Much Ado About Nothing?

Well, I thought I was done talking about this year's Tour de France, but that was before I read a version of this story in my local paper:

ance Armstrong’s RadioShack team is facing disciplinary proceedings because its riders wore unapproved jerseys to the Tour de France’s final stage, causing a 20-minute delay at the start.

The cyclists tried to wear black jerseys Sunday with “28″ on the back. The number honors the 28 million people fighting cancer, a theme of Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation.

Cycling’s governing body said Monday that RadioShack will be investigated for “breaching the regulations governing riders’ clothing.”

I've always found this sort of thing to be a little ridiculous. It seems as though some athlete or another is always getting fined for something like wearing socks too high or having too much undershirt showing or what-not, and this really ought to stop. Sure, people wear uniforms to look, well, uniform, but this whole thing can be taken too far. What's next--requiring people with hairy arms to shave them so as to more closely match their less-hairy teammates? Wearing wigs so they'll all have the same hair length and color? (Even high school drill teams stopped doing this a long time ago.) Besides, a rule like this was obviously made by a petty little bureaucrat and is being enforced by his latter-day counterparts, and people like that really, really need to be out of a job.

You'd think that for as good of a cause as good as cancer awareness, they'd let up a little bit, but maybe this is the root cause of the whole thing:

The International Cycling Union adds that it “regrets that an initiative for a cause as worthy as the fight against cancer” was not coordinated beforehand with officials.

Aww--so the officials got their little feelings hurt? Get over it, folks! You "officials" are being paid to make big decisions, and there's no reason not to be flexible in support of a good cause. If you're going to just blindly adhere to rules for rules' sake, there's no need for "officials"--everything could just be enforced by a giant computer.

Some would say that Team Radio Shack caused a disruption of the final stage by donning the "controversial" jerseys; I say that the officials themselves caused the disruption by not leaving well enough alone.