Rogers (the guy with the facial hair) and Dalhausser (the bald guy, right) won the men’s beach volleyball gold. Rogers is known the “The Professor” and Dalhausser “The Beast.” Brent Mullins has shot the team in Southern California tournaments and presents some great shots after the jump.

The Summer Olympics just keep getting bigger. There are 302 gold medals up for grabs in Beijing. That’s a gold medal every 47 minutes for the sixteen-day span of the games. Doesn’t sound so special when it’s put that way, does it? But is that BMX gold medal really as significant as the historic one Michael Phelps won last night? No, and there are good reasons why. Follow the jump for an in-depth analysis of the most valuable gold medals and the sports that don’t even deserve to be in the Olympics.

So what makes tennis players such scrotums, and beach volleyball players such studs?

And before you look for your lost balls, by scrotum I mean what advice columnist Dan Savage does after being challenged on calling somone a pussy:

Latvia’s Martins Plavins (right) and Aleksandrs Samoilovs, ranked 21 of 24 men’s beach volleyball teams, beat U.S. team Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers (ranked No. 1) 21-19, 21-18. Longtime Outsports photographer Brent Mullins, who has shot Dalhausser and Rogers for years, had this insight:

“If anyone was a lock for a gold,  I thought it was them — but they played poorly in the recent Long Beach event, losing badly (for the first time) to Gibb/Rosenthal — and they just seemed off after being invincible for so long.  Losing to Latvia was like having the newbie Aaron Rodgers-led Packers knock off the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

In Olympic beach volleyball T&A are OK, but pecs and abs are not. Most people would be surprised to know that the dress code for the sport in the Olympics mandates bikinis for babes but shirts on for the studs.

Teammates in Olympic beach volleyball must wear uniforms of the same color. The women can wear either a one-piece or a two-piece bathing suit, though due to the typically warm playing conditions, most opt for the two-piece. The men must wear shorts and a tank top. Players are allowed to wear hats and sunglasses.

(For men’s photos, keep reading)