Looks like President-elect Barack Obama has more than the economy and BCS on his to-do list.

Obama appeared in a 90-second taped video message played by Chicago bid leaders to the general assembly of European Olympic Committees, the largest regional group in the Olympic movement.

“The United States would be honored to have the opportunity to host the Games and serve the Olympic movement,” said Obama, wearing a dark suit and sitting at a desk in his Chicago transition office. “As president elect, I see the Olympics and Paralympic Games as an opportunity for our nation to reach out, welcome the world to our shores and strengthen our friendships across the globe.”

It will be interesting to see if Obama’s personal appeal to the European Olympic Committee will have any influence on their decision making.

The Love Of Sports paid tribute to our neighbors to the north by ranking their top 20 favorite Canadian athletes.

Fair warning to hockey nation – the writer chose not to list any players from the NHL because he says that would have been too easy. You won’t find Steve Nash’s name on the list either, so don’t look or get pissed off when you don’t see it.

5. Bronko Nagurski, NFL Hall of Famer
Nagurski was one of the inaugural inductees to the NFL Hall of Fame who played on both sides of the ball. He was also one hell of a professional wrestler and has the largest NFL Championship ring in the history of NFL Championship rings at size 19½. He hails from Rainy River, Ontario.

4. Jacques Villeneuve, Auto Racing
His dad Gilles could make the list too, but this list is for the Internet age and that’s the time of Jacques. He was the 1995 CART Series Champion, winner of the 1995 Indy 500 and the 1997 Formula One Championship. Villeneuve also was part of the Peugeot team that finished second in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and has even started to make a foray into NASCAR. One of the best drivers of the last 20 years, regardless of series, Villeneuve hails from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec.

3. Mike Weir, Golfer
The little lefty who won the Masters before Phil Mickelson ever donned a green jacket is a proud Canuck from Bright’s Grove, Ontario, and a valuable member of the President’s Cup team every other year.

2. Lennox Lewis, Boxer
The best heavyweight champion of the last 10 years was raised in Kitchener, Ontario and won a Gold Medal under the Maple Leaf long before he moved back to England. While he fought under the British flag as a professional, Lewis will always be a Canadian in my eyes.

1. Ferguson Jenkins, Hall of Fame Pitcher
The 1971 Cy Young winner is the pride of Chatham, Ontario, a city I was able to call home for a number of years and was able to meet the three-time All-Star. Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991, Jenkins is the only Canadian in the Hall (so far) and is one of only four pitchers to ever strike out 3,000 batters while amassing fewer than 1,000 walks. As an added bonus, Fergie played once played with the Harlem Globetrotters. Beat that!

I don’t know Bronko Nagurski was Canadian!

Brian Burke, Executive Director and General Manager of USA Hockey, admitted this weekend that Toronto Maple Leafs coach Ron Wilson is the leading candidate to coach Team USA in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Many in the hockey community feel this duo’s drive and fire for the game could lead the Americans to a gold medal.

The connection between Burke and Wilson began as teammates at Providence College 35 years ago and their bond and mutual respect for one another is still strong today. Privately, both men have long wanted to work together to rebuild a NHL franchise.

Burke is a leader with drive and purpose, and he has a vision for how an organization is to court success. Wilson is an old school coach in terms of his stern and demanding style, but he brings a sense of levity to the locker room that keeps the players at ease. There is no retreat in either’s character, so you can expect constructive arguments between the two on the structure of the U.S. team roster.

Each professes that a team must have quality play from the backline, but they also understand tough, physical players are just as important as skilled, crowd-pleasing scorers. In his initial press conference, Burke mentioned that this is the deepest talent pool that has ever been available to USA Hockey.

Wilson is equipped to handle the media pressure associated with the Olympics, as he coached the Americans to a victory in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. He still points to that championship as one of his greatest thrills in his professional career, and he recently became the 11th coach in league history to win 500 games.

If this duo does indeed collaborate for the Vancouver Games, expect good things from Team USA.

…oh, and she’s a Paraguayan Olympic javelin thrower too.

Go Paraguay!

Some call him “The Greatest Olympian of All Time,” while others simply call him Michael Phelps. He recently sat down with Men’s Fitness for an interview.

Since winning a record eight gold medals at this summer’s Olympic games, Michael Phelps has rocketed to international stardom with an appearance on Saturday Night Live, tons of endorsement offers, and an impressive list of pro-athlete pals. Lucky for us, Phelps dropped by the Men’s Fitness office to give MF the lowdown on his training, supplements, and what he’s been up to since making history.

Have you done much swimming since Beijing?
Nothing. I’ve never taken a break before. I’ve gone 12 years of pretty much straight work. My coach said after 2008 I could do whatever I want. I was like, ‘Alright, well, I’m not going to swim for a few months then.’ It’s tough. It’s weird. You go from having something as a part of your everyday life to waking up and doing absolutely nothing. I’ll wake up and say, ‘Hmm, what am I going go to do today? Lets see what’s on TV.’

Do you have a time-line for when you’re going to start training again?
Oh, I don’t know. Just getting back in shape is the biggest thing. January or February is when I’ll start. It’s weird, because I go from swimming pretty much every day of my life to not really doing anything. It’s a little strange. I kind of miss having some kind of routine. I used to wake up at 6:30 every day and go work out and then come back and go to bed. Now I don’t get up until noon and don’t really have a set schedule.

Click here to read the rest of the interview.

Deadspin had a post today about Chinese ping ponger Wang Hao, who got into an altercation with a security guard while peeing outside of a karaoke club. Allegedly, he said the following to the guard:

“I am the famous Wang Hao! I am the world champion! Does it matter if I beat you?” shouted the 24-year-old, according to a witness quoted by the papers.

That’s just an awesome quote. Wang Hao is my hero. I am totally going to the karaoke club this weekend (if I can find one) and urinate outside in his honor. Hopefully, a security guard will confront me and I can repeat Wang’s Words. It would be the highlight of my life (or at least my week, anyway).

Two-time gold medalist (and possibly the best volleyball player in the world) Misty May-Treanor underwent surgery on the Achilles tendon that she tore while practicing for “Dancing With the Stars.”

Her rep tells PEOPLE the surgery was “successful” and that “she is currently at home recovering. Her husband, Matt [Treanor] is with her.”

Doctors estimate it will take approximately nine months of recovery and rehabilitation before May-Treanor can return to the volleyball court.

The doctors went on to theorize that years of “lugging around a more than ample derrier” [picture] may have caused the Achilles to compress and weaken, making it susceptible to injury.

Okay, I made that last part up.

Get well soon, Misty. We’ll miss you.

This occurred to me during the Bejing Olympic Games, but I was reminded of it with all the hoopla surrounding the “Dancing With The Stars” premiere.

Misty May-Treanor has a tattoo on her lower back. It’s a picture of the Roman numeral five, a tribute to Jason Kidd, May-Treanor’s favorite basketball player. Kidd wears the #5 on his jersey. May also wore the number in college.

So imagine you’re Misty’s husband, baseball player Matt Treanor, and you’re spending some “quality time” with your wife and you look down and see that tattoo. What happens when a picture of Jason Kidd’s mug pops into your head?

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, columnist Barbara Demick examines China’s methods for cultivating Olympic athletes. It’s a very interesting read as it contrasts the American sentiment of fun and good sportsmanship to the Chinese attitude of duty and dominance.

The only mother on China’s team, Xian Dongmei, told reporters after she won her gold medal in judo that she had not seen her 18-month-old daughter in one year, monitoring the girl’s growth only by webcam. Another gold medalist, weightlifter Cao Lei, was kept in such seclusion training for the Olympics that she wasn’t told her mother was dying. She found out only after she had missed the funeral.

Chen Ruolin, a 15-year-old diver, was ordered to skip dinner for one year to keep her body sharp as a razor slicing into the water. The girl weighs 66 pounds.

“To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist Party central,” is how Chinese Sports Minister Liu Peng put it at the beginning of the Games.

“You have no control over your own life. Coaches are with you all the time. People are always watching you, the doctors, even the chefs in the cafeteria. You have no choice but to train so as not to let the others down,” gymnast Chen Yibing told Chinese reporters last week after winning a gold medal on the rings. He said he could count the amount of time he’d spent with his parents “by hours . . . very few hours.”

After Beijing was chosen in 2001 to host this summer’s Games, China’s sports authorities launched Project 119 (after the number of medals available in track and field, canoeing, sailing, rowing and swimming that were not Chinese strengths) and assigned promising young athletes to focus exclusively on these sports, some of which they’d never heard of.

Of course, a federal government having its hand in athletic development is nothing new; the Soviet Union and East Germany are just two examples. However, with these Olympics being the most widely watched in history and its minute-by-minute coverage being scrutinized by a host of international columnists and bloggers on the Internet, even the smallest off-color story can cause a worldwide ripple. China, for all its faults, hosted the most sensational Olympics in recent years. We will never forget the impossibly beautiful opening and closing ceremonies, the money and effort they spent conforming the architecture of their capital, and the hospitality they showed to each athlete. Still, it’s the performances that matter, and China proved their dominance in more events than any other country - even the United States.

As this article shows, this success was planned and expected. While reading, I was not in awe of the methods employed by the Chinese government, but was surprised by the “what-can-you-do” attitude of its athletes.

Everyone watches the Olympics differently. I rooted for Michael Phelps to break Mark Spitz’s record; I followed the Redeem Team to their gold-medal success; I cheered Nastia Liukin on in the all-around gymnastics competition. What I noticed was that I was throwing my support around specific athletes and teams based just as much on their individual stories as on their American nationality. For some reason, the medal count never felt important. I’ve always assumed that Americans would dominate in some sports and other nations would dominate in others—seemed like a fairly rational outlook. Yet, upon hearing rumors of China’s totalitarian policy towards its athletes and its submission of underage female gymnasts, the medal race suddenly became a huge issue. I found myself taking interest in sports I’d never cared for: rhythm gymnastics, shot put, rowing. I wanted to know the odds and needed to see where we could edge China.

This acute and misdirected patriotism gradually waned, however, with the arrival of Usain Bolt. Watching him run, I couldn’t have cared less which nation he represented. A gold (or three) would go to Jamaica, not the United States or China, and so be it. Those races were about Bolt and Bolt only. We now know who the fastest man in the world is. (To think, at one point I thought it was Ricky Henderson.)

I loved watching these Olympics. Aside from the events, I appreciated that NBC’s coverage focused on China’s culture and just how much they cherished hosting these Games. You got the sense that its citizens were familiar with each athlete, and that they cheered and rejoiced each individual triumph.

Obviously, we live in a country where its government doesn’t delegate the path of its athletes - our constitution practically forbids it. Most Americans watch the Olympics because of an ideal, not because of a medal count. I love the fact that athletes I’ve never heard of will perform unprecedented feats in front of an international audience. If one of them happened to be an American, then I’d be proud; if they happened to be a foreigner, then I’d be congratulatory.

Here’s something to chew on in the aftermath of these Olympics: competition in sport can be an antidote for inhumane catastrophe. Relating this theory to European soccer, American novelist Paul Auster wrote:

“Passions among the spectators run high. They wave their country’s flag, they sing patriotic songs, they insult the supporters of the other team. Americans might look at these antics and think they’re all in good fun, but they’re not. They’re serious business. But at least the mock battles waged by the surrogate armies in short pants do not threaten to increase the population of widows and fatherless children…As long as countries square off against each other on the playing field, we will be able to count the casualties on the fingers of our two hands. A generation ago, they were tallied in the millions.”

I believe this mindset is similar to that of the Olympics. Competition that takes place in the Olympic arena can be viewed as a substitute for political or martial strife. As is witnessed in this article, countries will choose to go about this in different ways. China has a heavy-handed approach while the United States utilizes a free-market system; these are vastly different, but equally successful. Even in sports, these tactics are representative of these nations as a whole. Either way, we should be thankful that these “winners” are determined in athletics rather than on the battlefield.

Last night on “The Tonight Show,” Jay Leno interviewed American gymnastics phenom, Nastia Liukin, as well as one of my all-time favorite comedians, Norm MacDonald. Jay kept the questions relatively light and Nastia handled each one with poise and good humor. MacDonald, however, was absolutely hilarious as the first guest. (If anyone can find a video of his segment it would be greatly appreciated.) Norm spoke at length about the Olympics. I’m paraphrasing here:

“And did you get a load of those speed-walkers? Don’t you think they probably got ribbed by the sprinters back at the Village? Don’t you think they’d be like, ‘Hey Sam, I saw you out there in your race—quite a brisk stroll you got there, Sam.’”

“Yeah, and that Usain Bolt guy, good Lord. You know he ran like a 9.6 or something like that in the 100-meter? So, I went down to the track at UCLA to see what I could get. And Jay, you know, I’m quite embarrassed to say, but I finished at just under 35 minutes.”

Here’s Nastia’s interview. Around the 3:40 mark Norm has a great line about how Nastia was robbed of a gold medal on the uneven bars:

“No offense, but that sounds like a bunch of Commie gobbledygook to me.”

Classic.

…not the other way around.

FIBA (the governing body of international basketball) plans to extend its three-point line from 20’ 6” to 22’ 2” effective 2010. They’re also getting rid of the trapezoidal lane in an effort to standardize the game worldwide. The NCAA is extending its three point line from 19′ 9″ to 20′ 9″ starting this season. The NBA’s three-point line is 23’ 9” from the hoop.

I like the international line where it is. Doug Collins said during the Olympic broadcast that “too many players are able to shoot that shot” as a reason that it should be moved back. I say… who cares? I think most basketball purists agree that the international game (and the college game) is more fun to watch than the NBA game. I’m not talking about the talent of the players - I’m talking about how the game is played. Part of that has to do with the pressure that the three-point line puts on the defense. If a good portion of players can hit that shot, it forces more defenders to get out and guard those players. This, in turn, creates more spacing inside the arc and allows for more free-flowing, dynamic offense, which is good for the game.

Plus, the three-pointer makes the game more exciting. Underdogs have a better chance of pulling an upset, comebacks are easier, big scoring runs are more frequent and scores are higher. Aren’t these good things?

Then there’s the NBA’s shot from the side. It’s a different distance (22’) from the rest of the arc, which in and of itself is just silly. But at least once a game, a player will step out of bounds because he is trying to spot up behind the three-point line when he’s catching the ball. This is just a drag that slows the game down, and it would be virtually eliminated if the league moved the line in.

I’d rather see the NBA adopt the international 20’ 6” length than see FIBA extend its arc.

I know, it will never happen. People conform to David Stern and the NBA, not the other way around.

There’s a joke about Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back” in here somewhere.

It’s true, the two-time gold medalist will appear on “Dancing With The Stars” along with Warren Sapp and sprinter Maurice Greene.

A record 13 dancers will compete on the show. Included are the program’s youngest dancer ever — 18-year-old Cody Linley of the popular Disney Channel show “Hannah Montana”, and its oldest, 82-year-old actress Cloris Leachman.

Others contestants include singers Lance Bass and Toni Braxton, Emmy-winning soap actress Susan Lucci, reality-show participant Kim Kardashian, television actor Ted McGinley, chef Rocco DiSpirito, television personality/model Brooke Burke and stand-up comedian Jeffrey Ross.

Wow, Misty May and Kim Kardashian?!? Those are some serious derrieres.

Here is May-Treanor (left) in a bear-hug with Kerri Walsh…

And here’s Kardashian (a.k.a. Reggie Bush’s girlfriend)…

Big is definitely back.

Anyone who saw the opening and/or closing ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing knows that they were… well… simply amazing. I don’t care what people say about the fireworks being fake, and a ton of other stuff being CGI, it looked great, and was a real treat to watch. The next Summer Olympic Games will be held in London, England in 2012. Yahoo! Sports columnist Martin Rogers wrote a great piece on the high standards that were set by China, and how hard it’ll be for London to match them.

Any attempt by London to replicate the extraordinary exhibition staged by the Chinese capital would ultimately be doomed to abject failure.

The 2008 edition was the kind of Olympics that is only possible if you have the world’s biggest collection of humanity at your obedient disposal.

Few other countries have the kind of political control needed to order factories to temporarily shut down to reduce smog, or forbid half of all car owners from taking to the road on any given day.

It’ll be really interesting to see what London is able to pull off. However, we’re going to have to wait four years to find out.

The U.S. men’s basketball team accomplished its goal of winning a gold medal by defeating a feisty Spanish team, 118-107. I give credit to NBC for airing the game live even though it was on at 2:30 AM on the East Coast. It’s too bad that they didn’t plan to air it again later in the morning, because it was a great game.

With Kobe Bryant and LeBron James in foul trouble throughout the first half, the game was tight but Dwyane Wade came off the bench to score 21 points in the first two quarters to lead the Americans to a 69-61 halftime lead. Spain continued to fight back throughout the second half, eventually cutting the lead to two on a Rudy Fernandez long ball with 8:13 to play. It was gut-check time for the U.S.; they had allowed Spain to get back into the game with a combination of sketchy shot selection and poor defense and once again it looked like the Americans would be plagued by fractured play.

But down the stretch it was Kobe who took control, scoring eight points and dishing out a couple of assists over the next five minutes to build the lead to nine. Spain cut it to four with 2:25 to play, but Wade hit a clutch three to push the lead back to seven. Carlos Jiminez missed a wide-open three (after just knocking one down) that would have cut the lead to three with 1:33 to play, but Bryant hit a tough shot in the lane on the Americans’ next possession to effectively put the game out of reach.

Defense had been Team USA’s calling card throughout the Olympics, but save for a couple of key stops, they just didn’t have it tonight. Luckily, they were able to knock down their three-pointers (13/28, 46%), which is something that has hurt the U.S. in the past. Wade led all scorers with 27 points and had four steals. Bryant chipped in with 20, including those eight crucial points in the fourth quarter. LeBron James played a solid all-around game, posting 14 points, six rebounds, three assists and three steals.

Spain was led by Pau Gasol (22 points), Fernandez (21) and Juan Carlos Navarro (18). They were playing without Raptors’ point guard Jose Calderon, who was sidelined with a groin injury. (Fernandez joins the Portland Trailblazers next season and he looks like a star in the making. He’s just 23, stands 6′6″, and has a great jumper. He also handles the ball well and attacks the rim. He is starter-quality, but may come off the bench behind Jerryd Bayless and Brandon Roy.)

Hats off to Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski for putting together a team capable of winning the gold. For the most part, they set their egos aside and played together, which is necessary these days to have success at the Olympic level. Every player knew and played his role.

Now where does the program go from here? It will be interesting to see if USA Basketball pushes forward with the same philosophy or, with this success, if they get lulled into a false sense of security. I’m betting on the former, but you never know.

…assuming the U.S. men’s basketball team wins, of course. It turns out Kidd’s medal is already spoken for.

His name is Steve Wynn. He’s a billionaire. And his wife, Elaine, is getting Jason Kidd’s gold medal if Team USA wins one more game in China.

“No, it’s not a (gambling) marker or anything like that,” Kidd said. “She’s just a great friend and a really great person.”

“Last summer, we stayed at the Wynn (resort) for a lifetime, close to three weeks,” Kidd said. “We met at a banquet, we got to talking, and she really understands the game.

“I told her I’d make a deal with her, that if we won the gold medal, I’d give it to her. She thought I was kidding. But I told her I had one already, and the way they treated us at the Wynn, it was the least I could do.”

So I’m trying to figure out this “deal” that Kidd is talking about. Did he stay at the resort for free and the gold medal is his way of paying Mrs. Wynn back? Really? It’s either that or he paid for his stay and doesn’t get anything in return for giving her the gold medal. This is apparently the “least” he can do. Hmm.

I guess the lesson here is that if you treat Jason Kidd well, he’ll give you things… like gold medals.

The New York Post is reporting that Michael Phelps celebrated his historic performance at the Bejing Olympics by sucking face with Australian swimmer (and hottie) Stephanie Rice.

Phelps, fresh from shattering Mark Spitz’s 36-year-old record, was spotted Monday night in a hot make-out session with Down Under swimmer Stephanie Rice, a source tells The Post’s Clemente Lisi and Luke Dennehy. The pumped-up pair clinched and swapped spit at a celebratory bash outside the Olympic Village.

The Baltimore Bullet swooped in for the lip-lock with the 20-year-old brunette just weeks after she split from Aussie swimmer Eamon Sullivan. “All the swimmers are talking about it, and [Sullivan] is cut up about what happened,” the source said.

The day after the face-sucking frolics, Phelps and Rice cheekily posed together for Speedo - laughing and playfully groping each other as a photographer snapped them in their swimsuits. “I definitely admire him for his athletic ability and everything he’s achieved,” gushed Rice, who won three gold medals of her own. “I’m just really glad to be in the mix with that.”

In the mix, indeed.

Some are saying that Usain Bolt is having a better performance than Phelps at these Olympics, but I think this puts Phelps over the top.

A day after both the U.S. men’s and women’s 4×100m relay teams mishandled a baton exchange in their respective qualifying heats, the heavily favored Jamaican women’s 4×100m team fumbled its second hand off and failed to finish the race. Their miscue unfortunately affected the Great Britain team, which also failed to finish.

I don’t remember seeing this many baton drops in one Olympics. The theory is that a lack of practice and familiarity amongst the team members is the root cause. Given the difficulty of handing something off while running at a full sprint, practice would probably help.

Russia went on to win the gold medal.

After twelve long years, an American has finally won the Olympic decathlon. Bryan Clay won the ten-event competition in Beijing going away, outdistancing his closest opponent (Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus) by 240 points. He finished with 8,791 points and secured the victory by finishing the 1500-meters race.

Dan O’ Brien was the last U.S. athlete to win the Olympic decathlon, in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

Clay led the competition wire to wire, as he placed first or second in five of the ten events and third in two others.

Argentina figured to be one of the toughest tests for Team USA at these games, but the U.S. raced out to a 21-point lead in the early second quarter of the single-elimination semifinal. The first half was a tale of two quarters. The lead, coupled with an injury that knocked Manu Ginobili out of the game, made it easy for the U.S. to get complacent. Even without their star, Argentina is a good team and while the Americans were sleepwalking, the lead was cut to six just before the half.

The U.S. got its act together after a halftime tongue-lashing from Coach K, and won the game going away, 101-81. Carmelo Anthony led Team USA with 21 points, but it was a very balanced attack as seven Americans scored in double figures.

The U.S. moves on to face Spain in the gold medal game. Jose Calderon is iffy to play with a strained groin, and given the Americans’ dominance in the two teams’ first meeting, the Spaniards are really going to have to raise their game if they’re going to keep it close. The game is scheduled for 2:30 AM ET on Sunday morning, so check your local listings.