The Ferguson and choke hold cases have brought on protests all over the country.  They also brought on demonstrations and comments by athletes.  So far no repercussions for these athletes such as the Rams players or Charles Barkley.  Nor should there be any.  Athletes, like celebrities, have a forum to make their views of known that the rest of us don't have.  It does not mean that people should agree with or follow what they say.  They are no smarter than us.  But they certainly have rights to their opinions.  The Rams players sided with the protesters and the NFL did not punish them.  Barkley sided with the police and TNT allowed him and Kenny Smith argued on the air.  All those are right calls.

My own opinion is that there should have been indictments in the two cases.  I am not saying that the cops were guilty but as I said before, grand jury indictments are usually easily obtained as compared to convictions.  I think that if prosecutors wanted indictments, they certainly could have presented the evidence in such a way that the grand jury would agree that there were probable causes.  I think if civilians and not cops were involved, there would be no question that the two cases would have gone to trial.  And here is a conflict that I see:  Prosecutors usually work with the police to get the bad guys.  Are there conflict of interests then when it comes to prosecuting cops?  I think in controversial cases they should move outside the area or at least bring in federal prosecutors who do not work with the local police on a regular basis.

Whether the officers were guilty or not in these two cases, there is no denial of the fact that blacks are arrested more frequently, killed more often by police and sentenced to longer jail time.  This is true even if you factor in the higher rates of crime committed by blacks than whites.  A lot of that is due to economic difference.  Rich people do get away with more.  Charles Barkley got community service and fine for throwing someone through a bar window!  A poor black guy would have been punished much more harshly.  Of course, Barkley is recognized by the police and the judges.  He also can afford the best legal representation.  Beyond economics, however, racism I think still involved in a lot of situations.  I do think we are way better as a country in race relations, but we still need to do better.

Alabama, Oregon, FSU and OSU are in!  I have no problem with these selections.  I think that the committee made the right final choices.  The controversy comes with the TCU and Baylor situation.  I think having TCU dropping 3 spots after winning the last game and Baylor got jumped over by OSU are controversial, although not really surprising.  So if they had not release weekly standings all along and just gave the names today, I think there would be little argument.  So let us just have the final standing next season!

Congrats to Landon Donovan for going out as a champion!  A great career playing for the Galaxy and the U.S.  Soccer fans will miss him.  To bad for Lee Nguyen for getting injured during the game.  It would have been great to see Nguyen and Donovan involved in a Finals PK shootout!

I am amazed by the power of this blog.  Last week I commented that Lee Nguyen is an MVP candidate for the New England Revolution of MLS.  I also wondered why he has not been selected to the U.S. national team.  Immediately, Jurgen Klinnsmann called up Nguyen and played him toward the end of the game against Colombia.  Nguyen came close to scoring, only a great save by the Colombia goalie stopped him from putting the U.S. ahead.  I think Nguyen and his teammate Jermaine Jones will be a great midfield duo for the U.S.  Hopefully he will get a chance to prove that in the future.

In DWTS Tommy Chong has to go tomorrow.  Despite my sympathy for his advanced age, he is by far the worse dancer left and it would be a travesty if he makes the finals.

This is the last blog regarding the World Cup 2014 unless something extremely crazy happens.  At this point, any one of the final four winning the Cup would not be shocking.  I will still go with Brazil to win it all even though they won't have Neymar and Thiago Silva.  On paper Germany is now a slight favorite but I think this may actually be advantage to Brazil.  There is still great pressure but instead of being heavy favorite they are a slight underdog.  They may play with a chip on their shoulder instead of a heavy burden.  And teams like Colombia, Costa Rica and France have lost top players and have played well.  Given the depth of the Brazilian team, they should be able to weathered the losses better than those teams.  So I will go with Brazil but as I said before, all four remaining teams can win it all.

There seems to be a lot more parity in this World Cup with the CONCACAF and African teams doing better than expected.  But I don't agree with those who think that the U.S. are close to winning the cup.  The U.S. has the best goalie in the world and we always produce great goalies.  We have speed and athleticism.  But our skill level are nowhere near the top teams.  We lost in possession in every game and the discrepancy in possession and shots in the Belgium game only points to our lack of world class skills.  The gap will not be closed completely in 4 or even 8 years.  Only Bradley and Dempsey can start on most teams in the world.  We have 5 Germans on the team and except for Green, Germany have no interest in them.  So unless we get athletes like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant to play soccer and we get a grass root system like they have in European countries, we have a long way to go before we can win the cup.  Sure, we can beat one of final four team on a given day, but to win four knockout round against the best teams, we can't do it in the near future.

My prediction of Roger Federer winiing Wimbledon almost came true.  He played a great tournament but unfortunately father time wins again.  I think this is his last chance to win another major.  I expect that Nadal will pass him in major titles.  Is he the greatest ever?  Given that he has a losing record against Nadal, even though Nadal was rising as Federer started to decline, it is hard to say that Federer is better than Nadal.  But I think Federer is still the best all around player, being in the top 3 of all time on clay, grass and hard courts.  This is something I don't think any other player can claim.