Like it is

'Bruce' is her name, greediness is his game

In 1976 it was hard, as an American, not to pull for Bruce Jenner in the Olympic Decathlon.

In those days it was amateurs against amateurs.

Country against country.

The USA vs. Russia (Soviet Union at the time), where athletes were considered amateurs but probably weren't in the truest definition of the word.

At the same time, it was hard to like Jenner.

He seemed aloof, arrogant and almost scandalous as one of the first U.S. athletes to ever show up with an agent looking for endorsements.

He was too good looking with his perfect hair, perfect teeth and perfect jaw.

Other than the looks, he seemed the same on ABC last Friday night when he told the nation he was a woman.

Looking at Diane Sawyer and facing the world, he looked like a guy who had too much surgery and needed something to introduce his new reality show.

According to him, he had had some sort of feeling since he was 6 years old that he was the wrong sex , which might have been a surprise to his six children.

Even in these liberal times it might be uncomfortable for a child to introduce a woman as their dad.

The only things standing between Jenner and big money as a movie star after the Olympics was the fact that he couldn't act, but he got the Wheaties cereal cover and some other endorsements.

Photos of him and his equally beautiful wife Chrystie appeared in newspapers, magazines and television on a regular basis.

Then six years after winning the gold medal, he divorced Chrystie and quickly married Linda Thompson, and a lot of the glimmer was off the gold.

That lasted about five years and then he was single for five years, when he claims he started taking female hormones. He later stopped them when he met Kris Kardashian, whom he married in 1991, the same year she divorced her first husband, attorney Robert Kardashian, who was made famous during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Robert Kardashian died of cancer in 2003.

Kardashian took the handsome Jenner and made them into a TV pitch machine. If there was a piece of exercise equipment and owners were willing to spend the money, they were available.

They got wealthy, had a couple of kids and then went viral with the reality show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."

By then the name Jenner was not needed. Kardashian spoke for itself. As the show went from season to season, Jenner became something of a shadowy figure lurking around and then last year they divorced.

Rumors circulated about Jenner's sex questions and last Friday night the golden boy of the 1976 Olympics declared in a two-hour special that he had struggled his whole life with wanting to be a woman.

The interview seemed redundant as it dragged through two hours. Not Sawyer's fault, but because Jenner did what he has always done, droned on and on about himself.

About being the world's greatest athlete. To get it straight, the record he set for most points in a decathlon 29 years ago has been broken 12 times and is currently held by American Ashton Eaton.

How he ran into the 1976 decathlon bronze medalist, Russian Mykola Avilov, who was overweight, and that Jenner won that battle too.

It was almost 120 minutes of "My name is not Kardashian" and "Who needs them anyway?"

He also reiterated the interview was not a publicity stunt, but yes, he does have his reality show coming.

Mostly what it seemed like was an over-the-hill jock with a lot of business sense trying to cash in on his name, and maybe that's why he still refers to himself as "Bruce."

If Bruce Jenner wanted to be a woman it was no one's business but his, until he went on national TV and out-Kardashianed the Kardashians.

Sports on 04/28/2015

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