The US Women's Soccer team played a friendly against Brazil at the lyrically named Dick's Sporting Goods Park just outside Denver. Amy Rodriguez scored the only goal of the game in the 71st minute to get the US to their 10th win in a row and 6th shut-out of an opponent. The team is 20-0-1 in 2008 in their run-up to this summer's Olympics.

Rodriguez is one of two collegiate players selected for the Olympic team, and has scored 5 goals so far in the 17 national side games she's played in this year. She seems to be fitting in well with her fellow players, who in turn are adapting well to the system introduced by coach Pia Sundhage, and you've got to like their chances of going deep in Olympic competition.

Congratulations Amy, and Fight On to Beijing!

UPDATE: Here is the video from All Things Trojan!

Hot on the heels of a $42 million contract extension, Lofa Tatupu got pulled over in Kirkland WA and arrested for a suspected DUI. When he finally took a BAC, he blew in at nearly twice the legal limit. Tatupu was pulled over after a Kirkland police officer observed him driving too quickly in a 2006 Hyundia Accent (!).

Tatupu promptly apologized for being a dumbass.

Response from Seattle PI readers seems to fall into one of three camps:

1) Hang him! (a surprising number of people with Greek names choosing this one ;)

2) Everyone's entitled to one mistake, don't botch it again

3) What the hell was he doing driving a Hyundai? (It belongs to his girlfriend, FWIW.)

PI Columnist Jim Moore weighs in on the side of "There but for the grace of God go I" and apparently thinks, as do the Seattle management, that Tatupu will make amends.

I can't claim that there haven't been a couple of times when I drove but probably shouldn't have, but then I never blew a BAC at nearly twice the limit either. While this isn't murder or anything like it (not to invoke an infamous former player or anything), DUI's can have serious repercussions precisely because they involve such dangerous behavior.  Lofa Tatupu is lucky he didn't hurt anyone, and he would be well served to follow through on his promise to fly right from hereon. He brought that kind of discipline to working his way from Maine to USC for football; there's no reason he couldn't do it in order to do his part in keeping the metro-Seattle roadways that bit safer for everyone else.

Besides, with a $42 million contract in hand, he should be able to afford cab fare in the meantime.

A little change of pace: USC women's soccer forward Amy Rodriguez has been selected to the US Women's Olympic team and will be playing in Beijing this summer. Rodriguez, who was the MVP of the Final Four on USC's national championship team on the strength of a performance that included two goals against ucla in the semifinals, has had a good showing in the recent Peace Queen Cup*, scoring the only (and winning) goal against Brazil in group play as the US women's team moved on to beat Italy in the semi-finals and Canada in the finals.

Rodriguez is the first Trojan to play Olympic soccer for the US, and joins with Stephanie Cox of Portland College as the lone collegiate players on the team.

US Women's coach Pia Sundhage selected Rodriguez on the strength of her recent form: "The way she's been playing and actually running at people has been very good."

This is fantastic news: the US is not short on talented women soccer players, so to be selected for the national side for the Olympics on the merits is a real vote of confidence - Fight On Amy! And best of luck in Beijing.

*In case you were wondering, the Peace Queen Cup is an eight nation tournament organized by the Unification Churh (of the Reverend Moon fame) which is intended to facilitate cultural exchanges and promote world peace... it also has a $200,000 prize to the winning team, in case fostering peace isn't incentive enough.

The LA Times today published a story with the highlights of Rick Neuheisel's contract with ucla. There are a variety of performance incentives and perks, all of which seem well chosen, and then this :

Neuheisel will not be eligible for performance bonuses if the program is put on NCAA probation and must return previous bonuses if the team is "subsequently sanctioned for NCAA violations in which coach was directly involved, that coach facilitated, condoned, or ignored about coach knew or reasonably should have known."

You know, bruins often say that USC fans should just drop the guff about Sam Gilbert - it was a long time ago, he wasn't doing anything untoward by the standards of the time, etc., etc. I think they may be on to something.

More specifically, I think that ucla has just created an enormous incentive for shenanigans by Trojans to interfere with Neuheisel's various bonuses. After all, if we're as unprincipled and corrupt as certain members of the ucla community would have others believe, then we must have some expertise in this area - right?

So if you've got any creative ideas - and paying for player's parents' rent etc., is off the table, it's too obvious - drop them in the comments*.

*Just in case the no-humor brigade is reading this, we are not suggesting that anyone actually commit any NCAA violations with ucla student athletes. That would be wrong, and we do not countenance any such thing or accept any liability for the actions of people who are no more subtle than Lake or Guillory.

Due to the ruckus about the alleged payments to OJ Mayo, following in the wake of Reggie Bush and his shenanigans, I've been giving some thought to what kinds of activities might be required to do a better job of preventing issues with agents or other interested parties making payments to players against NCAA rules.

It seems to me that there are two ways to look at this, which both require focusing on the demand side. The challenge in a demand-side focus, as will become clear, is the degree to which surveillance and enforcement are possible, and meaningful. The first dimension that I considered was Athlete Demand, and some of the issue associated with enforcement against Athlete Demand prompted me to consider Agent Demand.

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After due consideration, the Athletic Department has developed its opening gambit for addressing the Mayo situation: play dumb .

School officials said the NCAA might speak with the school this week, according to the report, and USC is preparing its initial defense, including telling the NCAA that it previously had banned the promoter, Rodney Guillory, from receiving tickets to Trojans games.

"Right now, we're just trying to weather the storm," a USC official said in the Daily News report.

According to the Daily News, however, Guillory was seen often at the USC basketball offices, around the locker room, and at pickup games at the Galen Center, where Mayo played last summer.

Paragon and I have been emailing back and forth about this (he's stuck in a training class), because we both had the same reaction: this really couldn't be any more feeble.

Intellectually speaking, I'd describe the gambit described above as the equivalent of playing dead in front of a bear, except that playing dead in front of a bear is a plan with a reasonable chance of success.

Even without the benefit of a law degree or a background in NCAA compliance, I'm seeing a couple of flaws in this plan. Relying on the narrowest possible reading of what constitutes "controlling" Guillory, in combination with plausible stories that show your version of events is a bit limited in scope, doesn't seem like a recipe for success.

Last time I checked, there are a fair few lawyers among the ranks of USC alumni. Surely someone from the Athletic Department could ask for a little free help on this?

Heck, despite the aforementioned lack of relevant experience, I'll chip in with five alternative approaches off the top of my head:

1. Stonewall: "Prove we failed. Good luck documenting that!"
2. Pre-empt: "We blew it, here's our remedial plan"
3. Pre-empt & Self-flaggelate: "We blew it, here's our remedial plan, and here's the names of the heads that are going to roll"
4. Year Zero: "Basketball program? What basketball program? Also, we've decided to make men's soccer a proper team!"
5. Horsetrading: "You can have the basketball program if you let us keep football intact."

Any other bright ideas are welcomed in the comments.

I haven't got the energy to write a complete recap; suffice to say that the lawyers for Reggie Bush and Lloyd Lake are squabbling over deposition dates. Apparently the judge has issued a warning which is the legal equivalent of my grandfather's standard warning: "You two need your heads knocked together if you don't stop it." (Not an idle threat.)

This is the kind of general douche-baggery that I expect to see in say a political party primary, perhaps a West Virginia Douche-off ? Certainly from the standpoint of wanting this nonsense over Bush to be resolved one war or another, this is another pathetic episode.

Incidentally, was there some kind of requirement of alliterative names to be a principal in the New Era start up? Lloyd Lake, Michael Michaels - suitable, I suppose, for a Mickey Mouse operation, although the alliteration falls apart when you get to Reggie "Scrooge McDuck" Bush swimming in his coin.

Reggie Bush

Scrooge McDuck

Incidentally, if you want more pictures of Scrooge McDuck like the fine example above, go to Allposters.com .

As some of you will have noticed, Scott Wolf has a little running joke of calling Pete Carroll "Caesar." As it turns out, this is more accurate than Wolf might have imagined. The BBC reported this week that a bust of Caesar was found in France in the River Rhone, prompting speculation that it was pitched by someone in the immediate aftermath of Caesar's assassination.

Take a look at the pictures after the jump and decide if you see the same similarity that I do:

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(Since this is not a picture post, you'll have to imagine me typing with clenched teeth...)

The ucla women's water polo team beat USC yesterday, 6 -3, to win their fourth National Championship in a row, and the 101st for ucla. By any measure, that's an incredible record of success, and while I'd rather they'd beaten someone else to achieve it, congratulations are very much in order.

Incidentally, this makes the women's water polo team the third bruin team to complete a four-peat: the men's basketball team did it in the wild-west days of the late 60s and early 70s, and the men's volleyball team in the early 80s. Frankly, given the level of sustained physical performance and outright ass-kicking required for water polo, I think this bruins team should probably vault over the men's volleyball team in the athletic pantheon of Westwood High.

All snark aside, though, again: congratulations to the Bruins Womens Water Polo team, and please, feel free to take next year off in celebration.

I had a series of reactions when I watched this video:

1. This is exactly why I keep my shirt on in public spaces
2. His ability to keep the ladies behind him from getting some crack is to be applauded
3. At least - given the song the band was playing - he wasn't wearing a red codpiece

I could have lived without the nipple rubbing though.