To the surprise of no one, former Lance teammates are implicating him in a culture of doping.

To the surprise of no one, Lance’s attorney is trying to cast Armstrong as the victim. But — no surprise here either — Joe Papp is having none of it.

To the surprise of no one, Lance himself continues to stonewall. But when he puts forward syllogisms like, “You can’t prosecute somebody for something they didn’t do — normally,” you have to wonder if he wasn’t just doping but smokin’ something as well. We repeat — fess up, Lance, and we can all move on.

A useful public service from Cozy Beehive, preserving the Floyd Landis — ABC Nightline interview before the links disappear.

And the crackdown continues on the little guys, this time Brit Dan Staite.

And Swiss rider Thomas Frei is taken down as well with a two-year penalty.

Assuming the dates and places identified in the Landis email have some veracity, Armstrong had to be in a world of hurt even before his tumble, which left him with stitches around his eye and elbow but no serious injury. He has said he will be back on the bike as soon as possible. But the Landis d-bomb, and Lance’s own sporadic training regimen this spring so far, have to cast some doubt over his enthusiasm and readiness for the upcoming 2010 Tour de France.

To deny each specific allegation — if he ever chooses to do so — would leave Amstrong open not only to growing public skepticism but to legal vulnerability, especially if witnesses identified by Landis are called to testify or otherwise corroborate Landis’ version of events.

As soon as this case enters any kind of official investigative status, whether by federal authorities, cycling governance or in a personal lawsuit, something has to give.

The question is whether it ever will.

Landis himself could be subject to prosecution based on potential perjury, as DrunkCyclist points out. The intriguing aspect to a perjury trial would be proving that what Landis said on the stand in 2007 was a lie, which would, conversely, confirm that he’s now telling the truth.

Any prosecution would presumably involve depositions, subpoenaes and documentation that would put riders and others named in the Landis email in the position of testifying under oath — forcing them to admit or deny their own culpability for the legal record. And that, again, could prove sticky — if Landis’ allegations have merit.

As we’ve suspected, Lance’s wife and UCI officialdom could prove key here. One Landis allegation that has gotten surprisingly little media play so far is that the then-president of the UCI — cycling’s governing body — allegedly took a bribe from Armstrong and his manager, Johan Bruyneel, in 2002 to cover up a positive test for EPO. Bribery is a pretty serious charge. One would think that Lance, Johan and the UCI official, Hein Verbruggen, would champ at the bit to go to court over at the very least libel — if what Landis is alleging is actually untrue.

But what if no one presses charges? It’s possible the whole mess could be left to twist in the wind, eventually victim to the public’s fading memory and cycling’s position as a marginal sport in mainstream news. Landis has said he is going to tell his whole story, possibly a reference to a book, but even that could fall by the wayside if cycling officialdom and federal authorities show little interest in pursuing the case.

Another possibility would be for The New York Times or similar news organization with resources and clout to do its own investigation. But there are reasons that hasn’t happened so far, despite repeated allegations against Armstrong over the past decade, and those reasons have not changed.

As we’ve suggested previously, the whole mess could be dispensed with if Lance simply made a clean breast of it and said, “I did it because everyone else did it, and to compete on a level playing field I had to. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things were. I’m clean now, intend to stay clean, and hope my admission will enable others to take similar action and permit the sport of cycling to move forward with a clean slate.”

To be clear, we’re suggesting this course only if Lance actually doped. If he didn’t, he should stick to his story. Or actually not just stick to his story: One would think he would file a defamation suit against Landis.

But if Floyd’s accusations are correct, the sooner Lance steps up, the better. Far from tainting him, it would make him more of a hero over time — because his example would finally allow the grand sport of professional cycling to move into a post-doping era.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Landis has for the first time fully acknowledged using performance-enhancing substances, i.e. blood doping, and says he is naming names re others’ use. The biggest on the list of course would be the King himself, Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong has been implicated repeatedly over the years, in documents, books, court testimony and by association with physicians linked to doping. But he has managed to raise enough doubts to deflect suspicion. And for the record, he has never actually been caught — or at least if he was, it was never made public.

The list of names already disclosed in Landis’ accusations, which comprise a series of emails to cycling officials, is depressing, sad and unsettling: George Hincapie, another rider considered straight and narrow. Levi Leipheimer, currently favored to win the Amgen Tour of California (where Lance is riding in his support). Johan Bruyneel, Lance’s longtime team manager and confidante, currently head of Team Radio Shack in the Tour of California. David Zabriskie, the current leader of the Tour of California. All American riders, considered all-American riders as well.

If true, Landis’ accusations mark the potential passing of an era similar to what baseball went through a couple of years ago with congressional hearings and all-star confessions regarding use of steroids. No one knows if usage has really been stopped. But the aura of sportsmanship for the “roids era” of baseball has been forever tarnished.

If there’s been a pattern to doping in any sport, it’s that athletes need assistance to pull it off. And typically the cover gets blown when someone steps forward. In Lance’s case, his inner circle has been consistently tight over the years. We always guessed his former wife would be the one to finally state the case. But Landis beat her to it. [See Joe Papp's post on this point.]

Lance has been subdued in the Tour of California and uncharacteristically muted about his racing form and ambitions so far this season. If he had any inkling of Landis’ action, it might explain his low profile. Now the cycling world will be in an uproar — the equivalent of the BP Gulf oil spill — while news media continue to probe and investigate Landis’ allegations. It will hardly be a copacetic environment for pursuing racing glory this season.

Our stance on Lance has always been that his charisma, commercial drawing power and huge international following put doping authorities in an impossible bind. Even if they did manage to test him positive, what would it mean for them to disqualify him from an event like the Tour de France? It would cost the event and the sport millions in lost sponsorships, American disenchantment, TV and media coverage, advertising and general tainting of the grand and glorious sport of cycling.

Our theory has always been that mum was the word. Now, as details emerge from the Landis confessions, we may see if our suspicions were correct.

Our hope is that Lance will make a clean breast of it and move on, so that his foundation and his worthy work all over the globe for fighting cancer and bringing fans and attention to cycling can continue without a morbid cloud hanging over it. It takes a true champion to own up to his or her faults. People like to forgive and forget, and if Lance comports himself moving forward as well as he has in the past, he can put all this behind him with an “everybody did it” defense. In that sense he can rise above Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds “syndrome” — stars who were jerks before they were accused and remained jerks afterward.

One last thing: We can only hope that Lance was clean last August when he rode away from the field in the Leadville 100 to deprive local hero Dave Wiens of a 7th straight championship. To think that Wiens, a true sportsman and humanitarian, was deprived of a legitimate win on the basis of drug cheating would be one of the more depressing circumstances we’ve encountered in our lifetime of cycling obsession.

As long as the top pros refuse to take responsibility for their actions … as long as they continue to deny, obfuscate, deceive and dissemble … as long as they maintain pretense in the sport’s charade of ersatz crackdowns and bogus claims of clean competition …

As long as the sad and ugly and tawdry and corrupt mentality of beat-the-system prevails, as long as Big Money and Corrupt Sponsorship continue to suck talent, honesty and respectability out of cycling — well, folks, this story will go on forever.

Now (presumably) all those back samples can be screened over again. But once again, it puts enforcement into a touchy political arena. If all the big stars test positive, will the UCI or applicable governing body really act? Since there’s no transparency in the lab screening process, we the public have to trust that all samples are being tested equally, and penalties meted out fairly. That’s a pretty big leap in this day and age where corporate sponsorships and Big Money ultimately call the shots.

“Having escaped a corrupt system in which doping was a practice as accepted and normal as brushing one’s teeth, I strongly believe in clean sport and for several years have been fighting against doping both publicly and in ways that I simply can’t comment on…” Papp said.

What Joe did — both his own doping and acting as an international pimp of sorts for other pro cyclists — was wrong and should not be excused. But in the context of his extensive work to bring doping problems to light and his own campaign for cleaning up the sordid state of pro cycling, his past transgressions hold little relevance today.

We wish Joe well and hope this works out for the best — for him and for the sport. Although he faces possible prison time, it’s obvious his presence can do far more good outside of jail.

Doping violations are as we note a daily occurrence on the pro cycling circuit, but anecdotally it seems that Spain is more represented in recent months than any other nation. Not to implicate Spain’s most accomplished pro, Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, but it does make one wonder.

Let that be an example to all you pros out there who think once is enough and promise never ever to do it again.

No, of course I’m not being serious.