This one’s for the sports traditionalist who feels disenfranchised and disinterested every time some suit-wearing yahoo hogs the camera and waxes weepy about what flavor energy drink Lance Armstrong imbibed for breakfast.

This one’s for the silver-haired, sharp-tongued, beer belly-scratching dude who either didn’t get or didn’t comprehend the memo when riding a bike or dating a has-been rock chanteuse made somebody a candidate for sainthood.

This one’s for the weekend warrior who’d like to hear more analysis of the offensive and defensive lines flaunted by the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and less chatter about yellow jerseys.

This one’s for the stick-and-ball stickler who has enough space in his or her heart for football, baseball, basketball, hockey, the four major golf championships, heavyweight title fights, the Olympics and the Daytona 500.

You’ve been given a big, fat freeze-out for, oh, about three weeks now, so I felt it was time to give you some love while delivering a message of healing.

One, you’re not alone. Two, I’m with you.

In fact, contrary to what you might have concluded by reading any newspaper or consuming any half-hour sports highlight show in the country last weekend, you are in the majority.

Most of us appreciated the scroll at the bottom of our screen telling us that Armstrong’s lead over Carlo T. Bridesmaid from some remote outpost within the European Union was growing exponentially each day of the Tour de Lance. Most of us were grateful for the occasional reminder that a lead of 2 minutes, 46 seconds in a three-week bike race is the approximate time equivalent of the Paleozoic Era.

And that was plenty, really. So, could we let Lance retire in peace? Could we let his fringe sport go back to being what it is: Fabulous exercise that makes for less exciting television and talk show fodder than the infomercial for Tony Little’s latest elliptical training machine?

Yes, we know. Lance is a champion. Lance is a fighter. Lance is a lean, mean biking machine. Lance is just alright with me. Lance is the greatest American since Lindsay Lohan.

Enough, already!

Every mention of Armstrong’s name in messianic tones wouldn’t irritate me nearly as much if I didn’t recognize it as an insidious plot to cram alternative sports and all things Europe up my nose.

The people who want Armstrong knighted, canonized, dipped in bronze and officially named the Greatest Athlete of This Century, The Last One and The Next One are the offspring of the same crowd who sipped wine while insisting that soccer and the metric system would take over this country.

Well, guess what? I still ride 150 miles (243 kilometers, to those of you in the middle of e-mailing me your death threat) on a bus to drink beer in the Gillette Stadium parking lot, and it isn’t to watch the New England Revolution, baby.

Please don’t misunderstand. I do believe that Lance Armstrong is a great athlete and the inspirational comeback story to end all inspirational comeback stories. I thought Carl Lewis, Pele, Mark Spitz and Michelle Kwan were great athletes, too.

At the end of this day and every day, however, they are little more than a blip on my radar screen.

Will I ever apologize for that? Heck, no. And neither should you.

Twenty more times before I die from eating too much red meat and never having visited Stonehenge or the Eiffel Tower, I will hear someone who is about five pounds more svelte than I am go absolutely ape about a 40-mile bike ride they enjoyed along some glorious hills in Franklin County.

And that, my friends, is all I need to know about Lance Armstrong’s grueling, unforgiving sport.

It’s an energizing, lifetime activity that’s fun for the whole family. For most of us, it’s also about three rungs down the give-a-rip ladder from who punched out whom at an NFL rookie camp.

So hold your head aloft, Ford-driving beer man who doesn’t own a bike and wouldn’t watch Outdoor Life Network on a $1 million dare. You’re OK. I’m OK.

Just be alert. With Lance Armstrong in retirement and the metric system buried in some retired third grade teacher’s basement, the wine-and-cheesers will be hard at work finding some other cosmopolitan crap designed solely to shame us.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].