Swimming is finally ready to recognize that the more than 100 world records set in 2008 may have something to do with exponential growth of swimsuit technologies in recent years. Apparently it took the powers that be this long to realize that something was amiss.  People were falling in the pool and breaking records in Athens and Beijing and it’s probably time to at least see if these swimsuit, made out of a combination of the stuff they use to make the space shuttle and seal skin (probably) had anything to do with it.

At the same time, the headline “Michael Phelps wins, breaks world record,” is much more exciting than “Michael Phelps wins, doesn’t break world record, several swimmers drown in 50m fee after swimsuit rules change.” Well, now that I think about it, I may be wrong on that one, but I think you get my point.  In general, the faster these people swim, the more fans are likely to care.  Then again, I think that suit that Phelps wore in the Olympics with the working dorsal fin, swim bladder and gills probably crossed the line.

In any event, while swimming’s governing bodies was lax in their enforcement of swimsuit technology, they weren’t the only sport to come up with some pretty ridiculous ideas for their sport.  Let’s take a look at some rule changes that were (probably, but not actually) postulated by the governing bodies of other sports:

Dana White’s shocking announcement that UFC fighters would be able to carry concealed weapons to the ring - While White’s UFC brand was certainly on top of MMA, he became increasingly concerned that copycat organization would begin to steal his market share.  This rules change would be his way to win back market share from other organizations that would be unwilling to take this step.

Surprisingly, this idea championed by some athletes that were new to the sport:

Fearing backlash from MMA purists, Dana White quickly withdrew this idea, leading to a quick retirement from William Regal.

Bud Selig instituting a metal bat only policy for Major League Baseball – Once it was clear that the public would simply not tolerate steroid use if they were sure it was happening,  (Rather than “kind of sure”  because second basemen turned into 30-home-run-hitting, Lou Ferrigno look alikes without anyone caring) Bud and his henchmen agreed they needed a way to keep the long ball in play and keep asses in seats.  The metal bat was the perfect answer. ”Look how well it worked for softball,” he told Donald Fehr.

500 foot home runs would be passe and modern ball parks would be made obsolete.  Fans would inevitably flock back to the parks.  Football would be a distant afterthought in the mind of the fan.  Not surprisingly, fans and the press lambasted Selig for this short-sightedness and the idea was shelved.  He was forced to come up with another idea and rush it to the table.  Thankfully, this one was slightly more well received.

Lance Armstrong Announces he will ride a motorcycle in the Tour De France – Tired of having doping allegations thrown in his direction, Lance decided to shift the focus away from this potential cheating by doping, to his blatant cheating by riding a motorcycle.  He also pointed to the Tour de France’s small sphere of popularity, which could be instantly enlarged by the swarms and swarms of Hell’s Angels packing the hills of France to watch him ride.

Here’s a potential fan right now:

Tour officials quickly dismissed the idea, but not because they hated it. In fact, they had nearly come to a similar conclusion years earlier when they realized so few people cared about this event, they could get away with riding motorcycles and save a lot of energy for their rides. No, Tour officials only hated the idea because it came from an American, which is the same reason they don’t eat many French fries or use toothpaste in France, despite their inherent deliciousness and tartar fight power respectively.

And finally, the most ridiculous of all potential rules changes:

The WNBA President Ms. S0 and So suggests a rule change to lower the net to 9 ft.  – Media and fans agreed from the get go that this is a terrible idea.  Let’s get real folks, why should we acknowledge that men and women are athletically different and as such a change of the games’ rules to make them more aesthetically pleasing to the fan? (See: making the ball smaller, making the three-point line shorter, lowering the net in women’s volleyball which are all terrible ideas).  I’m sure no one would be interested in seeing women’s basketball players dunk, make exciting plays around the rim, score more points and entertain fans more in general.  Thank god this rule was never instituted.

The Angry T

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Congrats to the old boy. He worked hard for 8 years to earn about 50 gold medals and its time for him to relax a bit. I’m sure media members and every one out there with a soap box will make a huge deal about Michael smoking weed, and then those same people will go to dinner with their wives, drink two bottles of Pinot Grigio and get drunk as hell. Best quote in the entire story:

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

I’m also very sure this is the first time this dude has ever smoked and it’s completely safe to say that he never smoked, even once, leading up to his completely annihilation of everyone else in the swimming world at the 2008 Olympics.

Maybe those clowns who make the marijuana commercials can draw one up for Phelps, “Just tell your family you just won 8 gold medals because you were high.”

Or, Michael Phelps saying, “Gold Medals are my Anti-Drug…Although I do love to get high, so its more like Marijuana is my drug and gold medals are what I win, even though I occasionally use marijuana.”

It’s got a great ring to it.

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Marissa Miller got us really fired up about commercials and once we saw this one, we had to post it.

The first question that pops into your mind after watching this video is obviously, “Why didn’t Kobe have to strip down to his underwear?” The second question that comes to mind is, “How much did these guys get paid for this?” I would think that Kobe got paid the most because he was probably the central figure in the commercial.  My guess is that he got paid $500k.  Violent J believes it was more like 100k. Personally, I don’t think that Kobe gets out of bed for less that 500k these days.

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I want to preface this article by saying that I love me some Michael Phelps.  I mean I went to school with the guy at the University of Michigan, where I called him “Phelpsy”, stared at him from across the bar, and attempted to towel him off after workouts.  So needless to say I was sporting a halfy as he won each of his 8 gold medals in Beijing.  Of course we couldn’t just call what Michael Phelps did this August the greatest swimming performance of all-time.

 We couldn’t just put Phelps and his 14 gold medals and 7 world records on the Olympic Mt. Rushmore.  Instead the sports media has had to go the extra step and say that Phelps’ Olympic performance was possibly the greatest athletic performance EVER.  Not in the Olympics, not in a swimming pool, the greatest athletic performance that has ever taken place.  With no disrespect to the sports media who never tries to take a great story and shove it down our faces until we despise everything involved with it, I can think of at least 10 athletes who have had much more impressive athletic performances then Phelps’ 8 golds. 

Honorable Mention: Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series

11. Christian Leattner scores 31 points, goes 10-10 from the Field and the Line in the Regional Final in 1992.

In the process of going 10-1o from both the field and the line, Laettner happend to hit a fairly clutch buzzer beater to send the Blue Devils to the Final Four.

10. Wilt Chamberlain has sex with 20,000 women

 

In “A View From Above” Wilt the Stilt wrote: “That’s correct, twenty thousand different ladies, at my age, that equals out to having sex with 1.2 women a day, every day since I was 15 years old.”  To me, this display of stamina is a little more impressive then swimming for 100 meters.  I would have put this much higher on the list, but I have masturbated to 25,000 women which, at my age, that equals out to having sex JCPenny lingerie catalog models much more frequently then Chamberlain.

 

9.  Usain Bolt 9.69 second 100 meter dash

I didn’t think I saw ol Phelpsy pausing with 20 meters to go in the pool to showboat and do backflips like Usain Bolt did when he won the 100 meter dash and set a new world record.  To be able to win by the margin he did on such a short race, while slowing down for the last quarter of the race was by far to me the greatest athletic performance of the Olympics.

8.  Scott Young bench presses 225 lbs 43 times at the NFL combine

This record has to put Scott Young as one of the strongest men in the NFL, which is a pretty cool athletic achievement in itself. 

7.  Running a Marathon with no legs

It must’ve been tough for Phelps to have been such a successful swimmer.  He only has a freakish wingspan and natural swimmers body, how did he do it?  I have to say a guy running the London Marathon (2007) in 3 hours and 52 minutes (8:51 miles) with artificial legs is a bit more impressive.

6. Barry Bonds hits 73 Home Runs in a single season

An unbelievable accomplishment, it’s like he was possessed that season with a superhuman strength that made his head bigger and his testicles shrink

5.  Kobe Bryant scores 81 points in a game

This wasn’t Chamberlain flipping shots over defenders a foot shorter then him, this was a guard hitting shots and driving to the basket at will against a Toronto Raptors team that made the playoffs that year. 

4. Various Strongman records

Michael Phelps: “I can swim a medley faster then anyone ever has!”

Franz Muellner: “Oh wow, I could only have a 1.8 ton helicopter land on my back.  And then I could only support it for 60 seconds.”

3. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hit streak

The USA Today did a countdown of the hardest things to do in sports a few years back.  While being part of a Olympic swimming relay team was not on the list, hitting a baseball was number one.  I happen to agree with USA Today (see: senior year batting average) and so the longest standing MLB hit streak deserves a spot on the greatest sports performances of all time. Dimaggio was so impressive that he ripped off an even longer, 61 game hitting streak in the minor leagues in the Pacific coast league in 1933.

2.  Nolan Ryan 7 No Hitters

When you consider that only one other pitcher has more then 3 no-hitters (Sandy Koufax with 4) Ryan’s 7 No Hitters are unbelievable.  Keep in mind also that 6 of those no hitters were in the American League and everyone of them occurred during the current DH-Era.

1. Jesse Owens’ Four Gold Medals in the 1936

In terms of political, social, and athletic significance, no other accomplishment on this list even comes close to Jesse’s exploits at the 36′ games, except Wilt’s 20,000 chicks, which has inspired generations of men to blatantly lie about if, when, and how many times they had sex with a woman.

Take away the whole Hitler thing for a second and you can argue that this was only Jesse’s second greatest athletic feat. Earlier that year Jesse broke or tied four world records in the span of 45 minutes at the Big Ten Track Championships.

The Angry T

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If you have read The Angry T for a significant amount of time, you know we have a certain penchant for super-babies. What is a super baby you ask? Well, a super baby is born when two phenomenal athletes sack up and combine their genetic juices. The Olympics give us a fantastic opportunity to do a little match-making with the world’s best pure athletes. Let’s take a what kind of monster could be produced using the best of the best:

Jamaican Sprinter Usain Bolt and South Korean Weightlifter Jang Mi Ran

The mechanics of this act of coitus could be problematic, but I think the world’s fastest man will be able to make do, especially since Jang can lift 138 kg’s in the Snatch. Jang Mi Ran is a three time world champion weightlifter that can pass on the type of genes, that when coupled with Bolt’s, will make the ultimate combination of size and strength. Watch out world.

Two-Time US Taekwondo Gold Medalist Steven Lopez and US Gymnast Alicia Sacramone

I would have chosen to pair Lopez with America’s best gymnast, Shawn Johnson, but Johnson is only 16. As disgusting as a human being as I am, not even I could put these two together in good conscience. With that being said, can you imagine how devastating the child of a gold medal martial artist and a world class gymnast might b?e This child would be a real life version of the chicks in Crouching Tiger.

Probably most importantly, Lopez was rated one of People’s 50 most beautiful people and Sacramone is pretty hot, so this would he one beautiful child.

US Basketball players Lebron James / Dwight Howard and US Volleyball Kerry Walsh

Combine the athletic ability of Lebron or Dwight with the height and athletic ability of Walsh and you have a 7′5″ child, male or female, with a 71 inch vertical. I listed Dwight and Lebron because both would work perfectly individually with Walsh, or they could involve themselves menage et trois and just roll the dice. In either case, the kid could play volleyball, basketball, handball, handjob, or any other number of ball related games that in any way involve athletic ability.

Lebron’s block today against Angola

US Shooter Walter Eller and Japenese Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist Ayumi Tanimoto

Walter Eller just broke the Olympic record in the Double Trap shooting event and Tanimoto just won her second straight gold in the 63 kg Judo class. Can you imagine the super hero / secret agent these two could produce? James Bond would crying in his martini if he ever had to go up against this bad ass.

US 110-Meter Hurdler Lolo Jones and US Swimmer Michael Phelps

We all know about Phelps’ exploits and how he virtually rules the water. You may not know that Lolo is one of the world’s best at the 110-meter hurdles, an event that combines jumping ability and sprinting ability. What better way to compliment Michael’s dominance in water than with Lolo’s dominance of land (the track) and air. This child would have dominion over all beasts that populate land, sea or air…The Ultimate Super Baby. Oh yeah, Jones is pretty hot too.

Any other suggestions? Leave them in the comments.

The Angry T

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