was yet another lesson in the vagaries of distance running, and how both difficult and beautiful it is.

Britain's Mo Farah won the race, in 26:46.57, breaking the European record for the 10k. (To show you how truly, profoundly difficult a sport track and field can be to keep straight: On the official computer board, Farah's record is called an "AR." That doesn't stand for "American record." That means "area record." Which means "European record" and, presumably, "British record," too. Which, of course, he set while running on American soil.)

Twenty-six guys started the race; nine broke 27 minutes. That is a crazy, crazy fast field.

Solinsky was not one of those nine guys.

He dropped out with 18 laps to go. He made a solitary figure walking off the red track as the others whipped by.

By the end, 14 guys in the race would set personal-best times. The 2004 Athens Games bronze medalist, Zersenay Tadesse of Eritrea, who finished fifth Friday night, in 26:51.09 -- he did not set a personal-best time. The 2004 and 2008 Games silver medalist, Sileshi Sihine of Ethiopia, sixth here Friday in 26:52.84 -- again, not a personal-best.

Imane Merga of Ethiopia, ranked No. 1 in the world last year in the 5k, finished second -- a personal-best Friday, 26:48.35. Josphat Bipkoech Bett of Kenya, just 20 years old, the 2008 world 10k junior champion, 26:48.99 for third -- a personal-best.

As he emerged later from under the Hayward grandstands, Solinsky, 26, sighed.

He so wanted to race this race, against this kind of field, because last year proved he could do it.

That's why he dropped into the race in the first instance.

But what he hadn't broadcast beforehand was that he'd been battling a wobbly left hamstring. He thought he could hang in there. But he couldn't. His hamstring, he said, is about a week away from being right.

At least he made it to the starting line.

The other top American expected to challenge Friday night, Galen Rupp, didn't start, apparently because of high pollen counts. It happens here in Eugene.

Solinsky not only started but was hanging in there, turning splits in roughly 64 seconds, when he decided, with about 18 laps to go, that there was no point in risking more. The nationals are in three weeks, back here at Hayward. The world championships, in Daegu, South Korea, are at the end of the summer.

"I'm very incredibly angry at myself to give away an opportunity to run with the best in the world," he said.

"It's the Pre Classic," he said. "I didn't want to miss the Pre Classic," this stop on track and field's calendar named for Steve Prefontaine, the middle-distance running icon -- and University of Oregon legend -- who died in 1975  at age 24 in a car accident.

He said, and this is why Chris Solinsky is going to be fine, "I just wanted to compete."

The USOC's summer fund-raising campaign

Not that I'm going to need therapy or anything about this but as of the time I started writing this column, according to the up-to-the-instant numbers on the left-hand side of the page on Facebook, 847,026 people "liked" the "US Olympic Team." That's way, way, way more friends than I have.

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm jealous.

Traditionally, it would be oh-so-easy for a sportswriter like me -- college in the late 1970s, first real job at an afternoon newspaper, schooled in the church-state separation of the business and editorial sides -- to make light of an "engagement" campaign like the one the U.S. Olympic Committee announced Thursday.

That campaign, among other efforts, features a number of Facebook-related initiatives.

This, though, is not one of those "make-fun of the USOC for its marketing efforts" columns.

Indeed, it's just the opposite.

Let's face facts.

The USOC, by virtue of the 1978 federal law that chartered it, has to find its own sources of funding. In contrast to virtually every other national Olympic committee in the world, which is supported by its own federal government, the USOC has to be resourceful.

The essential dilemma of the Olympics in the United States is elemental. The Games are on for 17 days every two years. How is the Olympic committee supposed to keep itself in the spotlight the rest of the time?

Anyone notice that the NBA Finals are on? That they're playing major-league baseball pretty much every day?

The Olympic committee simply has to be out there, too. It has to get attention. The London Games, after all, are still a year away. (Opening ceremony: July 27, 2012.)

It's not an easy thing the USOC has to do. On the one hand, it has to remain mindful of certain Olympic traditions. On the other, it must also continually keep re-inventing itself. It must remain relevant.

That's why the USOC is doing the smart and sophisticated thing with its Thursday announcement about its "Join Team USA" program, which formally kicks off June 14, Flag Day, and includes Independence Day, July 4, and runs through July 31.

Let's be clear. What the USOC is trying to do is drive fund-raising.

Here's how:

-- You'll doubtlessly see a public-service announcement, edited by NBC, as well as print and digital advertisements featuring the likes of swimmer Natalie Coughlin, runner Allyson Felix, gymnast (and dancer) Shawn Johnson, basketball player Lisa Leslie, fencer Tim Morehouse and Marlon Shirley, a Paralympic track and field champion.

You'll doubtlessly see it because it's going to air on more than 400 stations across the nation.

-- "Join Team USA" will be featured at events such as USA Badminton and USA Bowling youth summer events; the USA Boxing nationals; the USA Diving summer nationals; USA Judo's Junior Olympics and President's Cup; USA Volleyball Junior Olympics events; and the USA Wrestling junior national championships.

-- A number of Olympic and Paralympic stars and hopefuls are scheduled to make promotional appearances. For instance: on June 14, Diana, Mark and Steven Lopez -- the taekwondo standouts from Sugarland, Texas -- are due to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Houston Astros' game.

-- Sponsor plug: Anheuser-Busch events in Chicago on June 24-26; in Daytona, Fla. on July 2; and in St. Louis July 2-4 will center on the Olympic team.

-- From June 17-26, there will be more than 330 "Olympic Day" celebrations across the United States. Reality check: How many national Olympic committees put on more than even one "Olympic Day" event? We're talking 330-plus.

Hosts at all such Olympic Day events will be encouraged to posts photos and videos by using the hash-tag "#OlympicDay" on Twitter. Further coverage will be available on that "US Olympic Team" Facebook page.

And therein lies the real intrigue: how to really spread the buzz online?

What everyone -- including if not especially the USOC -- is trying to figure out is how to make money online. (Sportswriters, too. But that's a separate column.)

For the first time, the USOC said in Thursday's release, you'll be able to chat online with Olympic and Paralympic athletes on the Facebook page. The first chat took place May 26, with 2010 bobsled gold medal winner Steve Holcomb; the next one takes place June 2 at 6 pm. Pacific time/9 p.m. Eastern with 2008 Games water polo silver medalist Tony Azevedo.

For the uninitiated, navigating to the right Facebook page can be an exercise in spellcheck patience. It has to be done precisely and thusly: "US Olympic Team." (Note: No periods between the U and S. Make sure the T in team is capitalized.)

Another Facebook initiative:

From Sept. 2-18, there's going to be a contest -- make a video of two minutes or less that describes why your program affiliated with the USOC should win -- that will end up giving out six $12,000 grants; voting for the contest is going to be through the Facebook page; votes enter fans into a drawing for Olympic gear.

Look, maybe some of this stuff works. Maybe some of it doesn't. That's the nature of trying stuff.

In the meantime, consider this: While I was writing and then editing this column, the number of people who "like"  the "US Olympic Team"  went up to 849,368.

Just for comparison: I had the privilege of being a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times for 17 years, until 2006. For the six months ending March 31, daily circulation at the paper fell to 605,243 from 616,604 a year ago, down 1.8 percent, the Times reported in a May 3 story.

You do the math. Let's all catch up together on Facebook.

With South Africa out, who wants in for 2020?

There's ambition. And then there's reality.

When the two collide, you get an announcement like the one Thursday from Johannesburg, the South African government saying it was not going to mount a bid for the 2020 Summer Games.

It's still very, very early in the race for 2020.

But after all-star fields for 2016 and 2012 and a historic choice for 2008, is the  International Olympic Committee looking not only at a comparatively thin field for 2020 but at a campaign dominated by European rivals?

That would make for an intriguing turn in recent Olympic history. Because it's not immediately clear who else wants in.

To be clear, this is not -- repeat, not -- a call for a 2020 entry from the United States.

There are some influential Olympic insiders who say the U.S. ought to get in the game.

Here's the opposing view:

The U.S. Olympic Committee and IOC have far too many issues to be resolved, mostly financial, for that.

Moreover, no bid can win without rock-solid support from its federal government. As the New York 2012 and Chicago 2016 bids underscored, the American system of federalism -- there's the U.S. government but there's also the 50 separate states -- renders such support a complex matter, with contractual and jurisdictional issues galore.

Beyond which, why should the U.S. government want to jump in? The last time the White House was asked for its support, the president of the United States -- for the first time in the more than 100-plus years of the modern Olympic movement -- actually appeared in person at an IOC assembly, in 2009 in Copenhagen. He spoke on behalf of an American bid city, which happened to be his hometown, Chicago. And for what? Chicago was booted in the first round.

Here were the finalists in the last three Summer Games campaigns:

2016: Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Tokyo, Chicago.

2012: London, Paris, Madrid, New York, Moscow.

2008: Beijing, Toronto, Paris, Istanbul, Osaka.

Now here is the list of declared starters for 2020:

Rome.

Right this moment, that's it.

Again, it's super-early. But why aren't more cities eagerly lining up? The Summer Games is, after all, The Franchise.

It's not that there isn't a lot of talk behind the scenes. But it's just that -- talk.

Istanbul -- could be formidable contender but maybe more interested in playing host to European soccer championships?

Dubai -- big financial issues?

Tokyo -- obstacles include Pyeongchang, South Korea's, campaign for 2018 Winter Games as well as the tsunami-, earthquake- and nuclear meltdown-related issues in the northeastern part of the country.

Doha, Qatar -- amazing place, amazing story, but didn't make IOC cut for 2016, purportedly because of heat-related issues, though many close to the movement suspect it's because the Qataris might well have won if they had been allowed to advance to the knock-out round.

Know this: If the Qataris put their minds to it, they can achieve virtually anything they want. A Qatar entry in the 2020 race would alter the dynamic immediately.

That said, a 2020 Games in Doha would be before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The IOC gave the Games to Brazil in 2016 -- but after the World Cup there, in 2014.

For sure, South Africa staged a winning 2010 World Cup.

And this is key: The World Cup, for all its complexity, is but one world championship.

A Summer Olympics requires the infrastructure and logistics to stage 28 world championships (26 in London next year) -- all going on over 17 days, meaning pretty much at the same time.

Durban, where the IOC will stage the assembly in July at which the 2018 Winter Games city will be selected -- Munich and Annecy, France, are in the race along with Pyeongchang -- had been considered perhaps the likeliest South African bid city.

IOC rules forbid the members from visiting a city bidding for the Games. But if they were there for an IOC assembly -- wow, how clever that would have been to get to see Durban, right?

It would have, though, taken an estimated $4.5 billion, at least, to build the new venues Durban would have needed to stage a Games in 2020. That's money the South African government reasoned would be better spent on basic services.

The Associated Press reported the supply of such essential services was a top issue in last week's local elections in South Africa. Violent demonstrations, it reported, erupted in some communities over the lack of such basics as electricity and running water.

Frankly, saying no now gives South Africa an elegant out. The murmur had already begun in some IOC circles that it wasn't just enough to receive a bid from South Africa; it had to be a world-class bid. Now the South Africans have the luxury of time to put together such a bid.

With only that one declared entry in the 2020 field, it's understandable why that AP report from Johannesburg declared Rome the favorite to land the 2020 Games.

Um -- maybe not so fast.

The unknown is Qatar.

If for whatever reason Doha is not a factor, it surely is within the realm of possibility that the primary beneficiary of South Africa's decision not to run ultimately proves to be -- Madrid.

Madrid was the 2016 runner-up; virtually everything, with the exception of an Olympic village, is built; the financing is pretty much in place; the government support would be solid; the city is fantastic.

What Madrid needs has been missing the past two campaigns is a narrative -- a compelling story. They know now that's what they need.

The prediction here is that Madrid announces sooner than later that it's in.

And then, for 2020, it will be game on.

The ongoing history of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team

William Faulkner once wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past," and perhaps never were more apt words written than as they relate to the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. Five San Diego-area seventh-graders set out this academic year to make a little history of their own, telling the story of that 1980 U.S. team -- forever the team that got left home amid the boycott of the Moscow Games -- in what's called the "Kenneth E. Behring National History Day" contest.

Under the direction of their teacher, 28-year-old Hillary Gaddis, the students from the Day-McKellar Preparatory School in La Mesa, Calif., made it through the local and state rounds and now are en route to the nationals, to be held June 12-16 at the University of Maryland. The contest is a big deal. Here's the website.

Along they way, they managed to get a letter from President Jimmy Carter. The letter brings the past immediately alive.

Indeed, in that letter, the former president undoubtedly will summon in many quarters, yet again, all the emotions that still attend the boycott -- 31 years later.

He writes that to withdraw from the 1980 Summer Games was a "very difficult decision for me…"

He also writes, "Both the Congress and the Olympic Committee voted overwhelmingly not to participate, and I reluctantly agreed with their decision because the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in violation of all reasonable international laws."

The students, as well as Ms. Gaddis, emphasized repeatedly their respect for Mr. Carter and for the office of the presidency.

Nonetheless, a reading of the historical record would strongly suggest that the former president is perhaps not being entirely forthcoming about his role in orchestrating the boycott.

To be clear: That's not the opinion of the Day-McKellar students or Ms. Gaddis or the school.

That's me. But what would any reasonable person conclude from a review of the historical record?

As early as his State of the Union address in January, 1980, for instance, just weeks after the late 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter declared that "neither the American people nor I will support sending an Olympic team to Moscow."

That February, he said it would be "unconscionable" to send athletes to the capital of another nation "under the aegis of the Olympics" when that nation was "actively involved" in the "invasion of and the subjugation of innocent people."

In April, just days before that U.S. Olympic Committee vote on Carter's call for a boycott, amid an extraordinary variety of political and financial pressures, the president announced he would use "legal action" if necessary to prevent U.S. athletes from going to Moscow.

Three decades later, for him to say he "reluctantly agreed" with the decision -- well, as one of the students, Maxwell Major, 13, said when he read the letter, "I was shocked."

It has, indeed, been a lesson in history -- as well as politics and other endeavors -- for these young people.

The irony can not be lost on anyone that of course it is now American troops who are now in Afghanistan.

In their presentation during the contests, Max portrays a wrestler, Gene Mills, who was 21 in 1980, the greatest 114 1/2-pound wrestler of his time. Mills' shoulder didn't hold up and he didn't get a chance at another Games.

Max said, "When I interviewed him, he said [the boycott] was a stupid and ridiculous decision and he said he couldn't believe they would screw all the athletes who had worked their butts off for years to get this opportunity."

Nick Young, 13, said he has learned how not going to the Games has shaped the lives of those who didn't go. Rowdy Gaines -- a swimmer who not only made the 1984 team but won three gold medals and is now an influential NBC commentator at the Summer Games -- has coined the term "ghost Olympians" for those solely on the 1980 team, Nick said.

There's sadness in that, for sure. According to Nick, though, there's another piece to it, too. Another 1980 swimmer, Glenn Mills (no relation to Gene), had put in countless hours in the pool training in honor of an older brother, Kyle, who had died of cancer. When the Day-McKellar young people called, Glenn Mills said, "Everyone remembers 1980. That makes it special. Makes it unique. If it wasn't for the boycott, you guys wouldn't be talking to me today."

The Day-McKellar team has put in hundreds of hours preparing for nationals. They've done 32 primary source interviews. They have talked to the likes of Mike Moran, the U.S. Olympic Committee's spokesman from 1978 to 2003, who said that he enjoyed the conversation "as much as anything I lived through at the USOC over almost a quarter century."

He added," Their intense interest in the 1980 Olympic team's heartbreak and its stories was inspiring to me, because I had felt most people had forgotten this historic group of American athletes and the loss of their dreams. They have managed to re-awaken those memories and their passion for the subject is special."

You know, the Day-McKellar team -- Nick; Max; Mikela Chatfield, 12; Thomas Day, 12; Allie Shelton, 11 -- could win that contest.

If there really is any karma in the world, on behalf of that 1980 U.S. team -- they will.

--

If you'd like to donate to the Day-McKellar team to help offset the cost of travel to Maryland, call Hillary Gaddis at 858-335-3936 or reach her via email at hillarycecilia@hotmail.com.

Tyler Hamilton says he told the whole truth and nothing but

Of all the things Tyler Hamilton told "60 Minutes," one passage in particular called to me with special clarity. He said, "Well, there's a lot of other cheats and liars out there, too, who've gotten away with it. It's not just Lance, you know? I mean, with a little luck, I'd still be out there today being a cheat and liar."

Over the years, I have been asked far too many times to count whether I think Lance Armstrong doped to win the Tour de France.

My answer consistently has been, one, Armstrong insists he has done nothing wrong and is absolutely entitled to the presumption of innocence and, two, all things in the fullness of time.

Meaning: let's see what time, and the justice system, bring. If anything.

On the occasion of Hamilton's appearance on "60 Minutes," during which he said he was repeating what he told the federal grand jury hearing the Armstrong matter, it is also worth emphasizing that only the United States government, in its pursuit of what it deems justice, has the means to get the truth out of people who otherwise might well be out there being cheats and liars.

In elegant simplicity, that also may explain as much as anything why the government cares about Armstrong.

Has Armstrong done incredible good for cancer patients and their families? Yes.

Is that good premised on his heroism? Yes.

Does that heroism rest on his seven victories at the Tour de France? Yes.

Isn't that heroism predicated on him winning fair and square?

If that's the core question, there's this:

The government cares a great deal indeed about the truth. It is the bedrock of the entire justice system.

Hamilton ended up testifying before the grand jury in Los Angeles only after being subpoenaed -- that is, he had not gone voluntarily. The "60 Minutes" thing -- that was a choice, with which the Armstrong camp found fault.

Watching the screen, I thought of the day in 2005 I sat in Hamilton's living room in Colorado. He and his then-wife, Haven, said they had no idea why the authorities were insisting he had been caught blood doping in September 2004 in Spain, just a couple weeks after he had won a gold medal in the cycling time trial in the Athens Summer Games; legal papers filed in his defense were suggesting the far-out possibility of a "vanishing twin."

It's entirely one thing to sit in your living room and say anything you want to a sportswriter. What's the worst thing that happens? He or she prints it. So what? Stuff gets printed every day. The next day, new stuff gets printed.

When you lie to a federal grand jury, and they catch you at it, you risk going to prison. Ask Marion Jones.

Her case, the Barry Bonds trial, the Roger Clemens case and now this Armstrong inquiry underscore a critical point: Sports officials do not have the power to compel the truth. Only the public authorities do, with subpoenas and matchless financial resource and of course the threat of prison or other consequence.

It's intriguing now to watch Armstrong maneuver. Consider the Twitter post he issued last Thursday, as word broke of Hamilton's upcoming "60 Minutes" appearance: "20+ year career. 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case."

A bold -- as usual -- public-relations effort.

As the World Anti-Doping Agency's David Howman, emphasizing that he was speaking generally and not about Armstrong or anyone in particular, said Monday, "There's a certain fragility to the testing system, and a sophisticated doper can beat it."

If this ever gets to court, that point would become apparent.

For instance, Hamilton told "60 Minutes" Armstrong used the blood-booster EPO in 1999.

EPO was by then banned. But a test for it wasn't finalized until just before the Sydney Olympics, which took place in September, 2000.

So saying you might have passed x number of tests when y number perhaps didn't include a test for the most relevant illicit substance in recent years in cycling proves -- what?

Beyond which, Armstrong's tests from the 1999 Tour de France itself have been the subject of considerable controversy. The French newspapers have written about them at length. In 2006, when I was at the LA Times, so did I.

In coming forward, Hamilton moved quickly to give up the gold medal he won in Athens.

Moreover, Hamilton has written a letter to his friends and family that says he was a serial doper. You can read it here. In it, he says that his testimony before the grand jury went on for six hours and that telling the panel what he knew felt "like the Hoover dam breaking."

He says in that letter, "I opened up; I told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I felt a sense of relief I'd never felt before -- all the secrets, all the weight I'd been carrying around for years suddenly lifted. I saw that, for me personally, this was the way forward."

Another former U.S. Postal Service rider, George Hincapie, reportedly told the grand jury that he and Armstrong supplied each other with EPO and discussed having used another banned substance, testosterone, to get ready for races.

To emphasize: Armstrong has denied any wrongdoing.

Just to think this through:

Would the federal government go to the time, trouble and expense to bring a case against Armstrong and allege merely doping? Does that make sense?

What did it do in the case against Jones? The charges were doping -- and involvement in a bad-check scheme.

Bonds? The charges were perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the grand jury during the government's BALCO investigation -- not whether he had taken steroids per se but whether he had lied about using them.

Common sense says the government would want to build a case against Armstrong in which doping, if alleged, is but part of a wider action. How wide? It's mere speculation because grand juries operate in secret: Drug trafficking? Distribution? Conspiracy? Fraud, money laundering or other financial impropriety?

"My Mom and Dad always told me that the truth would set me free," Hamilton wrote in that letter to friends and family. "I never knew how right they were."

America's oldest living Olympian: Walter Walsh, 104

They announced the details of the 2012 Summer Games torch relay earlier this week. If they're smart at the London organizing committee, and they are, and if fortune smiles on him for another year as it has for these past 104, they ought to make sure that Mr. Walter Walsh gets one of the 8,000 or so slots in that relay run.

Mr. Walsh was there, in person, the last time they held the Games in London. That would have been in 1948. He was on the U.S. Olympic team, a member of the American shooting squad. He finished 12th -- just one of many achievements in a life full of accomplishments and memories.

His hearing isn't perhaps what it was. But Mr. Walsh is still pretty damn vital. When I first called his house, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, to talk to him about the 1948 Olympics and everything he had done and seen in his life, he thought I was a salesman cold-calling him for something he sure as hell didn't want or need at 104. "Cut the BS!" he said before hanging up.

A few minutes later, after one of his sons, also named Walter Walsh -- who happened to be visiting from out of town -- had explained what I was after, and we arranged another call, the senior Mr. Walsh couldn't have been more gracious.

"It's a pleasure to be here to do any damn thing," he said about being 104. "Just as long as I can do it. I don't care much about what it is. I just want to do it."

In some regards, Mr. Walsh's life story reads like something from a super-hero tale.

He was born May 4, 1907 in New Jersey -- he just turned 104 a couple weeks ago and is America's oldest living Olympian. The International Olympic Committee this week launched an inquiry to find out if there's an older Olympian anywhere else in the world.

Mr. Walsh graduated from Rutgers law school.

In 1934, he joined the FBI. Think about that. Just 27, in the midst of the Depression, he was a G-Man -- when the bureau was very much still making its reputation.

He helped make it.

That very same year, 1934, after a shootout that left two FBI agents dead, it was Walsh who -- acting on a tip -- discovered the body of Chicago gangster Baby Face Nelson.

The next year, Mr. Walsh arrested one of the most notorious criminals in the entire United States, Arthur "Doc" Barker. Barker, along with his brother and his mother, "Ma" Barker, were wanted for their role in a high-profile kidnapping. Doc Barker had been trailed, as the story goes, to a Chicago apartment building. Walsh caught him there, unarmed.

At a ceremony commemorating the FBI's 100th anniversary, this is the way Mr. Walsh told the story:

"I asked him, 'Where’s your heater Doc?'

"He said, 'It’s up in the apartment.'

"I said, 'You’re lucky, Doc. Ain’t that a hell of a place for it?' He was ready to be shot if he tried to run. … Lucky for him he didn’t, because he was close enough he’d be hard to miss."

In September, 1937, Walsh was part of a shoot-out between FBI agents and the infamous Brady Gang in Bangor, Maine. The gang had been on a cross-country robbery spree; they had gone up to Maine looking to stock up on weapons and ammo.

In the cross-fire, Mr. Walsh took a bullet in the shoulder. Even so, he was soon back on the job. Alfred Brady, at the time Public Enemy No. 1, was killed.

In World War II, Mr. Walsh joined the Marine Corps. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Mr. Walsh's expertise with a gun made him something of a celebrity in shooting circles. He was featured in photo spreads in gun publications, even in Life magazine, as his friends at the FBI have recounted.

For several years, he commanded the Marines' marksmanship unit. He was in the corps when he took part in the 1948 Games.

The war had only been over, of course, for three years.  He said with approval, "London didn't show any major damage from the war," adding, "There was plenty of time for recovery. The British are industrious, hard-working people."

"The '48 Olympics -- he remembers them quite well," his son said, launching into a story that's now family legend about how a British Royal Marine enlisted man had been tasked with driving the American Marine officer around London but was very concerned with how much gasoline was being consumed.

"The young man made some kind of mistake and had to go back 10 or 20 or 30 miles and pick something up -- some team property he had forgotten somewhere. He mentioned to dad, 'When I get back, the old man," meaning the responsible British officer, "is going to skin me alive -- I've burned up all this gasoline.'

"My dad said, 'Don't worry about it, son. We'll buy you the gasoline you need,' and he did. This guy was so impressed with the American shooters. Of course my dad was an active-duty American Marine officer at the time. Dad came home with several Royal Marine berets and distributed them to his sons. And I still have one."

The 1948 Olympics, the son said, "are not that distant to dad."

Once more for emphasis -- World War II had ended just three years prior. "The competition was, as I remember, the usual exchanges of friendship between members of the various teams," Mr. Walsh said. "On some of the teams, I'm thinking of the Germans particularly, they spoke in a broken fashion, better English than we did.

"… You had these people competing -- they were all trying to do the same thing. They were trying to speak to each other with various degrees of difficulty.

"… It brings about a mixture between these people. You get by with stuttering and making hand motions. It was a great experience for me. And I enjoyed it."

Mr. Walsh was married for 43 years; his wife passed away in 1980. They had five children together -- three daughters and two sons. The family counts  17 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren.

When the FBI held that 100-year celebration three years back, it was duly noted that Mr. Walsh was a year older than the agency itself.

"My dad is a great guy. Just a great guy," said his son, who is 66, himself a former Marine Corps officer and a businessman, living now in Birmingham, Ala.

"Most of the things I know that are worthwhile I know i know from him ... he was the greatest dad a kid might have. I can tell you my dad is a great dad, and a great guy, and a strong personality, a good leader and a principled, honest, stand-up person. I've seen that in my life.

"… I understand in what regard other people hold my father and I'm a little bit amazed. I still -- I don't ever want to disappoint him."