Mark Madden: U.S. sprinter who failed pot test has no one to blame but herself

America celebrated its independence Sunday. Celebrate again with refreshing sports notes. What is our most patriotic sports moment? It’s got to be the Miracle on Ice in 1980 or Kurt Angle winning Olympic wrestling gold in 1996. Only one was accomplished with a broken freakin’ neck.

• U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson might miss the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for marijuana. Pot isn’t performance enhancing, nor is it a hardcore drug. It shouldn’t be banned. But it is. Richardson knew that and indulged anyway. She is a victim of nothing besides her own stupidity and lack of discipline. Rules are rules. It’s not a drug test. It’s an IQ test.

• Richardson might run anyway. Given where the world is headed, she could get a mulligan. Rules are mere suggestions. Nobody wants to have a boss. Give Reggie Bush his Heisman back. Put Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson in the Baseball Hall of Fame, too. Gambling is intertwined with sports on a mainstream level now. All Jackson did was throw a World Series. That got him suspended for life in 1921. Today, it might get him sponsored by an online sportsbook.

• Letting NCAA athletes profit from their name, image and likeness is good. College sports have seen adults exploit kids too long and for too much. But the NCAA should have fended this off by paying a decent stipend to all athletes in revenue-producing sports. That could be controlled. This can’t. Big schools will increase their already large recruiting edge: “This car dealer will give you an SUV and a million bucks!” Locker rooms will be divided between rich and poor. Will agents get involved in negotiating these deals? Eighteen-year-olds will suddenly have a lot of money. This could go in many different directions. Many of the slopes are slippery.

• It’s difficult and probably unfair to call a team that makes the Stanley Cup Final a fraud. But Montreal is. The Canadiens had just the 18th-most points in the NHL but won their first two playoff series in the inferior North division. In the semifinal, Vegas was worse than the Canadiens were good. Montreal then lost the first three games of the final vs. Tampa Bay, only occasionally looking competitive. The Canadiens ran out of gas and weren’t good in the first place.

• Tampa Bay’s back-to-back Stanley Cups in the cap era will mean exactly the same as the Penguins’ back-to-back Cups in 2016 and ’17. It’s impossible to say the teams aren’t comparable. Tampa Bay has no player that compares with Sidney Crosby then, but Nikita Kucherov is very good. Andrei Vasilevskiy gives the Lightning a decided goaltending edge. Everything else seems a dead heat.

• Skilled, hard-nosed, 6-foot-2 Matthew Tkachuk reportedly wants out of Calgary. The Penguins should cut to the front of that line. Tkachuk, 23, is exactly the kind of winger the Penguins need. If it takes giving Calgary Jake Guentzel — or even a bit more — GM Ron Hextall should do it.

• Hiring popular ex-player and Pine-Richland product Neil Walker as a broadcaster is a classic Pirates diversion: Celebrate the local guy’s return and forget that the team stinks for a few minutes. It’s a shame the organization didn’t love Walker like this in 2015, when they traded him after he helped the Pirates get three straight playoff berths and was still excellent.

• Ke’Bryan Hayes missed two months with a wrist injury. Why did Hayes get rested Sunday? Or maybe he got benched: The rookie third baseman was 1 for 22 in his prior six games, dropping his average to .245. Hayes has great moments but lousy weeks.

• The Pirates weren’t expected to be good. But Milwaukee beat them in the first three games of their series at PNC Park by 7-2, 7-2 and 11-2. Before that, the Pirates played three games at the hitters’ paradise that is Coors Field in Denver and scored in just one of 27 innings, totaling two runs in three games and nearly getting no-hit. Bad is bad. But the Pirates are a joke.

• The Pirates have the first selection in Sunday’s MLB draft. They may not take the best player. That’s so they can use money saved to get better talent in later rounds. (The Pirates have a bonus pool of $14.3 million available to use.) I can’t fathom a team picking first in a draft not taking the best player. When has that happened? The Pirates will never get a No. 1 starting pitcher via trade or free agency. Their only chance is the draft. If they pass up Vanderbilt pitcher Jack Leiter to take a high school shortstop who signs for a smaller bonus, that’s nuts.

• Joey Chestnut set a “world record” by eating 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the annual Nathan’s hot dog-eating contest Sunday. If only a camera had been present to capture the acts of gluttony I’ve performed in over 60 years. That’s all competitive eating is: Gluttony. Nothing but.

• Becky Hammon is an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs. Those who believe every decision should be made based on a societal campaign are mad because she hasn’t yet filled a head-coaching vacancy in the NBA. Give it time. She will. The real outrage against women occurred when the men’s hot dog-eating contest was on ESPN, but the women’s competition was on ESPN3, whatever that is. Women deserve an equal platform to be revolting pigs.

• I feel eminently qualified to judge overeating. Disassembling a hot dog and soaking the bread in water violates the spirit of a hot dog-eating contest. You’re not actually eating a “hot dog.” There should be a “real” hot dog-eating contest where contestants have to eat actual hot dogs, not torn apart, each garnished with two condiments. That would crown a legit champ.

• Devin Bush of the Steelers seemed to criticize certain teammates on Twitter: “If you a grown man & you got TikTok on yo phone stay (abbreviated expletive) from around me.” As Houston’s J.J. Watt noted, that points to Bush needling his own locker room. Chase Claypool replied, “Yikes.” Bush backpedaled, tweeting at Claypool and JuJu Smith-Schuster: “Don’t let these (people) mess y’all heads up and our relationship…we the ones winning!! Where you think the money coming from…THEY POCKETS.” That’s called shooting yourself into a work. If the Steelers’ locker room has leaders, they don’t get followed. Everybody just wants the cool kids to like them.