When I found out that the Olympic mucky-mucks had decided to award the Canadian figure skating pairs team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier a gold medal (in addition to the gold medals awarded to the Russians in the same event), I immediately emailed Dan Acheson, Executive Director of DCI.

"Hey Dan," I wrote, "can we reconsider the 1995 DCI judging, too?"

I, of course, was joking. And yes, I DID march snare for the Scouts in 1995.

Don't get me wrong, I thought the Cavaliers were great and deserved the "gold." But hey, if there's room for more than one gold at the Olympics, why not give gold medals to the Scouts or Blue Devils for their '95 performances, too? It's tough to beat BD's snare line turning around playing that long single-stroke roll, and I'd challenge anyone to find me a videotape of any performance ever that had the continuous, roaring crowd response of the '95 Scouts.

I know, I know. Fans want "no more ties." Party-poopers.

Something tells me fans actually like these controversies, as if corps like BD, Cavies and Cadets are characters in a soap opera.

The Drum Corps World poll made it obvious how integral scoring is to many fans' interest in the art form -- err, sport -- um, activity. While only 41.2 percent agreed that "the judging system is an accurate representation of performance outcomes," and more than half of the respondents said drum corps judging concerns them, 51.2 percent said they'd be less interested in the activity if the scoring was eliminated.

So, if you harbor any thought that someday drum corps won't be scored, save yourself the time and anguish now.

DCI and DCA fans flood drumcorpsworld.com as well as DCI's and DCA's web sites for scores during the summer, so the circuits will never give up such a strong marketing tool. Especially now that DCI is focusing its marketing efforts on the 13-22 year-old demographic, a group that spends a lot of time on the Internet.

One of the most amusing moments during the Salt Lake games was when world skating chief Ottavio Cinquanta declared that he personally had come up with a system to make figure skating judging better. Meaning, I assume, less subjective. Voila!

And I have a singing dog that can fly.

I've personally spoken to a number of judges who have become frustrated with what they perceive to be pressure to score corps a certain way if they want to judge the big shows. One even told me the Scouts very well might have won in '95 had the corps' staff not been on the "outs" with some of the judges. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. None of these sources will go on record because they all are still involved with the activity, either as a judge, show designer or instructor.

Drum corps scores aren't fixed. But, historically, head judges have appeared to have a lot of influence on the other judges, whether they choose to flex that power or not. And the big-name instructors with the big-name corps definitely have the judges' ears. Whether that affects actual scoring outcomes is tough to say. I don't think the instructors and judges really know exactly how much of an affect all the lobbying has on the outcomes.

Do you believe the French figure skating judge -- the one at the center of the figure skating controversy -- when she said there were no "back room deals" before the competition? Obviously the Olympic Committee felt there was compelling enough evidence to award a second set of gold medals, an unprecedented type of gesture.

I can say that John Phillips, DCI Judge Administrator, did not say anything to the DCI Finals judges last summer about any particular corps during their pre-show meeting in the press box. He simply asked them to not give out, say, a "4" in a category when the going range was an "8" to a "10" for all the corps.

Somebody once said, "I'd rather have good people in a bad system than bad people in a good system." That couldn't be more true. Cinquanta agrees. "Most important is to have good judges with good skills," he said.

DCI and DCA can't control their judges' integrity, but they can recruit people who have experience in top corps. To me, you just don't know what it's like to perform cleanly at a world championship drum corps show unless you've done it. There are exceptions, of course. Veterans of top Winter Guard International guards and Percussive Arts Society drum lines would probably make fine judges, even if they haven't marched in a corps like the Caballeros, Vanguard or Blue Stars.

Once in a while, you hear show designers and judges using really fancy words to describe a show. Like, "Ow, I love the thematic expression in the curvilinear phrasing of that drill form, it's so impressionistic." Folks, you're not fooling anybody. It's an arc. Call it an arc, for Pete's sake!

NBC skating commentator Sandra Bezic said she was embarrassed for the sport after the judges gave the Canadians second place at the Olympic competition.

Let's hope drum corps fans aren't thinking the same thing on the way out of the stadium in Madison and Scranton this summer.