Week 41 Power Rankings

This was the week Jerry Buss remembered he was the owner of the Lakers . . .

1. Colorado Rockies: Look, Dodgers, at what thou hath wrought.

2. Tyrone Willingham: His current team, Washington, gave USC a scare the Trojans would have heeded with more care. His former teams, Stanford and Notre Dame, swept through SoCal last weekend to wipe out SoCal College Football As We Once Knew It. Behold the awesome power of The Three Degrees Of Tyrone Willingham.

3. Manny Ramirez: If A-Rod is soon going to be asking $30 million a season, how much is Ramirez worth? At least in October, when it counts?

4. David Ortiz: Ditto.

5. Alex Rodriguez: The Yankees won one more game this postseason than the Angels and the Dodgers. Is that the going rate for playoff victories around here -- $30 million per?

6. Jerry Buss: Now he says Kobe Bryant is not untouchable. Now he says there is no way to trade a Kobe-caliber star for equal value. A lot of Lakers fans wish Buss was saying this stuff while Shaq was still a Laker.

7. Kobe Bryant: Suppose he and A-Rod just changed cities. No other strings attached. Kobe becomes a Knick, A-Rod becomes a Dodger. Would either city be better off? Let’s discuss.

8. Those Reggie Bush / David Beckham commercials: If impossible is nothing, that must explain Bush’s victory total this season and Beckham’s playing time since August.

9. Hope Solo: After being dropped from the U.S. women’s soccer team for speaking her mind, Solo is re-instated to the roster. Before making this decision, did Coach Greg Ryan consult an attorney? Or the U.S. Constitution?

10. Tennis match-fixing: When people during the last 15 years said professional tennis needs fixing, this isn’t what we had in mind.

christine.daniels@latimes.com

Comments

[Joseph D'Hippolito]

Christine, here's the latest on the Solo controversy. She apologized again for her comments and did not dress for the game Saturday against Mexico. In fact, she sat at the end of the bench.

This is bleeping ridiculous. No other athete would be treated this way. To me, this suggests a culture of cliqueishness on the women's national team, where some players apparently are more equal than others. Solo did nothing wrong except speak her mind in an emotional moment and she's being shunned as if she sold team secrets to the Germans, Canadians, Brazilians, whoever.

The story isn't Solo. The story is a bunch of spoiled pseudo-professionals and their whining coach who have come to believe their own publicity and their own inherent sense of entitlement.

[goliathtrojan]

Hippo is correct! Solo should be leading our WNT from the onionbag, not from the end of the bench. Now that they've gotten rid of the coach, some of the prima donnas need to go too!