In no way do I condone the actions of Elizabeth Lambert, the University of New Mexico soccer player who was caught on video being violent toward BYU players during a Mountain West Conference tournament game.

Lambert nearly yanked a woman’s ponytail right out of her scalp, punched one girl in the back, another one in the head and did some over-the-top tackling in one game. She was obviously playing on tilt and should’ve been red-carded numerous times or removed from the game by her coach. Television cameras started watching her every move because she was that out of control. It was horrible.

But her Internet fame—videos of her acts had more than a million views on YouTube—came with jokes about women’s sports and the intensity that the BYU and New Mexico players were showing. That’s where I really shake my head.

ESPN.com’s Graham Hays said it best--women's sports aren't catfights. They're competitive. And it’s about time mainstream America accepts the fact that our female athletes aren’t worried about breaking a nail.

I was surprised by some people’s reaction, but perhaps my perspective is unique. My wife played Division I soccer, and I went to all of her games for four straight years. Big-time women's college soccer is a rough sport. Players are athletic, big, fast—and most of all, physical.

My wife was one of the smaller players out there, and she had to compensate by being tougher. She gruesomely broke her elbow in high school and still has problems with it, but kept playing. In college, she got a black eye in practice and a concussion during a game. She had trouble walking between many of her matches because of ankle and shin injuries caused by players kicking the daylights out of her while battling for the ball. I went to visit her at her apartment one day and she had an air cast on her right foot—and she played a full game two days later.

Funny thing is, my wife was relatively injury-free compared to some of her college teammates. One of them badly broke her leg in a game, another one tore up her ankle. Pretty much all of them spent their college days in a training room getting ice baths. Offseason knee surgeries were common.

After watching the Lambert video, I concluded that a red card should have been issued in four of the incidents. I then showed the video to my wife. She shrugged her shoulders at a couple of the tackles, acknowledged that the ponytail yank and the face punch should’ve been a red card, then deadpanned “they’re making too big a deal out of it.”

Probably so. While I view Lambert’s actions a little more negatively than my wife does, we agreed on this—if this was a men’s soccer game between BYU and New Mexico, the actions of one out-of-control defender playing rough with opponents wouldn’t have generated one million views on YouTube. It probably wouldn't have cracked 100,000.

Why do you think that is?

Maybe someday, we’ll figure out that female athletes are deeply invested in their sport, and they want to win just as bad as the boys do. Maybe someday, we’ll realize that competitiveness brings out physical play, and physical play can light a short fuse and unfortunate incidents will occur in the heat of battle--just like the boys.

And just maybe, we’ll get to a point where we're OK with the girls playing hard—and it won't be worthy of one million views on YouTube.

A new twist to the Major League Baseball All-Star Game was announced recently: A Charity 5K that will take place two days before the big game in St. Louis.

Here is a press release with a little more information on the run, including some former baseball greats participating in the festivities (courtesy of Major League Baseball):

LOU BROCK, ROLLIE FINGERS AND VINCE COLEMAN TO APPEAR AT ALL-STAR CHARITY 5K & FUN RUN

Hall of Famer Lou Brock will be the official starter with Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers and former Cardinal Vince Coleman handing out medals and congratulating fans as they cross the finish line of the first-ever All-Star Charity 5K & Fun Run presented by Sports Authority and Nike, which will take place on Sunday, July 12. This event is part of the 2009 MLB All-Star Summer program dedicated to charitable initiatives and giving back to the community. All race related net proceeds will be donated equally to three charities supporting cancer research and education--the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Stand Up To Cancer and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Hall of Famer Lou Brock is recognized as one of the most talented and gifted baserunners in Major League history. Brock, who had 938 career stolen bases, ranks second all-time in stolen bases and each year, the National League’s leader in stolen bases is presented with the Lou Brock Award. Rollie Fingers helped lead the way in defining the role of the modern day closer. Over his 17-year Major League career with the Oakland Athletics, the San Diego Padres and the Milwaukee Brewers, Fingers was selected to seven All-Star Games and appeared in 16 World Series games, fashioning a 1.35 ERA and collecting six saves in the Fall Classic. Vince Coleman was a two-time National League All-Star while a member of the St. Louis Cardinals. Known for his speed on the basepaths, Coleman set numerous stolen base records. In his N.L. Rookie of the Year Award-winning season in 1985, Coleman stole 110 bases, setting a single-season stolen base record for a rookie.

Participants will run and walk on a baseball-themed course featuring appearances by MLB legends and mascots. All finishers will receive a commemorative All-Star medal and t-shirt. The course will begin at Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals and host of the 2009 MLB All-Star Game, and will finish at America’s Center, home of Major League Baseball All-Star FanFest. The 5K portion of the event, which will be an officially timed event, will begin at 7:30 a.m. CT with the family-friendly 1.1 mile Fun Run starting at 8:00 a.m. CT. Sign up by July 2 and receive a discounted price of $30 (adult) and $25 (children 12 and under) for the 5K and $20 (adult) and $15 (children 12 and under) for the Fun Run. Space is limited so participants are encouraged to sign up early. Registration and event information is available at www.allstargame.com. Information is also available at all nine St. Louis area Sports Authority locations.

The All-Star Charity 5K and Fun Run presented by Sports Authority and Nike will be joining an All-Star Summer event line-up that focuses on giving back to the community including the MLB All-Star Charity Concert benefiting Stand Up to Cancer; People “All-Stars Among Us,” a national campaign with PEOPLE Magazine that will recognize individuals who have served their communities in extraordinary ways; and in-stadium events highlighted by Gatorade All-Star Workout Day in which nearly $5 million will be donated to local and national charities through MLB Charities and Cardinals Care. The charity and community service initiatives, which will be themed “Going Beyond,” will be the most extensive in Major League Baseball All-Star history and will complement the celebration of history and traditions of Baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Recruits cannot legally accept money to be lured toward a school. So universities looking for an edge take donor money, pour it into facilities and other whistles, and invite recruits to come enjoy their playground for 4-5 years. And you know what? It works.

It's one way of promising incoming players that they will be spoiled, even if it's not in direct compensation outside of a scholarship. More and more, recruits visit campuses and factor in how nice the facilities are as one of the reasons for committing. The beauty of their environment plays more of a role than you might think, especially at the higher levels.

Here's one example on the baseball front. In this article in the LSU student newspaper, Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco explains that a nice stadium on campus is huge for recruiting. Interestingly enough, having nice stadiums throughout the SEC makes a difference, too. "When a kid is choosing to go play baseball, is he gonna go to Billings, Montana, and play in an old, beat-up minor league park, or is he gonna go to the Southeastern Conference where it is not just Ole Miss or LSU, but there are 12 nice stadiums?" Bianco told the paper.

Strange. Your heated rival could help you land the recruits needed to beat them.

There's also the other side of the coin. I played baseball at a big-city junior college several years ago. My high school field was in much better shape than the juco digs. Our "clubhouse" in college was a little storage closet next to the dugout, and it was broken into about six times in the year I was there (one good shoulder into the door would snap the lock in half). Our "locker room" was the men's room of the community recreation center at the other side of the parking lot (it had two showers!)

Needless to say, facilities had little to do with my decision. But if a coach could offer me a clubhouse like this one at the University of Kansas, which opened this year? Yeah, it would probably be icing on the cake. I would stop sending my highlight video out and ask the coach where I need to sign.

You want to think that student-athletes choose a school because of academic opportunities, playing time and player-coach relationships. In a lot of cases, they do.

But this is one way big schools can throw their money around and create an edge. They call it the "arms race" in college athletics, and whether it's backed by good intentions or not, recruits are loving it.

After all, if you can't be compensated as an amateur, you might as well be pampered.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, all the craze was to build the most boring sports stadiums on earth: The cookie cutters (the P.C. term was "multi-purpose"), complete with rock-hard artificial turf, boring dimensions for baseball and bad seats for football. But, since two franchises could play in one venue, it was half the price and thus twice as appealing.

St. Louis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Anaheim, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Seattle, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, San Francisco, New York, Oakland, San Diego and Miami have all had multi-purpose stadiums built in that era that shared baseball and football. What resulted were stadiums that were so-so for football and awful for baseball.

Since then, the economic boom of sports has destroyed the cookie cutter. Of all those cities mentioned above, only six have those same stadiums still in use. Oakland, Minneapolis and Miami are building new baseball stadiums. San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium and San Francisco's Candlestick Park (or whatever they call it these days) is football-only now. And when the L.A. Rams left town, Anaheim's stadium was renovated to be baseball-only.

Well, almost. Angel Stadium actually played host to the CIF-Southern Section football championships in December, squeezing a full football field over the infield and left field of the Orange County venue. On one play, Long Beach Poly quarterback

Morgan Fennel

Some images from that final game, a clash of the unbeatens won by Long Beach Poly over a gritty Tesoro team, are below:

Apologies for the left-field foul pole getting in the way a couple of times. Playing football at a baseball stadium always leads to a few quirks. Thankfully, most cities are starting to correct that misjudgement--at least at the professional level.

It is my great pleasure to finish this blog with a picture of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Imploding. May all the cookie cutters eventually have the same finish.

Hundreds of thousands of young girls play soccer every day on patches of grass across the United States. A generation ago, they dreamed of being just like

Mia Hamm

Now they can dream even bigger--of being a professional soccer player.

The WPS will start in April of 2009, and teams are currently gobbling up the best players to start constructing a winner.

First was the allocation of the U.S. national team players, which took place in September. Then there was the international draft a short time later. The four-round general draft took place on Oct. 6 and was open to international and domestic players. The drafting will conclude in January with a post-Combine draft that expects to round out the rosters.

The WPS is calculating momentum that will keep it around for the long haul. It just recently signed a multi-year deal with Fox Soccer Channel for television rights. Seven markets are slated to have teams for 2009 (Bay Area, New York/New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.), and two more (Atlanta and Philadelphia) will join in 2010. More expansion is expected, perhaps in Dallas.

And, even more importantly, they have a model to learn from. The WUSA was forced to suspend operations in 2003, and committees were immediately formed to determine the best way to re-launch women's professional soccer in the U.S.

This is their answer. The staying power of WPS remains to be seen, but its efforts will trickle down immediately. After all, it is another chance to inspire thousands of athletic girls wanting to dream just like the boys do.