The shoes have all dropped, now the socks come off

T-Mobile has finally pulled the plug on its support for a pro bike racing team. Despite manager Bill Stapleton's celebrated role as the leadout man for a new, dope-free peloton, perhaps his activism resulted in the word "cheating" being too often associated with "T-Mobile."

Marketers and brand managers are funny that way. By any measure, T-Mobile tolerated several lifetimes of scandal and, to its credit, stood by its athletes as far as it was ethically possible to do so.

The tradeoff, of course, was that all those stoic Germans had to wear pink for all those years.