The columns on Lance Armstrong just get nastier and nastier. The LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik actually delves into neo-libertarian bullying, saying if the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s lawyers were any good, they’d have better jobs. (If you feel compelled to retort in personal terms, use any combination of the words “writer,” “J.K. Rowling” and “best-sellers list.” Or, as Chris Farley once put it, “Is that Bill Shakespeare I see over there?”)

Let’s clear up one myth. USADA chief Travis Tygart is being painted as some cross between Inspector Javert and Kenneth Starr. He’s neither. He has evidence that he believes is enough to persuade neutral parties (if any exist) that Lance Armstrong was not totally clean in his Tour wins.

And yet, USA TODAY finds, Armstrong might not have lost all his Tour titles had he cooperated. Not that this is the important part to Armstrong. It’s not about the titles now. It’s his rep.

In any case, USADA’s authority to strip the titles is highly debated. That’s evident even from WADA’s John Fahey in his widely circulated quote: “Olympic medals and titles are for other agencies to decide, not WADA.” (All of which leads to a brilliant parody: “I Am Stripping the USA Women’s National Soccer Team of Their Gold Medals!”)

And so we raise the question: What has been accomplished here?

I’m late getting to a couple more good reads on the topic:

– Bonnie D. Ford, ESPN: “As many critics have correctly suggested, the majority of other men who populated the podiums in that era are suspect, as well, so what good would it do to reshuffle the standings and refit the yellow jerseys? Cycling in those years is rapidly approaching the point of no-there-there, unless we co-sign the cynical premise that doping was so endemic that the playing field was level anyway.”

– Jim Caple, ESPN: “We must test. But we also must draw a line somewhere. And going after athletes for something they might have done seven to 13 years ago clearly crosses that line. Stripping Armstrong of his titles does far more harm than good. USADA should have let this one go. The agency exists to police sports, not destroy them.”

– And a powerful, personal read from the WSJ’s Jason Gay, usually seen unleashing his wit on Twitter: “There will always be the moral relativists, outraged by outrage. There will always be those who point to the epidemic of doping, and wonder if the playing field was merely leveled. Don’t be naive, they say—sports is about the furious pursuit of an edge. In full arc of Armstrong’s story, doesn’t the good outweigh any allegation? That latter argument is not an abstraction to me. More than 10 years ago, I got a cancer diagnosis. From the start, doctors assured me it was quickly treatable, and it proved to be. But it was still frightening.”

I’m not comfortable calling myself an Armstrong apologist or even saying that it doesn’t matter. (Another clunker in that LAT column: “These pitchers are taking testosterone. Is that worse than hitters getting Lasik?” Yes. The technical counterargument for comparing routine eye surgery with screwing up your body to make it more susceptible to cancers and other ugliness would be “Duh.”) But I’m not going to discount the good Armstrong has done, even if it’s ironic that he’s so much better loved outside his sport than within it.

Armstrong isn’t Joe Paterno. It’s not a question of whether a lifetime of good work can be undone by a shocking secret of horrifying negligence. We’re talking about someone who, at the very least, played within the bounds of what he knew cycling could reasonably test.

So don’t make Armstrong the spokesman of the new wave of clean cyclists. Aside from that, what else can we say about him at this point?

Bobby Fischer never gave up his world chess championship. In his mind and in perhaps the minds of a handful of people, he was still the champion.

Lance Armstrong isn’t quite as delusional as Bobby Fischer was. But like Fischer at the chessboard, he’s trying a shrewd gambit: Armstrong believes he has a better shot at casting reasonable doubt on the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s case against him outside the arbitration process than within it.

That’s not necessarily true. But it’s not a wild idea.

Armstrong will have more supporters than Fischer had. Alberto Contador had kind words. The International Cycling Union remains skeptical of USADA’s jurisdiction. Overseas at the Telegraph, many writers and readers sympathize with Armstrong.

Even the judge who ruled against Armstrong’s challenge of USADA’s jurisdiction took issue with USADA’s claims — see page 17 of his ruling. (Page 18 had one of the more ominous footnotes I’ve seen in legal documents: “If it should come to pass that Armstrong does not actually receive adequate notice sufficiently in advance of the arbitration hearing, and it is brought to this Court’s attention in the appropriate manner, USADA is unlikely to appreciate the result.” Page 28 refers to “troubling aspects of this case,” and page 29 calls USADA’s conduct thus far “mystifying.”)

That leaves two questions. The first: Did he do it? The second: Does it matter?

Internet commenters always think they know the answer to the first. They say Armstrong passed every test. And he did. But so did Marion Jones, before she admitted — in the face of considerable evidence — to using a designer steroid carefully constructed to pass tests.

It’s not to fair to say Armstrong is just like Jones. Every doping case is different. Swimmer Jessica Hardy had a particularly murky case. LaShawn Merritt had an embarrassing but convincing defense. Floyd Landis had a good, detailed case against his doping accusations, and then he confessed to all sorts of other performance enhancements that weren’t caught.

That brings us back to the cycling world — which, it’s fair to say, has had a drug problem in the past. If Armstrong was doping, even to the extent alleged by USADA, it’s not a case of a bunch of East German swimmers systematically doping their way to victory over athletes with no evidence of wrongdoing. Jan Ullrich and Andreas Kloden, who could theoretically be named Tour champions in hindsight, have had their own issues.

And so this Cycling News reaction roundup leads with this:

(Thankfully, Cycling News translates: “By deleting Lance, the list of winners doesn’t become more credible.”)

From a bookkeeping point of view, naming Tour de France winners in retrospect is impossible. No doping agency is going to go back through each cyclist’s history and make sure he was clean the year he might have finished on the podium.

And Armstrong knows the arbitrators and USADA, ultimately, can only affect the bookkeeping. What they learn from Armstrong’s case is ultimately more important going forward — what can they learn for future doping cases to ensure cycling in the 2010s is cleaner than cycling in the 1990s?

And so Armstrong is gambling that his reputation will survive the bookkeepers’ red pen. Given the good will he has built up through his advocacy for cycling and cancer, plus the uncertainty of any 8-year-old Tour de France records, that’s not a bad bet.

Bobby Fischer’s gambits in real life were rash and doomed to failure. Bobby Fischer’s gambits at the chessboard were meticulously analyzed and usually successful. Armstrong’s gambit is a lot closer to Fischer at the chessboard than Fischer in real life.