For the past few days I've been blogging on racial differences in the short and long distance Olympic races. I noted Jon Entine's argument that such differences may have a biological origin, a taboo subject because once we start talking about physical differences, perhaps some people might then begin to suspect differences of intelligence between the races.

In my book The End of Racism I argued against such differences, noting instead that culture is a far better explanation of ethnic differences in intellectual achievement and economic performance. But when we turn to the issue of men and women, I note an anomaly.

No one denies that men are taller and stronger than women on average. This explains of course why competitive sports is based on the "separate but equal" principle. Men play against men, and women play against women. Segregation on the basis of gender appears to have an obvious rational basis in physical contests of speed and strength.

Yet one of my favorite games, namely chess, is not such a contest. Rather, chess is entirely based on intellectual capacity. It involves planning, calculation, strategy. One would assume that since men and women are equally intelligent, therefore women should be fully competive with men in chess. But it is not so. Consider: of the top 100 players in the USA currently, only two are women. Even more startling, of the top 100 chess players in the world today, only one is a woman.

So embarrassing is male over-representation at the top level that most chess competitions today are divided into two categories. There is a general category that is almost inevitably won by a man, and then there is a separate women's championship obviously designed to give women a chance to succeed as well. Currently there is a World Chess Champion and a World Women's Champion. Somehow the chess world seem to have adjusted to the reality that int his particular mental contest, women simply aren't as good as men.

Can culture account for the difference between the sexes? Actually no. Culture can help to explain why certain countries like Russia are more dominant in chess. They simply play a lot more chess over there. But culture doesn't explain why Russian males are so much better than Russian females in chess. I am not aware of an historical exclusion of women from chess, and even if there was some past discrimination, how come women still fare so poorly in an age of equality? Of the top 20 junior chess players in the world, there isn't a single woman. So in these respects the cultural explanation falters.

Are we forced to conclude then that men are smarter than women, at least when it comes to chess? Not really. The average IQ of both groups is 100. But when it comes to the bell curve distribution, an interesting difference emerges. The female bell curve is taller and narrower, with the vast majority of women bunched in the middle. The male bell curve is shorter and flatter, with more men at both ends of the distribution. What this means is that there are more male geniuses and more male morons. And this would effectively account for why at the very top level of an intellectual contest like chess, we find far more men than women.

It's Kenya's national sport, a kind of national obsession. From a tiny age, young Kenyans dream of the roar of the crowd, the fame and success that comes from demonstrated excellence on the field.

Conventional thinking--and quite a few liberal academics--hold that this cultural obsession is the best explanation for the incredible Olympic success of Kenya's distance runners. Kenya in particular, and East Africa in general, enjoys a near-monopoly in medals in the long distance races.

The only problem--pointed out by John Entine in his fascinating book Taboo--is that the national obsession in Kenya is not running but soccer. Kenyans are crazy about soccer! "Unfortunately," Entine observes, "Kenyans are among the world's worst soccer players." Even in Africa, Kenya is routinely routed by West African countries like Cameroon and Nigeria.

Running is not such a big deal in Kenya. And when it comes to short-distance sprints, Kenyans and other East Africans aren't particularly good. Virtually every running record from the 100 to the 400 meters, male and female, is held by athletes of West African ancestry. It's only in the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and in the marathon that the special abilities of East African runners manifest themselves.

Entine, an Emmy winning journalist formerly with NBC News, has done his homework. He does not completely reject economic and cultural explanations of athletic prowess. He just shows their inadequacy. For instance, examing the notion that poverty is responsible for success in sport, Entine notes that most poor countries do terribly in sports. How many runners from poverty-stricken Bangla Desh, for instance, have won Olympic medals in Beijing? The "spur" of poverty is more than trounced by the benefits of superior nutrition, superior facilities and superior coaching in affluent countries.

So what about culture? Yes, culture can help to account for why Americans do well at baseball and why the Chinese usually triumph in ping pong. Americans play baseball more than most others, and no one takes ping pong more seriously than the Chinese. But Entine notes that running is universal. In every country, young people run races. "Given the universality of running," Amby Burfoot writes in Runner's World, "it is reasonable to expect that the best runners should come from a wide range of countries and racial groups." So why are there such enduring and overwhelming racial differences in the outcome?

Entine is not afraid to say that "genetically linked, highly heritable characteristics, such as skeletal structure, muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency, and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among populations." These traits help to explain why groups succeed--and sometimes fail--in certain sports. For instance, the same body type that works so well in the boxing ring and on the track doesn't do so well in the water. How many black swimmers have there been on the U.S. Olympic team? Even countries on the African coast have a terrible record when it comes to swimming medals.

Entine's book is titled "Taboo" because he knows how controversial his thesis is, how fiercely it is hated and resisted. I suspect this is not because of powerful academic evidence that Entine is wrong. If there is such evidence, I would like to see it, but so far I've had a hard time finding it. Rather, the resistance is due to the liberal fear that if we praise black athletic superiority and attribute it to genes, this opens the door for racists to speculate about black intellectual inferiority and to attribute it too to genes.

Yet this is a non-sequitur. Groups can be unequal physically and still be equal intellectually. Men and women are clearly unequal in upper-body strength, for instance, and yet the average IQ for males and females is the same, although the bell curve distribution of that IQ is not. But I'll leave that subject for a later blog.

My general point is that many liberals are looking in the wrong place to find a justification for their support for political equality. As Jefferson noted a long time ago, inequality of endowment, whether it exists or not, is no warrant for inequality of rights. Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity.

I've been watching with patriotic interest the Olympic track and field events. And I notice something about the results that is both remarkable and fascinating. Even so, this something is never commented on by NBC or any of the analysts.

Consider the sprints. The winners seem to be overwhelmingly of African, specifically West African, origin. The man and woman who blew away the field in the 100 meter dash were both from the tiny country of Jamaica . Indeed the contestants in general seem to originally come from the same part of the world. Virtually no one from a different race and region even qualifies. Sure there are Canadian and French and American sprinters, but they too tend to be blacks of West African heritage. These races come down to our West Africans against everyone else's West Africans.

Now consider the long distance races. The winners once again are overwhelmingly black, this time from East Africa . The 10,000 meter race, for instance, came down two guys from Kenya, two guys from Eritrea, and two guys from Ethiopia. Basically it was a contest of six guys from the same neighborhood! If there were a couple of whites and Asians in these races, they seem to have been running strictly to get photos for the family scrapbook.

These results are not a coincidence. They hold true of every Olympics in living memory. In the early 1990s Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner's World, published a lead article called "White Men Can't Run." Burfoot documented that blacks have not only dominated Olympic and world championship races for five decades, but also that black hegemony has increased over time. Along the same lines, the Sociology of Sport Journal reports that since the 1930s, "there has been no American white woman who was world class in the 100, 200 or 400 meter dashes. All the outstanding sprinters have been black."

Yet if black domination is a fact, the mysterious question is why. There are three possible explanations, two of which we need to take seriously. The first and most unlikely possibility is that there is widespread discrimination in favor of blacks in sports-not only in running but also in boxing, football, basketball, and so on. Let's call this the liberal explanation. It seems utterly obtuse, but we have to raise this argument because it uses precisely the logic of our civil rights laws.

Our civil rights laws presume that if groups are not equally represented in a given field (say university admissions or jobs or government contracts or sports teams) it follows that invidious discrimination can be inferred on the part of the over-represented groups, directed against the under-represented groups. In this case, of course, is it even reasonable to speculate that blacks are ahead because they are keeping everyone else down? Laugh out loud if you will, but you are laughing at the crazy logic that operates in civil rights jurisprudence in America today.

A second possibility is that there are cultural and motivational differences between groups. For instance, an NBC documentary preceding the 100 meter final noted that Jamaicans simply love to run and they start running competitively at a very young age. Perhaps West Africans simply have a cultural preference for short-distance sprints, and East Africans attach high social priorities to long-distance running. Using the same line of reasoning, sociologist Harry Edwards has suggested that black success in NBA basketball can be explained by the desire of poor African Americans to "jump, jump, jump out of the ghetto." Let's call this the cultural explanation.

The third possibility is that there are natural or genetic differences between the races that explain why one group is so heavily over-represented among both the contestants and the winners. Let's call this the Bell Curve explanation, after the controversial book published several years ago by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. Admittedly Murray and Herrnstein were writing about IQ and intellectual performance, not sport. The role of biology in sport is candidly explored in Jon Entine's book Taboo, which I'm reading during the commercial breaks.

Setting aside political correctness, I'm trying to figure out which explanation is right. I don't think we need to be scared to discuss this topic. Before I offer my thoughts, I'd like to know what you think.

Michael Phelps is a great Olympian and I'm proud that he's won approximately 187 medals for us (take that Guatemala!). Having said that, there are two issues here. First, swimming has eight races and if you're the best swimmer you can win all of those races. The basketball team has a shot at one medal and one medal only. Is Michael Phelps really a "better" Olympian than Kobe Bryant because Kobe is only going to win one gold medal in this Olympics (presumably)?

Second, Phelps' body is built for swimming. So, there's a part of me that finds it hard to celebrate people who are extraordinarily gifted physically winning in their respective sports. I know there are other folks who are gifted physically who don't accomplish as much, but it's a fairly limited pool of people who can succeed in that arena (the "pool" pun was actually not intended, but now that I look back it, I like it).

This is why we root for Rocky. The little guy that isn't quite as physically gifted that does it through sheer will power. That's the heart of competition that I love. So, having said that, here is my annoying take on Michael Phelps medals that has been making people really angry when they watch it:




Understand that I am obviously saying some of this stuff tongue-in-cheek, but overall, I think this is a conversation worth having. And in the part of the show we didn't include here (you can watch the whole show here), I talked about why I respected Michael Jordan more than Shaquille O'Neal.

While Jordan was obviously extraordinarily athletic there were about 200 guys in the NBA with his skill set and he rose above all of them with his sheer will to win. Whereas there are about three guys in the whole world as big and agile as Shaq (there might actually be no one else in the world that big and that quick). Shaq still had to work hard and it was not a given that he was going to win any of his championships but I still respect Jordan more because it was harder for him.

Okay, that's my thoughts. Now, let me have it. Tell me why I don't understand athletics or appreciate swimming enough or tell me what an unpatriotic "lib" I am. But understand that I say all of this because of how I love competition. My favorite moments in sports are when you have two great evenly matched teams and they battle out to see who wants it more.

Finally, I understand that I am ironically taking credit away from Michael Phelps for being so great that he blows away the competition. But conversely, you have to admit, somehow claiming he is the greatest Olympic athlete because his sport has eight different races you can win medals in per every Olympics is a bit ridiculous.

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Last week, we interviewed the World Champion Chessboxer, a 19-year-old Russian math student, for TIME magazine, and remembered why we love our job: we get to research things like chessboxing.

The matches work like this: competitors alternate between three-minute rounds of boxing and four-minute rounds of speed chess with one-minute breaks in between to get the gloves off and hunker down at the chess table. The winner is determined by knockout, checkmate, or referee decision.

Here's an excerpt from our conversation with the winner, Nikolaj Sazhin:

Maybe all the talk of boycotting the Olympics in China will die down with the first perfect round-off, but in the meantime it's hard not to wonder what we're doing there.

The New York Times recently ran a horrific story about what Chinese athletes go through to get ready for the Olympics. Hint: It's not just waking up early and catching a ride to the local skating rink.

By Jayar Jackson

Every time a big championship game is played, I wonder what it would be like to watch it with a person not involved but very personally invested in the outcome. When Lakers head coach Phil Jackson won his 9^th NBA Title as a head coach in 2002, tying legendary coach Red Auerbach's number of titles, I wondered what Auerbach was saying and thinking as the man he openly criticized as a head coach was accomplishing what he had sole possession of.

When Peyton Manning watched the Super Bowl this past season, what thoughts did he have about his conference rival Patriots going against his younger brother's Giants? Sure, he gives glowing answers to the media when they ask him about the respect he has for the guys representing Boston, but what kind of things was he saying about Tom Brady over a few beers with friends? The uninhibited trash talking fuels me; it's like the sports bet to an out-of-control gambler that makes the competition all the more exciting.

Now that former Lakers star and avid trash talker Shaquille O'Neal has voiced a few of his thoughts about Kobe Bryant's recent NBA Finals loss at the hands of the Boston Celtics, I can take one person off my "I Wonder What He Was Saying" list.

A video surfaced at the beginning of the week showing Shaq in a New York nightclub doing a freestyle rap for the fans. Let's not get into the hip hop styling of Mr. O'Neal, since it's pretty much confirmed that his lyrics,

"Once again it's time to get braggadocios, the tall human being and that's right, Shaq-a-tocios, check out my lyrical slam slam, watch me flip flam flam, I re-frack the crim-clanks, I biggity bitch the bam bam"

aren't exactly lyrically killin 'em in the streets.

As he ripped into Kobe from the very beginning, taunting him for losing the championship without him, the crowd knew they were in for an unexpected treat. It quickly became obvious that the thesis of his rap was "Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes.

"

You can disagree with the insensitive timing; only a week after Kobe suffered the devastating loss in his MVP season, disagree with the vulgar words, which everyone should just calm down and finally get used to, but you can't fight the fact that this has rebuilt the excitement NBA fans have to see these two rival teammates go up against each other again next year. The season just ended and I'm already looking forward to November just to see how this will play out on the court. We have the never ending antics of Shaq to thank for that; people love him when he's talking for their side, but hate him as soon as he's against them. Just ask Lakers fans, that's some effective trash talking.

And I'll admit it, I had Shaq's album back in '93. The truth shall set me free!

Some eyebrows were raised yesterday when Don Imus had this exchange, CNN reports:

Sportscaster Warner Wolf told Imus that Adam Jones wanted to change his name to disassociate himself from past legal trouble.

"He's been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005," Wolf said.
"What color is he?" Imus asked.

"He's African-American," Wolf responded.

"Well, there you go," Imus said. "Now we know."

The US Open Golf Championship wasn't the only recent major competition to finish in a tie after the regulation rounds. But it certainly has a more sensible format for breaking the tie.

So I'm at the A's-Angels series opener this week and I see two things totally new to my baseball eyes. First, it's Frank Thomas legging out a triple. More on that in a moment, because Frank Thomas – speed demon – was nothing compared to what I saw two innings later.

It begins with Angels pitching coach Mike Butcher (4 years in the Majors, 82 walks in 137 innings, a 4.47 ERA – just ineffective enough to teach others) visiting the mound to talk to starter Jon Garland. Home plate umpire Charlie Relaford comes out to break up the meeting, but Butcher keeps talking, seeming to ignore Relaford. When Butcher finally starts to head back to the dugout, he and Relaford start jawing. Suddenly – Bam! Butcher gets tossed – first time I've seen a pitching coach ejected on the field after a meeting on the mound.

But that's not the incredible part. After a quote from Angels manager Mike Scioscia that Relaford "may have been having a bad day," the AP story on the game contained this line, "It was Relaford's first game back from vacation, which he had to cut short due to the..."

What the? A Major League umpire was on vacation? On April 28th? Were the rigors of the season's first four weeks just too much for him? Here's a crazy thought. Maybe big league umpires could take that cruise to Puerto Vallarta in November. Or January. Or one of those unpleasant months when no one's playing baseball.

I went to Journalism school. I know what to do here. I called the MLB press office and asked them, ya know, how come an umpire is allowed to take a vacation 25 games into the season and you know what they said? OK, I didn't call, but I did do a Google search for "umpires" and "vacation" and it seems these guys get four weeks paid vacation – wait for it – DURING THE SEASON. They may be the only people in America who get more time off than George Bush. You can practically hear the umpires union recruiting pitch: "All the excitement of American sports with the backbreaking schedule of a French civil service employee."

Back to Frank Thomas. The triple itself does little to alleviate the concerns of those who think his problems at the plate are greater than his typical April struggles, but are more likely the symptoms of having Frank Thomas's body, but Dave Thomas's bat speed. And Dave Thomas is dead.

(By the way, would Dave Thomas have allowed Arby's to buy Wendy's? What kind of a world do we live in where Arby's is bigger than Wendy's? Wendy's is a classic single, maybe a double with cheese. Arby's is a gimmick – 5 sandwiches for $5? Please.)

Anyway, you've probably seen the highlight by now on "Sports Center." Thomas is very late on a Garland fastball and lofts a high flyball to right, near the line. Vlad Guerrero is essentially playing right-center, gets there late and over-runs the ball. So here's Thomas rumbling around second and heading to third. As I watched – A lonely A's fan in the OC – it was like that scene in the train station in "The Untouchables." Thomas is barreling toward third like the baby carriage careening down the steps. It's a very precarious situation. You need Sean Connery to throw up the stop sign. But he's been gunned down – murdered in his own apartment.. But you still have Andy Garcia. He kills Capone's men AND saves the baby. And a smiling, healthy Frank Thomas slides into third with his first triple since the second Cleveland administration. Or maybe it was a White Sox game against Cleveland. I don't recall. Either way, the whole thing will make a great story when an exhausted Thomas takes a week off in August for a little vacation in Aruba.

San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker married Eva Longoria ... because he could. My guess is she wasn't going to marry any old schlep, given that she is a very attractive and successful star these days. On the other hand, Tony Parker is no slouch either. As a professional basketball player who happens to be very good and fairly attractive, he can do alright for himself.

We discuss the ups and downs of his decision to marry Longoria in the video below:





What do you think you would have done in his position (or if you're a woman, would you be willing to get married to an NBA player who stands an excellent chance of cheating on you at some point)? Would you have kept playing the field or settle down with this hottie once you felt you found the right person?

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By Jayar Jackson

Alright, I know I'm about a week behind on this one, but the back and forth online debate over Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant's Aston Martin jumping stunt could use some discussion for those of you that missed it. For the inconsistent YouTube surfers and sporadic NBA fans, here is what many have been talking about.

While 16 year old kids have been taping themselves attempting to jump over moving cars for years, resulting mostly in face plants and broken egos, a multi-million dollar asset to possibly the #1 team in the Western Conference of the NBA hasn't been documented doing such a pointless activity. With its explosion onto the internet, in a home video style quality, the debate over whether or not Bryant really jumped over a speeding Aston Martin was sparked. After the most careful analysis and rigorous consultation with the most reliable of sources; YouTube commentary, it's obvious to me that the fake scene was staged.

It's not that I don't believe the 6'6" sometimes super human athlete that jumps out of the gym couldn't clear a 4 foot-high vehicle that is traveling fast enough to pass under him in .5 seconds, it's that he wouldn't dare risk his career, or life with a mistimed jump as the car approached. All for what is obviously a shoe commercial without all the bells and whistles of a hyped up music track highlighting some of the athlete's most impressive aerial acrobats on the court. Here's an example of one of my favorites...

The one simple camera angle showing Bryant's profile was the first indicator. They never showed where this car was coming from, his teammate and "boy" Ronny Turiaf scattered off camera until the stunt was over, and his "concern" for Kobe's safety was oozing with most athletes' inability to act. At the height of his jump, he looked oddly suspended in air, possibly an indicator of some slight post-shoot special effects at work. Beyond all of that, it looks like the front tire of the car is turning as he "jumps" over it, showing that the car was probably to his right when it passed him, instead of directly in front of him, if there was even a car and Kobe there at the same time at all. But hey, that's just me being a skeptic, a Laker-hating skeptic? Many others swear that Kobe did it, because there's nothing he can't do.

I'll try it next weekend, all I need is for someone to donate a V12 Aston Martin Vanquish to me, and I will prove whether or not this ex-athlete can get even close! I'll take it in black, thank you.

By Jayar Jackson

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart may have finally gotten himself in some trouble over his much publicized partying ways. Pictures have surfaced on the internet of the USC alum and Heisman Trophy winner partying at his house in Arizona with his roll dog Nick Lachey and several women. Red cups and beer bongs decorate the background...and foreground of the photos, with the two guys looking like regular frat boys having a good time with friends.

Now that the embarrassing pictures are making their rounds throughout everyone's inboxes and "check this out" pages, the Cardinals head coach, Ken Whisenhunt told reporters that although Leinart warned him of the images before they surfaced, he was still upset over them. "We obviously reinforced there's a standard we hold all our players to that we expect them to keep. I'm obviously disappointed that those pictures showed up."

It's obvious that Whisenhunt had no choice but to deliver comments that show disappointment in his 24 year-old quarterback, since so many people in this country scour the gossip pages for a new way to correct someone other than themselves. The coach has the organization that he works for to protect, he has to cater to the ultra-sensitive fans that still actually expect professional athletes to stop being human and be role models for their children.

If you look closely, you'll see that Whisenhunt said he's disappointed that the pictures showed up, NOT that Leinart was partying in the off-season with beers and women. He understands that Leinart is a party guy and that a majority of professional athletes do the same type of thing. If you still think that these grown men with ridiculous paychecks are living the life of a priest...bad example...the life of a Doug Christie or an A.C Green, you're living in a fantasy world.

Now, it's been rumored that these girls are under the legal age for drinking. If this is the case, Mr. Leinart has an entirely different problem on his hands. So far, the proof to this includes the always reputable comments left on gossip sites saying that they know the girls and their graduating year, and fool-proof myspace pages that do nothing but tell the truth. Once some real proof comes to the light, that condemnation...and criminal charges will come right along with it.

Some argue that this unproven golden boy doesn't have time to play around like this, off-season or not. His pedestrian numbers on the field, his battle back and forth with the antique Kurt Warner for the starting position, and ultimate collarbone injury last season gives much credence to this case. After staying around for a 5^th year at USC after winning a National Championship, many questioned his commitment to football over partying. He just may end up being a bust due to his apparent lack of dedication. To this I say...who cares? Are you his parents? If he wants to ruin his career before it gets started, why does it have you punching walls?

We don't even know that his partying in the off-season like so many others is his problem. Many fans can't get enough of the iconic image of Joe Namath jogging off the field with one finger in the air after winning Super Bowl III, but if his partying ways were documented back then the way Leinart's are now, the same nosey people would be in his business, calling him a sure failure. The only obsession left that makes this everyday ordeal so personal to some is that they wish they were in his shoes. I hate to point out such an ugly truth, but jealousy is not very becoming.