So the Duke Lacrosse thing is pretty interesting. Just read a story saying that the Duke women's lacrosse team, participating in the final four, will be wearing armbands that say "innocent."

Now I've long (and by long I mean 5 years) been a critic of college athletics, admissions, practices, etc. And in the Duke case, as in most rape cases, my initial reaction is almost always that the accused are guilty. As more information has emerged, however, it seems possible that no rape occurred. However, what has become abundantly clear is that many members of the Duke Lacrosse team are really the scum of the earth.

After all, it seems pretty clear that they ordered an African-American stripper, specifically because she was African-American, and proceeded to insult her with racial slurs. Whether a rape was committed or not, that alone is disgusting behaviour that tells you a little bit about the athlete culture at big time sports schools.

Even at Harvard, where I attended college, the athletes were for the most part decidedly un-intellectual. There were of course numerous glorious exceptions. But at the end of the day, these were msotly athletes, not scholar-athletes.

And what's worse, people go on and on about how athletics are very character-buidling. Indeed, one of the great defenses of athletics at Harvard was that it builds character, leadership skills. What a croc of shit that is. In my experience for 2 years as a sports reporter for the Harvard Crimson, I absolutely could not say that athletes distinguished themselves at all as having better characters or more leadership skills than the general population. And while athletes at Ivy league schools are to some degree isolated by their non-athlete peers, there is no comparison to the situation at Duke, or Stanford, where athletes live almost separate lives.

So, it's nice that the Duke women's team are supporting the innocence of the men's team. But I don't doubt that most members of the men's team regard their female peers as pieces of meat, vessels for their over-sized lacrosse sticks. Perhaps they are innocent of rape. But I hope to God these are not the future leaders of America. Because they seem to be coming out of the Dubya mould.