US Women Have Stolen the Show from Men in Athens
Performance by Women Teams Have Overshadowed Men at Olympics
By Jim Armstrong, AOL Exclusive

In case you haven't noticed, but I know you have, the Olympics has turned into one big chick flick.
 
Girls rule, boys drool in Athens. Oh, sure, the U.S. men have accounted for their fair share of medals. Michael Phelps, for instance. He won eight, six gold, thus ensuring himself a lifetime pass to Letterman and Leno. But more and more, the Olympics are about the fairer sex. I'd say the gentler sex, too, but some of those U.S. weightlifting mamas might beat the snot out of me.
 
Not that it's any surprise, of course. The Olympics is like every other sporting event in this 21st century of ours. It's as healthy as its TV ratings. And why have we been tuning into the Athens Games? Simple. The babes.
 
I mean, what's more fun to watch, a pair of hairy Greco Roman wrestlers giving each other cauliflower ears, or a couple of bronze-bodied beach-volleyball starlets frolicking in the sand? Not that it made for five-star viewing, but those bikinis of theirs? I've seen belly-button lint with more material.
 
Our babelicious beach-volleyball duo, including the aptly-named Misty May, brought home the gold. Good thing, because the U.S. men wound up with sand in their faces. And to think, it's our sport. Some guy made it up one day, presumably while sitting in traffic on the 405 outside L.A. It's not just beach volleyball. The women have carried Team USA on several fronts. The U.S. baseball team wasn't even good enough to send a team to Greece. That left it up to the U.S. softball team to save face for Uncle Sam in the bats-and-balls department.
 
Sure enough, the women turned up golden. Now if they could just break a sweat. It wasn't until the final inning of the gold-medal game that Team USA even allowed a run. Lisa Fernandez is the best softball player on the planet, but Crystl Bustos may be the best hitter. She hit a home run in the gold-medal game that just landed on the north coast of Crete.
 
Moving on, there's the U.S. women's basketball team. Their victory margins have rivaled the gross national product of several third-world countries. The U.S. men? They beat Angola the other day. Oh, and did I mention they beat Angola the other day?
 
And how about soccer? The U.S. men's team, like the baseball team, is nowhere to be found in Athens. I don't follow soccer that closely, but I heard we lost by the 10-run rule in the qualifying tournament. Maybe 2008 will be the U.S. men's year. Right. As long as Brazil and a bunch of other soccer factories sink into the nearest ocean.
 
The U.S. women's soccer team. Now there's a ballclub worthy of the stars and stripes. I must confess, I had never heard of Justin Gatlin before he won the gold at 100 meters. But I've heard of several members of the U.S. women's soccer team. Fact is, with Marion Jones living in the shadow of the BALCO scandal, Mia Hamm is the most popular U.S. Olympian, period.
 
I could go on and on. The point is, U.S. women dominate at the Olympics the way U.S. men used to. How can this be? It's called Title IX, bubba. That's the difference between this generation of women and previous ones. It didn't just force colleges to fund women's programs. It empowered little girls, daring them to dream about things once reserved for little boys. No? Then try finding a teenage girl to baby sit some weekday night. Not gonna happen, Sparky. Today's teenage girls are off running or shooting three-pointers. They don't want to marry the quarterback; they want to bench press him.
 
What, you think I'm kidding? There's a 17-year-old girl who lives across the street with thighs that make Serena Williams' look like Slim Jims. Her body fat is lower than Bluto's grade point. She's got more scholarship offers than Allen Iverson has tattoos, not to mention bigger biceps than he has.
 
All of which brings me to a story, courtesy of a Denver Post reporter at the Athens Games. Seems a bunch of Australian laptop lizards were huddled around a rugby game the other day, whereupon one of the blokes blurted out that ''American football is for girls!'' Nah. Football is for wimps, not girls.