After nearly five hours of testimony that will ultimately lead nowhere, the congressional hearings are finished. We know you hate it when politics enter the sports world, but it was impossible to ignore - the Republicans embarrassingly backed Roger Clemens - one woman pulled out four large photos, didn’t have the exact dates they were taken, and said something to the effect of, ‘Roger, you look the same in all of these’ - and that was her defense. He’s nothing like Barry Bonds! It was a colossal letdown. The Democrats were mostly in favor of Rocket’s trainer, Brian McNamee, and one even called Clemens a liar (repeatedly). But the endgame is that nobody’s going to court to fight this because you can’t nail Clemens for perjury unless there is a smoking gun, and that doesn’t exist.

We’re not going to plunge deep into this mess - Jason Kidd just got traded to the Mavericks, can’t wait to get to that blockbuster - but our opinion is that we saw nothing today to change our stance - Clemens, that evasive prick, is guilty. The only player in all of this who came off perhaps worse than Clemens is ESPN’s legal analyst Roger Cossack. How pro-Clemens was that guy? Does he plan on riding the teacups with Roger at ESPN the Weekend at the end of this month? He actually said (paraphrasing here, but the video will probably be on ESPN later): ‘if you throw out what Andy Pettitte said, who are you going to believe, McNamee or Clemens?’ It was a disturbing display, mostly because: HOW CAN YOU DISCOUNT WHAT PETTITTE SAID? (We should add that Karl Ravech held it down in the studio quite well, and Steve Phillips actually had his first halfway decent performance - possibly ever). Cossack seems to be the only person we’ve read/heard so far who thinks McNamee is the liar.

We just started to sift through all this SI coverage, and it is rather comprehensive, so you should probably check it out.