Mike Ficher

What Usain Bolt did at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin earlier this month, breaking the 100 and 200 meter world records while capturing the bi-annual event's sprint races, is, well, insane, simply off the charts, the sports story of the year.
Bolt won the two races in record times of 9.58s for the 100 meters and 19.19s for the 200, breaking marks the Jamaican sprinter set at last summer's Olympics in Beijing.
In events where the difference between first and fifth can often be as minute as a body lean or a slightly askew stride, Bolt is putting visible distance between himself and his competition.

Memories from a baseball season as the play-by-play announcer for the Bend Elks on 106.7 KPOV:
The most horrifying, sickening sound in baseball is the contact of a baseball with a face.

Controversies in bowling usually range from what light beer should
be consumed to the preferred width of the diamonds on the classic King
Louie retro shirt.

Well, two weeks ago, the Professional Bowlers
Association ignited a much-needed publicity brouhaha when the tour held
its first limited equipment tournament, the GEICO Plastic Ball
Championship at Wheat Ridge, Colorado.  Unlike regular PBA events, in
which players usually cart a baker's dozen or more bowling balls, the
rules of this event required all players to use the same old school
purple (yes, purple!) plastic ball.
How outdated is the plastic
ball?  All-time tour wins leader Walter Ray Williams Jr. was the last
bowler to win with a plastic ball, capturing the 1993 Homestead
Classic. The two top players on the tour this season, Wes Malott and
Norm Duke, skipped the event with Malott registering his disdain for
the concept saying, "Nobody's asking Tiger Woods to use a wood driver
or Roger Federer to use a wood racket." 

The dust has settled on one of the most tumultuous college football seasons with Oklahoma and Florida emerging from the morass of qualified one-loss teams to compete for the so-called national title. Of course, USC, Texas Tech, Alabama and, particularly, Texas, might beg to differ with the selection of the Sooners and the Gators for the national title game.

HOW FAR WE
HAVE TO GO
On Feb. 2, Michelle Campbell arrived at St.
Mary's Academy in Kansas to referee a boys' basketball game. The
two-year officiating veteran was scheduled to call her first boys game.
However, the former college player was sent home because the school
didn't want a woman refereeing boys.
Darin Putthoff, who was
scheduled to officiate the game with Campbell-both walked out after
being told of the situation-reported that a St. Mary's official told
him that having a woman in a position of authority over boys was
against the school's beliefs.
In a statement-the school had
declined interviews-St. Mary's offered: "Our school aims to instill in
our boys the proper respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to
treat ladies with deference, we cannot place them in an aggressive
athletic competition where they are forced to play inhibited by their
concern about running into a female referee." Campbell is a career
police officer.
"It was a sad day for the kids," Campbell told ESPN. "If they're like any other teenagers, all they want to do is play ball."