I just returned from a two week vacation on the coast of Maine. I don't think anyone there plays football or basketball, but they are definitely into lobstering and sailing. While I was away the USADA finally got Lance Armstrong to surrender to their "I don't care if we can't prove you used drugs" charges of drug use and will strip him of his titles at the Tour de France.
I bring this up on FTRS because we went through a very similar episode two years ago when the NCAA accused us of "tampering" with their investigation of two players supposedly receiving gifts they should not have gotten. At the time, our AD and his staff said, "Hey, we did not do it. What makes you think we did?" The NCAA said it doesn't matter what you say, because we don't have to have proof.
That is pretty much what is happening to Lance. I am not sure what the next move will be in this case, but I bet Lance and his attorneys are not done yet. The judge in this case pretty much said Lance had to go through the arbitration process before he could win in court, so that may be the course Lance has chosen.
We appealed to the NCAA and found that appealing to the body you are appealing against is pretty much fruitless. Lance found the same to be true with the USADA. If you are interested in reading more about this, try this and this in today's Washington Post.
Here is the key phrase from Tracee Hamilton's column:
"I don’t know if Armstrong did the things he’s accused of doing, and neither do you. I don’t know if these witnesses are telling the truth, and neither do you. I do know two things: First, he passed all his tests. And second, if he had failed a drug test, and brought in 10 people to testify that they were with him every minute of every day leading up to the test and he never ingested anything, never injected anything, never doped his blood, would we be having this debate today? No, because he would have failed a drug test, and all the testimony in the world wouldn’t matter."