Pardon the Interruption, or "PTI," is the best show on television. If I've said that once over the past 6 months, I've said it a thousand times. For those of you not familiar with the show, it runs on ESPN and is a half-hour long daily run-down of news from the sporting world. The show's distinguishing characteristic is a topic list and a countdown-clock on the right-hand side of the screen, allowing the viewer to see both the upcoming topics and the amount of time remaining on the current topic. Tony and Mike, the regular hosts, are fantastic, which makes it a good show, but it's the addition of the topic and clock features that earn this show the title "Best Show on TV" - See, using a TiVo, you can instantly target the topics you care about and skip over the topics that you don't using the 30-second-skip and 8-second-replay buttons.

For the last 2 weeks Tony and/or Mike have been on vacation, and various guest hosts have tried to filled their shoes, which has only demonstrated how vital each of them is to the show. Seriously, topic list and clock notwithstanding, the show SUCKS when either of them is M.I.A.

One of yesterday's guest hosts was a columnist from St. Louis. Or was it Detroit? I'm sorry, I don't recall his name. However, he did make a pretty bold (and asinine) assertion. Paraphrased, it went something like,

Lance Armstrong isn't a "great" athlete, because he has no real skill. All he does is ride a bike, which anyone can do. It doesn't take superior skill to ride a bike, not in the way that it takes superior skill to play basketball or golf. Therefore, since Lance only does something that everyone can do, Lance isn't a great athlete.

I'm not going to get into the details of just how silly I think that statement is - suffice it to say, I think Lance Armstrong is one of the greatest athletes alive. Is he a Michael Jordan or a Wayne Gretzsky? I think so. What do you think?

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