The federation of gymnastics must love this. That is the only explanation. They understand that the all-powerful American market will have, in general, three reactions to any event with an American gymnast.

1) The American kid got screwed!

2) The American kid won, even though they tried to screw her/him

3) The American kid has no chance. What else is on?

Clearly, Option 3 is not acceptable to gymnastics or NBC. So, we go for Option 1 & 2, as evidence by the uneven bars thing last night.

My favorite was when Al "The American Baghdad Bob" Trautwig yammered on about how some judges represent countries that have never medaled in gymnastics. So... only Americans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese and Romanians should be judges now?

I've having a harder and harder time recognizing gymnastics, or any judged activity, as a real sport. Yes, yes, these young men and women are absolutely amazing, but you know what? So is the Undertaker. So is Jackie Chan. We don't consider pro wrestling or movie stunt work a sport.

I'm good at fixing things. My award-winning work on the technical balk is legendary. I've got a plan for gymnastics.

1) Make the routines compulsory. So much of this garbage has come from whether a routine is harder or easier. Everyone does the same routine, period.

2) Get mean. You fall off the beam, bar, rings or horse, you get a zero. Knees touch the mat on the vault, or you go out of bounds, zero. Butt hits the mat on the floor exercise, get out. That will at least alleviate the "Chinese girl fell, but still won bronze!" nonsense.

3) MORE, not less judges. This seems counter-intuitive in a rant about judging, but the more judges, the less any one can overly influence things.

4) Give every home gymnast an automatic .05 deduction, just to account for the crowd effect on the spineless, corrupt judges.

5) Give Bela and interpreter.