Rovell's apology:

I said that Keflezighi's win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn't as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn't account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi's running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn't deserve to be called American.

All I was saying was that we should celebrate an American marathon champion who has completely been brought up through the American system.

This is where, I must admit, my critics made their best point. It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the "ringer" I accused him of being. Meb didn't deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

That's all well and good, but the idea at the heart of Rovell's first story — the mystique of the African marathoner — isn't going away anytime soon. Rovell was far from the only offender, as The New York Times' Gina Kolata notes. Kolata, in addressing the question of whether Keflezighi is sufficiently American, alludes to the widely held notion that an African runner represents some kind of a winning genetic bingo card. This is true to the extent that every great athlete is, in one way or another, a winning genetic bingo card. For whatever reason, though, whenever a big marathon rolls around, we pretend that the Africans are winning less because their abilities were forged at some happy intersection of culture and circumstance and geological phenomena and more because their abilities derive from some super-special nucleic juju that no one else has. (Rovell wisely avoids this minefield only to bumble into another. He thinks that Africans run faster because they're really poor.)

Keflezighi's victory has renewed what the New York Times judiciously calls a "debate." It's not a debate. It's science and common sense on one side and on the other a handful of grumpy people who've decided that the genetic advantages that may or may not sort themselves according to race somehow matter more than the countless other genetic advantages all world-class athletes necessarily possess.

What I Got Wrong About Keflezighi [CNBC]
To Some, Winner Is Not American Enough [The New York Times]
EARLIER: American Who Won NYC Marathon Isn't American Enough For Some People

CNBC's Darren Rovell confesses that he's not feeling the slightest bit patriotic today. He writes:

Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he's not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies.

[...]

Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi's country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

That's right. An American by Scantron. Meb can run around with Old Glory all he wants. Won't change the fact he was born not just in Africa, but in an African country so damn un-American we made Ethiopia bomb the crap out of it for us. So, no, Rovell will not be waving the flag today, thank you very much. He's waiting for an American to win this goddamn race. Someone who really represents these United States of ours. Maybe someone more like that fellow who won way back in 1982, the last time an American broke the tape in New York. Now there was a real American. Guy by the name of Alberto Salazar.

Who was born in Havana.

Marathon's Headline Win Is Empty [CNBC]
Technically, An American Won The NYC Marathon...Kinda [SB Nation]

Darren Rovell, formerly of ESPN and now at CNBC, wrote a story last week questioning whether WWE shareholders could have an action against the company now that it is pretending that owner Vince McMahon was "killed" in a car bomb last week. (Apparently, there's some sort of storyline involving McMahon and a blown up limo and ... jeez, we get tired just typing this.) When he emailed the company for comment, they accused Rovell of being a suspect.

As far as speculation as to who may have committed this heinous act against "Mr. McMahon," the WWE has not ruled out any suspects, including CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell. The WWE would like to thank CNBC for its concern over the "Mr. McMahon" mystery and we would like to remind your viewers to continue to tune into WWE's Monday Night RAW, cable's top rated program on USA Network (a division of NBCU), to keep abreast of the latest developments in this ongoing situation.

We are so tired of sports business reporters assassinating fictional owners of fictional sports leagues. Goddamned liberal media.

WWE's McMahon "Death": I'm A Murder Suspect [CNBC]