Poker pro Mike Matusow, future Olympian?

When I watched the equestrian competitions (OK, I didn’t watch them, but I saw them briefly) I wondered why that was an Olympic sport. The horse was doing everything, the guy who won the medal just sat there. Alright, calm down all you horse fans, I know that the guy riding the horse has to do a lot of training in preparation for a routine, but I still think it’s the horse that should get the medal.

Then I thought that a poker player just sits there - maybe poker could become an Olympic sport like horse jumping? But then I realized that poker is a game, not a sport. If games were Olympic sports we would have been playing for chess gold medals for the past century. Olympic sports should require that the participants at least have to get off a chair to compete. Could you imagine Mike Matusow with a gold medal? (Or 2008 Summer Olympics 8 x gold medal winner Michael Phelps with a gold medal in Poker?)

Mark Cuban’s got nothing on these curmudgeons when it comes to dissing the Olympics. FC Barcelona are refusing to release forward Lionel Messi to play for his native Argentina at the Summer Games in Beijing. FIFA has ruled that they must; however, Barca may appeal on the grounds that the Olympics are not on FIFA’s international soccer calendar.

Messi isn’t the only player caught up in this. Brazil could be down three men: Kaka (AC Milan), Rafinha (Schalke) and Diego (Werder Bremen) are also being held back. So far, FIFA has yet to rule on Kaka’s fate. Their absence would make life difficult for the second favorites at 11-4 on the Olympic soccer futures market. Argentina is the favorite at 2-1.

Italy and the Netherlands are tied for third favorite status at 7-1. There’s generally less interest in Europe for Olympic soccer; South Americans take it much more seriously after first arriving on the national scene at the 1924 Paris Games.

This could be something of a disappointing Olympics for the United States. The over/under on medals for Team USA is 92.5 – two fewer than the host nation China.

There are two ways to go about handicapping this bad boy. You could look at every single sport at the Summer Games, everything from archery to wrestling. Or you could look at the medal counts for Team USA in Olympics past and spot the trend. Both methods have their limitations, but at least the second one won’t take you from now until the Olympics are over to figure out.

The smallest medal total for the U.S. over the past 40 years (1980 aside) has been 94, at Munich, Montreal, Seoul and Sydney. So the over is a lock, right? Wrong. China’s medal count has climbed steadily, and they’ll be winning a lot more this year as the host nation. It’ll be at the expense of Team USA.