Michael Phelps (Getty)LONDON – Welcome, swimming fans, to this royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this blessed plot, this earth, this pool, this England.

We are preparing for a competition that could be – nay, should be – Shakespearean in scope and grandeur. Drama, tragedy and comedy all shall have their place at The Globe – pardon me, the Aquatics Center – starting Saturday.

The plot lines taking shape:

"Can one desire too much of a good thing?" – from “As You Like It”

This is the query facing Michael Phelps. Already a winner of a record 14 gold medals and 16 total Olympic medals, Phelps is back for his final act as a swimmer. Can he summon a final flourish of greatness on his way to retirement? Can he reach back and relocate the dominance of Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008?

To train or not to train, that was the question tormenting Phelps for more than a year after his epic, eight-gold performance in Beijing. For a long time, the answer was not to train. That left him far behind

Read More »from Shakespearean drama to play out in London pool

Time was you knew the sketchy neighborhoods in college athletics.

The Southeastern Conference and the old Southwest Conference – basically the states of Texas and Oklahoma – were outlaw territory. Schools went on an off probation like workers changing shifts at a power plant. According to folklore, gossip and the NCAA Committee on Infractions, there were two kinds of programs in those leagues at those times: those that were caught cheating and those that hadn't been caught yet.

The Big Ten can put on quite a perp walk with Jerry Sandusky, but so can other leagues. (NFP)Today, the scofflaw geography has changed. The Big Ten can put on quite a perp walk, as can the Atlantic Coast Conference. Out in the Pac-12, Oregon may replace USC in the NCAA pokey. Before Syracuse exits the Big East for the ACC, it likely will have to face NCAA justice for failures of its drug-testing policy in regard to men's basketball. And we already know about Connecticut basketball.

It's suddenly a lot harder for one power league to claim moral superiority over another.

According to the NCAA

Read More »from Scandal is all around college athletics

INDIANAPOLIS – Mark Emmert kicked ass and took names Monday. He also took bowl games, scholarships, tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of victories and any last illusion of purity away from Penn State.

Mark Emmert leveled unprecedented penalties against Penn State. (Getty Images)After atomizing a program that used to operate under the self-congratulatory motto of "Success With Honor," the man who had just swung the biggest hammer in NCAA presidential history sat down with Yahoo! Sports for an exclusive interview in the association's headquarters. He said Penn State could have been hit harder.

Emmert told Y! Sports that a multi-year suspension of the football program was "vigorously discussed" with members of the Division I Board of Directors. Ultimately, Penn State's willingness to take its medicine – commissioning, accepting and making public the damaging Freeh Commission report, and accepting massive NCAA penalties without due process – helped save the school from a complete shutdown of football for a season or longer, Emmert said.

"The resolve

Read More »from NCAA's Mark Emmert establishes with Penn State sanctions that he's in charge like no one else

INDIANAPOLIS – The NCAA took unprecedented actions against Penn State on Monday in response to the Jerry Sandusky child sexual molestation scandal, fining the school $60 million, cutting scholarships for four years, imposing a four-year postseason ban and vacating all wins from 1998-2011.

Vacating the wins means the late Joe Paterno no longer is the winningest major college football coach in history.

The actions were unprecedented both for their severity and how they unfolded. The normal NCAA enforcement process did not take place. Instead, NCAA president Mark Emmert gained approval from the board of directors for the penalties. The board is made up of 22 college presidents and chancellors. 

Edward J. Ray, the NCAA executive committee chairman and president of Oregon State, said, "Not only does the NCAA have the authority to act in this case, we also have the responsibility."

Ray cited the Sandusky criminal investigation and the recently released Freeh Commission report as

Read More »from Penn State is fined $60 million, banned from postseason for four years and loses scholarships

The figurative deconstruction of Penn State football continued Sunday morning, when workers unbolted the Joe Paterno statue from outside of Beaver Stadium and removed it from the premises. Good riddance.

The more substantive deconstruction of Penn State football will come Monday morning, via NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. Good luck.

At 9 a.m. ET, NCAA president Mark Emmert will announce penalties levied against Penn State in relation to the Jerry Sandusky child molestation crimes and the school's unwillingness to do anything to stop it. This will be a defining moment for the future of Penn State football, and for the NCAA itself.Joe Paterno statue at Penn State was removed Sunday. (AP)

Emmert seems determined to go where no NCAA president has gone before. Not only is he willing and apparently anxious to involve his organization in a situation that does not fit neatly into NCAA enforcement bylaws, but he also seems willing to put on the Roger Goodell cowboy hat and sheriff's badge, making himself the chief arbiter of justice.

To

Read More »from Penn State sanctions were hastily reached by NCAA's Mark Emmert and are anybody's guess

Penn State made a football coach bigger than the school itself, accountable to no person and no moral imperative, and now we see the devastating consequences.

North Carolina sold its esteemed academic soul for the pursuit of greater athletic glory, and now we see a proud institution embarrassed and divided.

Yet amid these raw cautionary tales about the dangers of misplaced priority on college campuses, along comes this news item: Oregon is dumping $68 million of Nike kingpin Phil Knight's money into a new "football operations center." Among the accoutrements you get for $68 mil, the (Eugene) Register-Guard reported, is a private hot tub and steam room for the coaches, "each with a waterproofed video center … so they can watch games while taking a soak."

As long as Chip Kelly keeps winning Pac 12 titles, nothing else seems to matter. (Getty Images)

While taking a soak in that absolutely necessary hot tub, I suppose coach Chip Kelly could cue up the largely useless video his school paid $25,000 for from "talent scout" Will Lyles, who was closely tied to Ducks running backs

Read More »from It's time for schools to seize control of athletic programs, and Penn State should lead the way

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Bubba Cunningham could be considered an athletic Utopian, or at least a guy with big ambitions. Cunningham, the first-year athletic director at North Carolina, looks at his department and sees the potential to be the East Coast Stanford.

Stanford is the collegiate gold standard: It has won the Director's Cup as the nation's top overall athletic department 18 consecutive years while maintaining academic excellence.

"They've been able to play top 10 football, win the Director's Cup and have great students who graduate," Cunningham told Yahoo! Sports last week in his spacious office. "We're in the top 10 in the Director's Cup, we're in the top 25 in U.S. News & World Report [rankings of American universities]. I don't think being a good athlete and a being good student is mutually exclusive. Now, I think it's hard – it's hard to do it and to find that select group of students who are willing to do it. But it can be done."

For an athletic director at North

Read More »from North Carolina's new athletic director out to clean up program mired in growing academic scandal

For children of the 1970s, there were two iconic posters that could be found in American bedrooms.

Mark Spitz shows off the seven medals he won at the 1972 Games. (Getty Images) One was of Farrah Fawcett, the "Charlie's Angels" heartthrob. The other was a swimmer, of all things.

It was Mark Spitz – hands on hips, smile wide, mustache thick, wearing nothing but a stars-and-stripes Speedo and seven gold medals around his neck.

No Olympian had ever won more golds at a single games than Spitz did in Munich in 1972. That was the great highlight in an Olympics otherwise darkened by murder and controversy.

Spitz's seven gold medals remained the record – the literal gold standard – until Michael Phelps did him one better in 2008. Phelps' pursuit of what Spitz accomplished became the central storyline in Beijing, riveting the nation.

But while Phelps got the record, he doesn't have a poster that speaks to an entire generation.

"My older sister was a swimmer, and I remember his poster being in her bedroom," said 1984 Olympian and current NBC commentator Rowdy

Read More »from Spitz's '72 triumph: part coronation, part redemption