Interesting or ironic that Upshaw led players strike in 1987, the same year he was voted into the Hall of Fame. Heard on the radio that someone said he was one of the most five influential persons in history in creation and growth of the NFL. True? And who would be the other four? Hunt, Halas, Rozelle, ???

Shouldn't gymnastics be striving for as objective a system as possible

I don't think there is any way that you get ever get an objective system. Gymnastics, like certain other competitions (skating, diving, some skiing events), has too much subjectivity built in. They can assign certain points to certain skills, which is one component of the score. But the other component, execution of the skills, is almost entirely subjective.

And politics, as well as other factors, do influence the judges. This is probably true even more on the international stage such as the Olympics, but also in lower levels. In the past I have seen it at local competitions where some gymnasts with a "reputation" (a girl can apparently get a reputation as young as 12) can fall off the bars or the beam and still make a higher score than other gymnasts who appear to do their set without error.

I am just happy that the Americans won since, from the portions I saw, they appeared to be the best. After seeing some of the scores for the Chinese girls after shoddy or shaky performances on events, I was afraid the fix was in.

Two points:

1. Gonzalez should have fessed up. Tennis like golf requires some honesty by the players in calling shots against themselves. However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he did not feel the tick. Haven't seen the replay, so I assume that could be the case.

2. Blake should have sucked it up and gone ahead and won. He had plenty of chances to win and did not. He cannot blame that one call on his blowing the match.