Baseball players swing pink bats for them. We wear rubber bracelets in support and make donations to find a cure. We love our cancer survivors even more than our sports heroes.

Lance Armstrong is both. He beat cancer. Then he beat the world ... especially the French, at their own game, cycling. (And apparently there's a new constitutional amendment stating we're supposed to hate the French, thus making his seven consecutive Tour de France wins even sweeter.)

The thing we're asked to believe—and many of us lap it up like hot, thirsty dogs drinking car wash water—is that Armstrong is Mr. Clean in one of the dirtiest sports when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs and blood doping. Pretty much everybody else was cheating and he wasn't, but he dominated. OK.

Accusations and denials are nothing new for Armstrong, and there's never been hard proof. But the latest finger-pointing is worth looking at closer. It doesn't come from a foreigner; it comes from a former teammate, champion and protege.

Floyd Landis finally came clean, and he named names, including Armstrong's. He said Armstrong was a mentor in the ways of cheating and getting away with it.

You don't want to believe it. Consider the source, you say. I have.

Yes, Landis lied about cheating for years. But one of the tricky things about liars is you can't assume they're never telling the truth.

And don't mistake lack of character for a lack of believability. People who say Landis has “;no credibility”; are wrong. Yes, he could very well be lying about Armstrong, but he was THERE.

Everyone laughed at Jose Canseco when he blew the kazoo. As cartoonish as it seemed, in the end many of his accusations were validated. Lance Armstrong doesn't go in the same basket as Mark McGwire and Roger Clemens. But beating cancer doesn't mean he is above suspicion for beating drug tests, especially now.

I have a friend who is an Armstrong fan, but can back away from this enough to see it clearly.

“;Landis may be a jerk, but he's not alone, and just because he's a jerk doesn't mean he's wrong,”; she said. “;I hope Lance isn't doping. I hope that he never has. But I honestly wouldn't be surprised.”;

» The Hawaii football game at Army is on Sept. 11, so Isaac Ho'opi'i should perform the pregame coin toss. He's the policeman from Waianae who pulled 17 people out of the flaming Pentagon after it was hit by a 9/11 suicide plane.

» Hawaii offensive coordinator Nick Rolovich said something very interesting at this week's Honolulu Quarterback Club meeting.

Everyone's talking about how great the UH receivers could be this season, and rightfully so. But Rolo pointed out a deficiency from last fall. He said the Warriors failed to pick up plenty of yards-after-catch because they didn't block.

“;We're emphasizing giving it up for the other guy,”; Rolovich said.

With that said, it should be remembered that Kealoha Pilares earned a game ball for helping his fellow receivers by decoying defenders and running them out of plays.

» UH basketball coach Gib Arnold's getting a lot of credit recently for putting together a big recruiting class so quickly. This shouldn't be too big a surprise; Arnold was already looking at players in his role as a USC assistant last year.

Still, good job—and kudos for giving Dwain Williams a long look; many new coaches would've cut the troubled guard loose right away.