CS&T/AllsportsAmerica would like to know, what's your take?

Chicago Sports & Travel, Inc. / AllsportsAmerica

The NHL starts it’s abbreviated season tomorrow and I have the feeling it’s going to be a great!!! May your favorite team do well, however, being based in Chicago, I must warn you, “Here comes the Hawks, the amazing Chicago Blackhawks”. It’s our year. Remember, you heard it here first. Good Luck and go Hawks.

This week’s NFL conference championship games feature:

San Francisco 49ers Vs. Atlanta Falcons, 1/20/2013 @ 3:00PM (ET)

Our picks: San Francisco 49ers  

Baltimore Ravens Vs. New England Patriots, 1/20/2013 @ 6:30PM (ET)

Our Pick: Baltimore Ravens
 
Out of the final four will come the terrific two before we crown the only one, “Super Bowl Champion”.
 
Hoaxes/Scandals galore start 2013... You Think!!!

2013 is going to be a terrific sports year full of great games, records, stories, events and it’s share of hoaxes and scandals. We have two great ones to start the year off with: (1) After years of accusations and denials, Lance Armstrong admits he did participate in sports doping. Why now? What’s his motivation? And (2) Manti Te’o girlfriend's hoax. What’s this all about and why now? Do they consider these actions as a prank, joke, trick, con or some form of deception? What did they think they would gain from it? I often call myself, “The old fool from the old school”; use the term, “This inquiring mini-mind would like to know”, and to paraphrase a saying from the late Paul Harvey, I’d love to know "the rest of the story".

Below are articles on both ruses to bring you up to speed. CS&T/AllsportsAmerica would love to know, what’s your take?

Manti Te'o girlfriend's hoax:  Reserve judgment until everything comes out.

By Matt Hayes, Sporting News

No dead girlfriend, no tear-jerking, feel-good story of an All-American linebacker at Notre Dame. Just question after question after question. Manti Te’o is either a victim, a liar, a conspirator or a confused man. And none of them make any sense. 

If Te’o truly is a victim of a hoax—as he and Notre Dame claim—his story doesn’t add up. If Te’o truly is a liar and a conspirator—as the exhaustive reporting from Deadspin.com suggests—the obvious question is: Why?

Why lie about a girlfriend? Why, as a red-blooded superstar linebacker with the world as your oyster, do you lie about something as simple—yet eventually, so complex—as a relationship?

This, more than anything, is why this story needs to play out. This, more than anything, is why this story is far from complete.

The inclination in this media climate is to meticulously criticize or joke about a fallen star (I’m a card-carrying member); to wonder aloud about explanations; to offer up answers.

Yet here’s a question we all must ask ourselves: What if it’s not that easy?

This much we know: It’s not possible that Te’o is that naive and that gullible and that lonely and that far from his home in Hawaii that he had an online relationship. I’ve been in this business for more than two decades, and it gets harder and harder to decipher fake from genuine; to find what’s behind the mask.

Te’o, and his love for his grandmother and “girlfriend,” his passion for football and the camaraderie of his teammates, was about as real as could be. To be that completely invested in a scam; to be so full of emotion and tears that you fall into your parent’s arms after a game, something has to be driving those emotions.

Who is this longtime “friend” that allegedly helped concoct the hoax? Too many questions, not enough answers. If we’ve learned anything over the last few years of the unthinkable in sport, it’s that we can’t overreact and simplify things.

There are too many questions in every unseemly story. Too many unknowns, and too much uncertainty.

We’re all to blame. We put Manti Te’o on a pedestal, and praised a man none of  
us really knew.

Turns out he’s just as flawed as all of us.

That’s the real hoax.  
 
Excerpts from Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah, 01/17/2013, Part 1

By JOHN LEICESTER (AP Sports Columnist) | The Associated Press

THE TRUTH IS OUT:

''One big lie,'' says Armstrong, putting the final nail into his myth. To their credit, Armstrong and Winfrey haven't beaten around the bush. From the get-go, we hear Armstrong say ''yes'' - he doped for all seven of his Tour de France victories. Blood doping, the blood booster EPO, human growth hormone, testosterone - the panoply of drugs and methods that many riders used when cycling became chemical warfare in the 1990s. Armstrong is being surprisingly candid. Few will dispute that doping was part of the culture in cycling. But his critics say Armstrong perpetuated it.

NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON:

Nearly 14 years after first winning the bike race that turned him into a global sports megastar, is Lance Armstrong finally going to tell the truth - or his latest version of it - about the role performance-enhancing drugs played in his career and seven Tour de France victories?

It's not as though he has much choice. The evidence gathered by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency of systematic drug use on his U.S. Postal Service cycling team was so overwhelming that Armstrong could look foolish and deluded if he insists to Oprah Winfrey that he rode clean, as he's always done until now. But, at this point, who still believes that?

Armstrong hasn't spoken at length and publicly about the thick dossier of evidence USADA published in October. To now admit to doping after years of denial will undoubtedly be painful and embarrassing for Armstrong, a proud and intensely competitive man. But this is also an opportunity for Armstrong to start the long trek back from disgrace and try to seek forgiveness.

Will he seize it or make matters worse by being insincere and sparing with the facts and apologies?

THE TIMING:

Why now?

Only when cornered is Armstrong making what is expected to be an ungainly U-turn after more than a decade of insisting that he competed clean and of hounding those who suggested otherwise.

Sponsors who stuck with Armstrong through the storms of suspicion that punctuated his cycling career have now abandoned him, costing him millions in future earnings.

To spare it more turmoil, Armstrong was forced to cut ties to Livestrong, the cancer-fighting charity he founded in 1997, the year after he was diagnosed at age 25 with testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain.

USADA has voided all of his competition results from Aug. 1, 1998, including the record string of seven Tour wins that made him rich, famous and buddies with pop stars and presidents.

The International Olympic Committee this week wrote to Armstrong asking that he return the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Olympics.

The sport's boss, Pat McQuaid, has said Armstrong ''deserves to be forgotten in cycling.''

In short, Armstrong's reputation couldn't sink any lower. To have any hope of surfacing again, he had to do something. He surely never anticipated that he would ever hit bottom like this - coming clean to Winfrey. Or will it just be clean-ish?

Armstrong must have decided that the alternative - do nothing - was worse.

What's your take? We'd love to know!

Please let us hear your opinion on the above articles and pass them on to any other diehard fans that you think might be interested. But most of all, remember,  Chicago Sports & Travel, Inc./AllsportsAmerica wants you!!!!!