August 2016 – The River City Renegade

About Mike O’Shea still wearing short pants and getting the job done…Rodney Dangerfield…girl power in the NHL…running mates for Donald Trump…Jacob Trouba wanting out…and top-drawer sports writing

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Mike O'Shea: He's no Jeff Reinebold anymore. — Mike O’Shea: He’s no Jeff Reinebold anymore.

Well, who saw this coming? Mike O’Shea suddenly looking like the second coming of Mike Riley.

Well, okay, we don’t want to get carried away. Riley coached the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to a pair of Canadian Football League championships. I assume he still has the Grey Cup rings to prove it. O’Shea, on the other hand, has accomplished squat. But, hey, when the good times roll so does hyperbole.

What kind of a roll are the local football heroes on? Let’s just say the fact we’re mentioning O’Shea and Riley in the same sentence—rather than O’Shea and Jeff Reinebold—ought to be your first clue.

Your second clue would be that no one is talking or writing about O’Shea’s short pants anymore.

It wasn’t so long ago, remember, that the Bombers were a Sad Sackian 1-4 outfit and O’Shea was being fitted for a neck-tie party. A funny thing happened on the way to the gallows, though. He changed quarterbacks (or someone did it for him), a whack of starters sustained owies that put them on the shelf, and the guys filling in have done something the prime-timers couldn’t do—win.

So what am I saying? That it’s necessity, not design, that is at the root of the Bombers’ rise to respectability? Yes. And no.

Only those who share the inner sanctum—and, perhaps, a few flies on the wall at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry—know the true story behind the QB switch. To that point, the head coach had displayed either a shocking quarterback blindness or a peculiar infatuation with his do-nothing starter, Drew Willy. Thus it’s my guess that O’Shea was prodded, if not instructed, to take the ball from Willy and hand it to Matt Nichols. His hand was further forced due to the injuries on the offensive line, at receiver and among the defensive dozen.

But here’s where O’Shea got it right: He’s plugged the proper people into the appropriate places (hello, Taylor Loffler). The result: four games, four Ws and a 5-4 record at the halfway juncture of their 2016 crusade.

Now let’s see if he has the smarts to get it right once the original starters are back from sick bay.

Rodney Dangerfield doesn't get any respect, and neither do the Blue Bombers. — Rodney Dangerfield doesn’t get any respect, and neither do the Blue Bombers.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bombers are playing the Rodney Dangerfield card. “We feel like we’re not respected,” linebacker Mo Leggett said scant seconds after Friday night’s brawl in Montreal, with the Winnipegs on the favorable end of a 32-18 score against the Alouettes. “We feel like we’re still underrated by everyone, so we’re just going to keep going making plays and we’re going to stay hungry.” This, of course, is a common rallying cry from players on outfits that go from punching bag to pick-of-the-litter seemingly overnight. But whatever works, right?

It occurred to me while watching the Bombers and Alouettes grab grass and growl that the jury remains out on Duron Carter, who received a one-game sentence for bowling over Ottawa RedBlacks head coach Rick Campbell yet has not missed a beat. We still await an arbitrator’s ruling. Good grief. The O.J. Trial didn’t take this long.

John Bowman of the Larks had a legit gripe with officiating when one of the zebras flagged him for roughing late in the fourth quarter and the result very much in the balance. Bombers O-lineman Travis Bond shoved Bowman post-whistle. Bowman shoved back. Bond, a 6-feet-6, 329-lb. behemoth, went all soccer player, abruptly leaning back and his arms flailing as if the victim of a terrorist attack. Out came the hanky. That cost the Als 15 yards. Lip service from Bowman cost him another 10 yards. Brutal. If Bowman’s shove was worth 15 yards, Bond’s embellishment should have been worth 15 yards.

Speaking of embellishment, I’m sorry but Kevin Pillar of the Toronto Blue Jays doesn’t have to leave his feet to catch a ball quite as often as he does. No doubt he’s among the premier glovesmiths in Major League baseball, but the Jays centrefielder made a play on an Albert Pujols drive the other night that had mustard dripping all over it. Yes, he ran a long way to make the catch, but, no, he didn’t have to launch himself into the Superman routine. It was pure hot-dogging.

Barbara Underhill has provided the NHL with girl power for years.

The arrival of Dawn Braid as full-time skating coach with the Arizona Coyotes was met with much ballyhoo, because she’s a she. Except neither Braid nor the Desert Dogs is breaking new ground here. The Toronto Maple Leafs have had former figure skating champion Barbara Underhill on payroll as skating coach since 2012. Previously, she had worked for the Disney Ducks, New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lighting. The Hockey News once named her among the 100 most influential people in the game. Figure skating females have, in fact, been coaching in the National Hockey League since the 1970s, when Laura Stamm worked with Bob Nystrom of the New York Islanders. Underhill, Cathy Andrade, Barb Aidelbaum and Braid have followed her lead. Girl power has long been in the NHL…it’s just that a lot of people never noticed until the Braid hire.

Is it too late for Donald Trump to recruit either Hope Solo or Ryan Lochte as a running mate in the U.S. presidential election race? Nobody, other than the Donald, has offended more Americans than the soccer goalie and the swimmer, so I figure one of them is a perfect fit.

Bill Watters, former player agent, former NHL executive, current radio gab-and-gossip guy, says Jacob Trouba wants out of Winnipeg. He offers no insider info to support his theory that the Jets’ young defenceman wishes to fly the coop. He uses only the deductive reasoning of a man who has spent a lifetime in the game at many different levels. You know something? I’m inclined to believe Watters.

My three stars at the Rio Olympics, print division, were Bruce Arthur (Toronto Star), Cam Cole and Ed Willes (Team Postmedia), with an honorable mention to Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail for his wrapup piece. Each wrote a column that has stayed with me. More than one, actually. Some other scribes’ work stayed with me as well. Like a batch of bad chili. But we don’t want to go there.

If there’s a top-drawer sports columnist in the True North with better social awareness than Arthur, I haven’t read him or her. His piece from the Olympics on American skeet shooter Kim Rhode and fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, who, like Rhode, contributed a bronze medal to the U.S. collection, is a prime example. It’s about hijabs, blue hair, the Second Amendment and the beauty of social acceptance. It’s worth a read.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

Caster Semenya: Why are so many hung up on her looks?

Be honest. It isn’t Caster Semenya’s ridiculously high testosterone levels that bother you. It’s her physical appearance. Also her voice. That’s the rub.

If Semenya looked and sounded like, say, Lynsey Sharp or Melissa Bishop, the volume on the rhetoric re her perceived (or real) “unfair advantage” in female foot racing would be turned down. Sharply. It would seem less of a witch hunt and more of a reasoned conversation that grants equal consideration to both pro and con.

But Semenya doesn’t look like Sharp or Bishop, does she?

Ignore, if you can, the hue of their skin. The British and the American runners are lean and lithe, blonde-haired and blue/green-eyed. A photo shoot for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is more likely than someone in a lab coat knocking on their doors and demanding they piddle into a bottle and lift their skirts to confirm they are not boys. Semenya, meanwhile, is ripped and rawbone, her raven-black hair styled in tight corn rows and her eyes threatening and as dark as midnight. SI photogs won’t be quick to ask her to slip into something skimpy. The boys in the lab coats, meanwhile, already have stood on her doorstep and have the samples.

That’s why many of the people who watch Semenya run don’t see her run. All they see is someone different. Someone who doesn’t belong. Someone who doesn’t fit into the pigeon holes of their cisgender template.

The jury in the court of public opinion seemingly has found Semenya guilty. But of what? She isn’t cheating, not by any measure. Her ability to arrive first at the finish line of an 800-metre race isn’t the product of a pill in a bottle or the point of a needle poked into her butt cheeks. Nor is her strength. She has naturally elevated testosterone levels for a female, and her training regimen is of a rigidity befitting an athlete of Olympic-champion loft. So, she’s guilty of? Looks. Or, based on societal stereotyping, lack thereof.

Society doesn’t demand that its female champions be pretty, but it is more accepting if they are. Think Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.

Anyone ever question Sharapova’s femininity? As if. She’s long, lean, lithe and cover girl gorgeous. What about Williams? Accusations of manism began to dog her not long after she and sister Venus arrived on the tennis scene as teenagers with beaded hair. As recently as two years ago, the president of the Russian Tennis Federation, Shamil Tarpishchev, referred to Serena and Venus as “the Williams brothers.” He added it was “frightening when you look at them.”

The focus always seemed to be on Serena’s physical package—the hands, the forearms, the biceps, the shoulders, the back, the neck, the jaw, the forehead…all too big, too masculine. The fits of pique, anger and aggression? The threatening gestures? That’s the way male athletes behave, not women. Better check that Williams girl’s testosterone levels. Must be too high.

Only in the past 20 months, as her Grand Slam championship total rose to near-unparalleled achievement, has Serena gained wide-spread acceptance and admiration. There now is more discussion about her loft in tennis and sporting lore than her looks.

I fear a similar happily-ever-after ending is unlikely for Semenya.

I suppose had the 25-year-old South African finished well up the track and not struck gold in the women’s 800-metre final at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro last weekend—leaving a flock of frustrated and, yes, embittered “real” females in her wake—the temperature of the conversation would be lower. But as long as Semenya is ruled eligible to compete in female foot races, we’ll hear considerable braying about a “man running against women” and an “unfair advantage.” (As if those flippers that swimmer Michael Phelps calls feet aren’t unfair and an advantage.)

In Semenya’s case, I don’t think it’s about what’s fair or unfair. It’s about insisting that females fit into society’s one-size-fits-all schematic. She doesn’t look the part, therefore she shouldn’t be allowed to play the part.

That, of course, is a ridiculously shallow interpretation of a definition.

As was the case with Serena Williams, much of the slander directed toward Semenya’s appearance is cruel, mean spirited and ignorant. It also means that the South African shall forever be running with an asterisk. There always will be a “ya, but” placed behind any mention of her accomplishments.

Apparently, it’s okay for a female to run, leap, swim, throw, kick and punch “like a man,” just as long as she doesn’t “look like a man” while doing it.

Sigh.

Rio Olympics: The Media Squawk-O-Meter was on high alert

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Now that the Five-Ring Circus has pulled out of Rio de Janeiro and environs, we can take a final reading of the Media Squawk-O-Meter as the boys and girls of the Fourth Estate navigate their way home.

Squawking, you realize, is a large part of every Olympic Games. It is, in fact, the sworn duty of news scavengers to alert readers back home to their special brand of misery. It’s not that we care about their hardships. We don’t. And they know we don’t care. But they cannot resist the urge to whinge about their food, traffic delays, lodgings, creature comforts, toilet paper, air quality, insects, blah, blah, blah. Apparently, it’s part of an unwritten code: When assigned to cover the Olympics, one must find something about the locals or the locale to squawk about and insert said inconvenience into one’s copy, otherwise no one will believe you actually have gone hither. Or yon.

It is permissible for the media to squawk about shattered glass in a bus window as the result of gunfire.

There exists at least one other clause in the unwritten code by which the sports scribe is governed: Mention the number of Olympics you have attended as early and as often as possible, in the likely event that it failed to register with the reader the first dozen times.

Games covered, of course, impresses exactly zero people. I mean, a tree with 1,500 rings? That’s impressive. A jock journo with 15 Five-Ring Circuses on his or her resume? That just tells me he or she can count without using all fingers and toes and has discovered more to bitch about than most.

The point is, sportswriter squawking is as germane to the Olympics as Usain Bolt’s lickety-split, Michael Phelps’s wing span, or a boxing judge with one eye on the fight and the other on his take. And, with 28,000 accredited media for the Rio Olympics, that’s one serious group gripe.

They all do it. It’s just that some are louder than others, that’s all. There are also those, like Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star, who can pull it off with humor or wit or satire, rather than a sledge hammer. And, in fairness, I should also like to emphasize that it isn’t always about minor inconveniences. I rather think that were I riding a media bus en route to a sporting venue and bullets shattered the window beside me, that would qualify as more than a petty annoyance.

At any rate, the Media Squawk-O-Meter was operating at a dizzying rate in Rio. Here are some of the gripes…

One of the flowers of Canadian jock journalism (and a personal favorite), Cam Cole of Postmedia, struck first with a tweet about there being just “one ATM to service a population of several thousand in Main Press Centre. Good job, good effort.” He then followed with “worst organization of a Games in my 16, hands down.” This was a brilliant bit of bitching. It showed veteran savvy and moxie. Only a seasoned scribe could have trashed the organizers and established his career Five-Ring Circus count before the Games began. Pure genius.

Steve Politi of NJ.com was also quick off the starting blocks, with an essay about polluted Guanabara Bay. “When I put down the camera and finally look down at the water, I see the trash. It isn’t the piles of it you may have seen in photographs that have moved from here in recent weeks, but it is all around the boat. Plastic bags. Restaurant cups. Soda bottles. A sanitary napkin. The water is covered with a noticeable film, in all directions, making it look like a thick, green stew. But the biggest concern is what I cannot see. The bacteria. The viruses. The human excrement.” And you’re telling us what, Nick? That there’s no garbage in New Jersey?

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star didn’t bitch so much about the peculiarities of Rio as she did a nervy media back home who, from their sofas, had the bad manners to critique the work of news scavengers in Brazil. At the same time, Ramblin’ Rosie dumped a load of hooey on ill-mannered scribes and/or talking heads on site: “A bewildered shout-down also to media mooks in Rio loudly rooting for their country’s athletes along press tribune row. One simple rule: No cheering in the pressbox.” Yo! Rosie! The Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Brits, South Africans, Dutch, Brazilians or whomever you’re bitching about don’t have to play by your rules. Perhaps cheering in the pressbox is acceptable behaviour where they pin their press badges.

News scavengers’ preoccupation with food is fascinating. Doug Smith of the Toronto Star lamented the absence of golden arches at the journos’ feeding trough. “One thing missing: McDonald’s in the media centre. It’s a staple, an old friend waiting to greet you at the end of a long day and the decision to pull out of Rio might have made sense from a business sense but it’s screwing up tons of media types who miss it dearly.” Smith also bemoaned hanky-panky with pricing at an eatery near his hotel: “The nice menu that was printed in English was quite helpful the first two nights but it was somewhat of a surprise to me when I got there last night to see the prices scratched out by marker and raised a couple of Reals or so for each item. Yeah, a 20R fish dinner became a 22R fish dinner, the 4R appetizer is 6R now and the folks who run it sure know how to make a buck. Still gonna go because it’s so handy but we’ll be looking for somewhere else now more often, a place where the owners aren’t quite as blatant in their gouging.” Geez, Doug, you’re on expenses. Live a little.

They lined up for their Big Macs and Quarter Pounders in Rio, but not at the Media Centre.

King of the complainers had to be Steve Simmons of Postmedia, though. If there was anything about Rio he enjoyed, other than the competition (excluding dressage which, apparently, should be axed), I missed it. Some of his gems: “Green water. Polluted ocean. Wonky buses. Athletes held at gunpoint. So many robberies. I don’t need a second week.” Let’s see…he never had to dive into the green water, he never had to take a dip in the ocean, nobody put a gun to his head, and he wasn’t robbed. Only disruption in transportation impacted on his work. Yet he still wanted to bail. Hmmm. Oh, yes, there was also the weather: “No matter where you’re at it’s either too hot or too cold. A lot of us looking for just right.” Then there were the lineups: “These are the lineup Olympics. Lineup for food. Lineup for drinks. Lineup to pay. Lineup to get in to venue. Lineup to leave venue. Lineup to go to washroom. Lineup for just about everything.” Even when there weren’t lineups, he whinged: “This isn’t complaining. This is just how it is. You pay for a cold drink at concessions. You don’t get a drink. You get a receipt. You then move down the line. Even if there is no line. The four people behind the counter, near the drinks, do nothing until you get to the end of the counter. Then one of them may ask you what you want, or ignore you. Depends on the moment, and this is without a lineup.” Some advice for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, Stevo—stay home.

Smith of the Star wrote it best about media squawking re the numerous glitches during the Rio Olympics: “These weren’t the best Games I’ve been at—Barcelona and London and Sydney still top the list—but they weren’t the worst, either. That’s still Atlanta by a mile and it always will be. But enough of that, really; it’s tiring.” Amen to that, Doug. Amen.

About female footballers…pants on fire…gay medal winners…body shaming…Caster Semenya and creepy tweets…and other Olympic things on my mind

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

I love our soccer team, distaff division. Those women have a remarkable ability to make tap water taste like wine. Good wine. $150-a-bottle wine. They did it in England in 2012. And they did it again in Brazil on Friday. Bronze-medal bookends.

Bronze is beautiful for Canad's female soccer side. — Bronze is beautiful for Canad’s female soccer side.

Except those Summer Olympic Games trinkets they’re bringing home to the True North have the glitter of gold, rather than the blandness of bronze.

Some of the faces changed in the four years between the two crusades, but the ingredients that we like to think define us as Canadians remained intact. We are modest and passive by nature yet fierce when suitably aroused. Forever the underdog, except on the frozen ponds of the globe, our successes oft are the product of a strong-willed, bulldog-determined mindset.

And so it is with our female footballers. Ranked 10^th in the world, they beat three of the top five and four of the top eight nations—Germany (2), France (3), Australia (5) and Brazil (8). Zimbabwe (93) was another casualty. The sole setback came in a semifinal match, at the boots of the German side that carried on to strike gold. Our girls soothed that wound with their energetic, 2-1 success over a Brazilian outfit that perhaps was not properly engaged at the outset but warmed to the task in plenty of time to provide the bronze-medal match with an edge-of-your-seat climax.

It is easy to admire the Canadian women. Diana Matheson is my favorite, a 5-feet-0 burst of energy. Ashley Lawrence is electric and adventurous. Christine Sinclair, the captain, has a regal bearing and carriage.

Unfortunately, they now will disappear from our sight lines until 2020, because that’s the nature of the beast for female summer sports and the media. The Fourth Estate takes note of, and celebrates, their good deeds every four years, then largely ignores them between the lighting of the Olympic torch.

I must say that I enjoyed the bluntness of soccer color commentator Clare Rustad, a former member of our national side. Rustad was very unforgiving in the matter of swan diving and particularly harsh in citing numerous German players for embellishment. And she was correct in her indictments. In the semifinal, I hadn’t seen that many Germans hit the deck since I last watched Battle of the Bulge. Germany was full value for its 2-nil victory, but also gets the gold medal for bad acting.

Liar, liar Ryan Lochte’s speedos were on fire, but the gold standard for Ugly American was established by Hope Solo, not Lochte and three of his swimming pals who got all liquored up, vandalized a gas station and flat-out fibbed about their drunken, frat-boy hijinks. I assume Solo, keeper with the U.S. women’s soccer side, was sober when she branded the Swedish 11 as a “bunch of cowards” after they’d eliminated the Americans in a shootout. Lochte apologized. Solo hasn’t been heard from since. Which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing.

According to Outsports.com, there were 53 openly gay or bisexual athletes at the Brazil Olympics and 25 won medals—10 gold, 11 silver and four bronze. Among teams with LGB athletes collecting medals were the Canadian and Swedish women’s soccer sides, the U.S. women’s basketball outfit and Great Britain and Netherlands women’s field hockey collectives. So perhaps the homophobes can tell us one more time how a team cannot win with openly gay players on the roster. Or does that bogus theory only apply to men’s team sports? By the way, the breakdown of those 25 LGB medalists by gender is three gay men, 22 lesbians.

The gold for body shaming goes to Rosie DiManno, the Toronto Star columnist who, in an A-to-Z of the Games piece, described Ethiopian swimmer Robel Kiros Habte as “rather paunchy for an athlete—beer gut midriff spilling over his swimsuit.” Had a male scribe written a similarly stinging critique about the physical appearance of a female athlete he’d have been drawn and quartered. Rosie, in fact, would be among the first to call the cad a chauvinist troglodyte.

Someone must have piddled in Ramblin’ Rosie’s Corn Flakes, because she didn’t stop at body shaming in her Games wrapup column. DiManno also whinged about “the snarky commentariat ‘colleagues’ not here, who sniped at reporters’ work from the comfort of their TV sofa.” Oh, the poor dear. Is someone not treating her and her overworked, underfed colleagues like the sacred cows they believe themselves to be? Get over yourself, Rosie. If you make a living critiquing every mother’s son and daughter, you and your kind are fair game.

Caster Semenya: What is it about her that Steve Simmons would like us to discuss?

Tackiest tweet during the Olympics was delivered by Steve Simmons of Postmedia. He wrote: “Caster Semenya is easily through to the 800 finals. Talk amongst yourselves.” What would you have us discuss, Steve? Her incredible athlete skills? Or is it her appearance you would have us talk about? Or maybe her voice? Or her hyperandrogenism? I have a better idea for Simmons: He can give us his opinion on all of the above, then we’ll have a discussion. Except he won’t go there. Doesn’t have the gonads. He’d rather hide behind a cryptic, creepy tweet. I can only take that to mean he silently believes that Semenya, the gold-medal winner from South Africa, is too manly to be running with the real girls. Sad.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers: Bye week with the braintrust

We now take you inside the Winnipeg Blue Bombers bunker at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, where the team braintrust—CEO Wade Miller, general manager Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea—are using a bye week to review their first eight games and plot strategy for the back half of the Canadian Football League crusade…

O’SHEA: “I don’t know about you, Kyle, but I feel like we’ve dodged a bullet.”

WALTERS: “We? We didn’t dodge anything. It was your ass on the line, not mine. Wade and I already had you blindfolded, lit you a cigarette and had you standing against a wall. One more loss and…let’s just say it’s a good thing for you that Wade ordered me to order you to start Matt Nichols at quarterback and put Drew Willy in the dumpster when we were 1-4. Ain’t that right, Wade? ”

The Blue Bombers' three wise men: Mike O'Shea, Kyle Walters, Wade Miller. — The Blue Bombers’ three wise men: Mike O’Shea, Kyle Walters, Wade Miller.

O’SHEA: “Ya, I guess we were wrong about Willy.”

WALTERS: “We? We weren’t wrong about anything, Mike. Wade and I wanted Nichols to start at QB right from the get-go. Right outta training camp. But oooooh no. You had to have it your way. I swear, you’re as mule-headed as Wade is round. If we’d let you have it your way, Willy’d still be the starting quarterback and we’d be 1-7 instead of 4-4. Actually, you’d be outta Dodge and the old sheriff would be the new sheriff in town. Ain’t that right, Wade?”

O’SHEA: “You telling me that Paul LaPolice is here as offensive coordinator just so you have someone to step in if I screw up?”

WALTERS: “Do the math, Mike.”

O’SHEA: “Ya, let’s do some math. Now that we’ve got this thing turned around and won our last three games, maybe it’s time we talked numbers. Like numbers on a new contract. I’m what those annoying media people call—quote-unquote—a lame-duck coach, ’cause I’m on the last year of my contract. You’re good to go until the end of 2017, so what about me?”

WALTERS: “What you just said is the very reason we can’t give you a contract extension—I’m good to go only until the end of next year. That’s it. There’s no guarantee that Wade’s gonna keep me around after 2017. Maybe he’s already got someone in mind to replace me. Someone like Eric Tillman. So, again, do the math, Mike. Until I get an extension, you don’t get one. Besides, we’re not convinced you’ve turned this thing around. How do we know you won’t go back to Willy at the first sign of trouble? When Wade ordered me to order you to name Nichols the starting quarterback, you told the media that we hadn’t seen the last of Drew Willy. That he’d be back.”

O’SHEA: “The day I start Willy at quarterback again is the day I stop wearing my creepy short pants on the sideline. I’ve seen enough film to know that Matt Nichols is my main man.”

WALTERS: “Trust us, Mike, there’s only one way you’ll ever, ever, ever start Drew Willy at QB again—if Matt is in the hospital and there’s a priest beside his bed. It ain’t gonna happen. Meanwhile, it’s about those shorts of yours. What’s up with that?”

O’SHEA: “Did you bring me here to win football games or to get on the cover of GQ magazine?”

WALTERS: “Well, until recently, you and your short pants weren’t doing either one of those things. You’re 16-28!”

O’SHEA: “Ya, and you’re 18-38 in long pants! So what’s your point?”

WALTERS: “I guess my point should be that neither of us belongs on the cover of GQ and both of us are lucky that we can still afford to buy a new pair of pants, short or long. Most teams would have fired both of our sorry asses by now. I mean, I’m 18-38. You’re 16-28. What part of pathetic does the board of directors not understand?”

O’SHEA: “I think maybe Wade has ’em hoodwinked. He scares ’em. Or maybe he’s got incriminating pictures, or something. That’s gotta be it.”

WALTERS: “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you don’t screw this thing up by doing something stupid the rest of the way, like sending Clarence Denmark home to sit on a couch in Florida again.”

O’SHEA: “I didn’t get rid of Clarence in the first place. You released him in the off-season.”

WALTERS: “Ya, because after I spent all that money on Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith, I couldn’t afford to pay Clarence anymore. But now that he’s back and making mice nuts for a wage, he’s a keeper.”

O’SHEA: “And what do I do with Dressler and Smith once they’re healthy? I can’t have my highest-paid receivers standing on the sidelines.”

WALTERS: “Why not? You’ve got a $400,000 quarterback holding a clipboard on the sidelines. You’re winning without him. And you’re winning without Dressler and Smith and all the other high-priced starters who’ve been injured. What does that tell you?”

O’SHEA: “It tells me that you have spent a lot of money foolishly. Ain’t that right, Wade?”

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 46 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

A helpful guide to political correctness for 21st century sports scribes and broadcasters

I feel sorry for scribes and broadcasters covering the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil.

I mean, they’re working without a net. Political correctness is running at a faster gallop than Usain Bolt and, coupled with a language landscape that has changed dramatically this century, they no longer know what is safe to say and write. That’s why, barely into the second week of the Games, media already have issued more mea culpas than Donald Trump’s apologists. Someone’s ox is always being gored and the jock journalists can’t tell all the special-interest groups without a program.

Well, I like to think of myself as a helpful sort, so I’ve begun to piece together a new, politically correct style guide for the news scavengers in Rio de Janeiro and, indeed, for those here at home, just so they know what no longer is acceptable.

Let’s begin with some time-worn cliches and phrases. Use any of the following and you’re sure to put someone’s knickers in a knot (and, remember, this is just a start)…

Beggars can’t be choosers: Never use this phrase. It marginalizes the homeless. Most of them choose not to beg, but those who do choose to beg have their reason. You don’t have to agree with the reason—you don’t even have to know the reason—just leave the homeless out of it.

Life is a one-way street: Totally homophobic.

That’s a horse of a different color: Clearly racist. What does it matter what color the horse is?

Life is just a bowl of cherries: This can be perceived as a derogatory comment about a group of women who have yet to lose their virginity.

He’s in the driver’s seat: No, no, no, no, no. Women drive, too, and god forbid if you ever call in to question their ability behind a steering wheel. Nobody is in the driver’s seat. Ever.

They’re behind the 8-ball: Being behind the 8-ball carries a negative connotation. The 8-ball is black. Do the math.

He goes both ways: You might think you’re talking about a football player who plays both offence and defence, but someone is guaranteed to think you’re outing a bisexual athlete. Never out a gay or a bisexual athlete. Especially the men.

They control their own destiny: This will upset the gospel sharks who are convinced that their God controls all things and all people. They will remind you that all things are an act of God. Even game-winning field goals.

It was a clean sweep: Never use this phrase when referencing a women’s team, unless you want to do your own cooking and cleaning when you get home.

It’s a Cinderella story: That suggests it’s all about the shoes. More female-targeted sexism from male journalists.

Boys will be boys: What about Caitlyn Jenner?

He’s a real work horse: You want the people from PETA knocking on your door? Nothing will get them running faster than a suggestion that an animal is being used for anything other than petting. Animals are meant to be layabouts, don’t you know?

Let sleeping dogs lie: Go for it. This will make the PETA people happy. Then, again, it will likely alienate cat lovers, who’ll cry prejudice and insist that their kitties be considered equal-opportunity layabouts.

That’s his bread and butter: Promoting poor eating habits is a no-no. Generous helpings of bread and butter is an okay diet for sports writers, and I’ve seen enough of you scribes to know you’ve made a visit or three to the McDonald’s drive-thru. It’s okay for you to be soft around the middle, but dietitians will have your scalp (which is another phrase one never should use) if you talk up the benefits of bread and butter for athletes.

He’s a meat-and-potatoes guy: Oh, sure, tick off the vegetarians.

They’re feeling each other out: Oh my. What will the children think if they learn that grownups are feeling each other out? They’ll be scarred for life. Either that, or little Johnny will think it gives him license to cop a feel from little Suzie in the schoolyard.

It’s nip-and-tuck: Hey, plastic surgeons are people, too. They don’t want their serious skills to be trivialized into a sports cliche about a close game. They have feelings, even if that botox injection numbs the feeling in your face.

It’s a real barn-burner: Can you say KKK, kids?

That’ll put a few more grey hairs on his head: It’s acceptable to use this phrase when discussing men. There’s nothing wrong with some snow on the mountaintop. It doesn’t mean the coach can no longer think straight. At worst, it means he needs a little dab of Just For Men. If, however, you’re talking about a woman and grey hair, it’s ageism.

His coming-out party: Not a phrase to be used for male athletes. We know there are no openly gay men in any sports league that truly matters to the beer-swilling, belching lumps who sit on bar stools. But mention of a coming-out party tends to make the closeted gays antsy. Numerous gay female athletes have had their sexual coming-out parties, but since men only write about women’s sports once every four years, they probably haven’t noticed all the lesbians.

A pretty Penny: Holy sexism, Batgirl! Don’t even think of going here. Pennys aren’t to be told that they’re pretty. Not at any age. If you have to write about an athlete named Penny, change her name to something that is non-punable so tabloids can’t use it for a cheesy play-on-words.

Don’t wash your dirty laundry in public: Even though it’s been documented that many men (usually bachelors) wash their dirty laundry in those convenient places we call laundromats, radical feminists shall insist that this is yet one more example of sexist stereotyping.

She’s the (insert male athlete’s name) of her sport: Write or say this and you’re on your own, pal. And I shouldn’t have to explain why.

About grrrrl power ‘n’ goddesses…an ugly American in Rio…giving A-Rod the needle…the Otta-whine RedBlacks…a mea culpa…and not wearing a beach volleyball bikini

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Quiz me this, Sexism Police: If a writer uses the word “goddesses” to describe a female athlete, is that sexist or not? Or does it depend on the gender of the scribe?

I ask this because one wordsmith has bestowed the loft of “goddesses” upon the women who are responsible for the entirety of Canada’s medal haul at the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil. Given the sensitivities of the day, such a descriptive might be expected to inspire howls of protest because the word “goddess” is very much about female physical beauty.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a goddess is “a female deity” or “a woman who is greatly admired, especially for her beauty.” Merriam-Webster defines goddess as “a female god,” or “a women whose great charm or beauty arouses adoration.”

So, you need to be female and you need to be beautiful in appearance. All others need not apply.

Sounds sexist to me.

Actually, much of the column written by Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star could be considered sexist, to the point of being an exercise in the gender-shaming of men. I mean, it’s appropriate to laud the ladies for their achievements at Rio de Janeiro with catchy phrases like “Grrrrl power in the pool.” But Ramblin’ Rosie shifts into an us-vs.-them mode. The women vs. the men. It’s XII medals for the XX side. And the XY side? Zip. Zilch. The men have provided no yang to the women’s yin.

Still, I don’t think DiManno was being sexist in her use of the term “goddesses” or her emphasis on the lack of success, to date, by Canada’s male Olympians. (Stooping to the branding of certain scribes/broadcasters as “chauvinistic troglodytes” is another matter.)

I just find it interesting that she can use a word, the meaning of which speaks directly to a women’s physical beauty, and it goes unchallenged. I’m not sure a guy would get away with that. Not in today’s politically correct climate. Surely someone would be offended. Which might explain why, in a similarly themed column, Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press took the safe route and described our women as “fierce female warriors.”

The gold medal for Ugly American in Rio goes to Hope Solo, goalkeeper with the United States women’s soccer side. Her gamesmanship, whereby she demanded a new pair of gloves prior to the final kick in a shootout loss to Sweden, was pathetic theatrics, but calling the victors a “bunch of cowards” went beyond the pale. According to Solo, those pesky Swedes displayed extremely bad manners in refusing to join the Americans in a game of run-and-gun football. How dare they sit back and defend? Dirty, rotten “cowards.” And, to think, some Americans wonder why the world cheers against them.

Hard to imagine that the now-retired Alex Rodriguez is on the New York Yankees’ payroll as an adviser. What pearls of wisdom will he dispense to young players with Major League Baseball’s most-storied franchise? In which butt cheek to inject the needle?

I don’t know what is worthy of more yuks, the Saskatchewan Roughriders being found guilty of cheating and still sporting a woeful 1-6 record for this Canadian Football League season or former genius Chris Jones insisting that all fans wishing to attend Gang Green workouts must first produce photo identification and sign in. Perhaps Jones shouldn’t just ask fans to sign in. Let ’em on the field. One or two of them might be able to do something most of the Riders are incapable of. You know, like catch a football.

I’m all for chasing dreams, so I won’t be joining the chorus of rude laughter that has accompanied football washout Tim Tebow since he expressed a desire to play professional baseball. Just one piece of advice for Tim, though: Play first base, because you rarely have to throw the ball.

That was quite the pity party Henry Burris had last week. Smilin’ Hank was snarlin’ Hank, most of his venom directed at the talking heads on the TSN football panel, who might or might not have been critical of him. Chris Schultz called the Burris rant an “overreaction,” while Matt Dunigan was “disappointed” and submitted Snarlin’ Hank’s “focus is all out of whack.” Milt Stegall got more personal, saying, “You sound like a baby right now, that’s exactly what you sound like.” You got it, Milt, just call Hank the Otta-whine RedBlacks quarterback.

Alex Rodriguez: Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I have a theory about the outpouring of support for Elliotte Friedman from his brethren in the Fourth Estate—he apologized. Jock journalists, you see, are not accustomed to hearing mea culpas. They expect lies and denial (hello, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, A-Rod, Roger Clemens, Alan Eagleson, Roger Goodell, Russia, Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa et al). Thus, when Friedman apologized for his mega-mistake in the Olympic men’s 200-meter individual medley final, the boys and girls rallied ’round him, not simply because they don’t eat their own, but for his honesty. It’s in short supply in sports.

Not in short supply is casual homophobia. BBC commentator Paul Hand had this to say as a kiss-cam scanned the audience during a women’s tennis match in Rio: “Let’s hope they don’t go on to two blokes sat next to each other.” No Paul. The sight of gay people kissing is not the problem. The problem is people like you who have a problem watching gay people kiss.

A fun BBC thing is the site Who is Your Olympic Body Match? You type in your height, weight and age and you’re given the names of Olympic athletes who most closely resemble you. Mine are Barbora Strykova, a Czech tennis player, Natalia Alfaro, a Costa Rican beach volleyball player, and Wai Sze Lee, a Hong Kong track cyclist. I can handle playing tennis and riding a bike, but you’ll never catch me wearing one of those skimpy beach volleyball bikinis. For which we all can be thankful.

The Elliotte Friedman Flub: Will the sports media cut athletes the same kind of slack?

So, Elliotte Friedman had a Bill Buckner d’oh moment.

He didn’t simply stumble in his clumsy call of the men’s 200-meter individual medley final on Thursday at the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil. He performed a full-on face plant into the compost heap. Misidentifying Michael Phelps and declaring Ryan Lochte the gold-medal winner when, in fact, the latter finished a distant fifth is as bad a broadcasting blunder as you’re apt to hear.

What I find interesting, however, is the fallout to Friedman’s epic faux pas.

Basically, the CBC gab guy has been given a get-out-of-jail-free card. From 95 per cent of tweeters. And, more notably, from 100 per cent of his brethren in the toy department of Canada’s Fourth Estate. The prevailing theme seems to be, “Hey, stuff happens. Nothing to see here, folks. Let’s move along.”

That would be fine, except for one thing—sports scribes/chin-waggers are the first to brandish the pitchforks and torches whenever a professional athlete, coach, manager, commissioner (hello, Roger Goodell) or team owner stubs a toe.

Glossing over the Friedman Flub, as they have, is hypocrisy unharnessed.

I realize that jock journalists, most notably in the print stable, are loath to eat their own, and I’m not advocating the kicking of a good man when he’s down. But if they’re going to pick Friedman up, dust him off, smooth his clothing and apply salve to his emotional owies, should they not extend similar sympathies and kindnesses to the athletes they write and talk about?

We won’t hold our breath waiting for that to happen, though, will we?

Hey, I feel for Friedman, because once upon a time I was in the media. I know the demands and the stress levels. So I get it. The thing is, some have gone to ridiculous extremes in rallying ’round their crestfallen and contrite colleague.

A Dave Shoalts column in the Globe and Mail provides an example of the sugar coating.

“Twenty-two minutes after that horrendous miscue, in which he confused gold-medal winner Michael Phelps for his fellow American swimmer Ryan Lochte for the entire race, Friedman went back to the CBC microphone and delivered a solid play-by-play call of Penny Oleksiak’s historic gold-medal win for Canada.”

Excuse me? Solid play-by-play? Friedman mistakenly referred to Oleksiak as Emily Overholt. But Shoalts added yet more sweetness, submitting the gaffe was a mere “slip of the tongue.”

Spare me.

Whatever became of telling it like it is in sports? Friedman screwed up. Royally. Not once but twice. And the fact he immediately delivered a mea culpa on air and on Twitter doesn’t erase that reality. Fact is, he had no choice but to apologize during the broadcast. I mean, he had the wrong guy winning the race, for cripes sake.

Some look at the kid-gloves handling of the Friedman Flub as a ripe example of us being a kinder, gentler, more polite people. Road apples! Imagine the reaction had this been an American broadcaster bungling the call of a race featuring two Canadian swimmers. We’d freak out. It would be Harold Reynolds revisited.

Billl Buckner's d'oh moment. — Billl Buckner’s d’oh moment.

Look, Elliotte Friedman has been a solid reporter for more than two decades and oft has served as the voice of reason when natterbugs Glenn Healy and P.J. Stock were speaking no known language on Hockey Night in Canada.

Does his Olympics gaffe undo a lifetime of quality work? No. But this might stick to him like infamy has stuck to Bill Buckner. Few remember that Buckner had 2,715 base hits and batted .300 or better seven times during his lengthy Major League Baseball career. For Buckner, it always comes back to a baseball dribbling through his legs in the 10^th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

Hopefully, Friedman will be more fortunate than Buckner and his gaffe won’t become his Mary’s Little Lamb. Whatever the case, the next time one of the flowers of Canadian jock journalism has the urge to cut an athlete a new butthole, I hope he/she remembers how they cut Friedman large slack.

Man oh man, the Sexism Police are having a field day with the Rio Olympics

If it’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is equally accurate to suggest sexism is in the ear of the beholder.

And, oh boy, do the Sexism Police monitoring the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro ever have good hearing. And eyesight. They’re listening to and viewing the Five Ring Circus with ears and eyes wide open, convinced that there’s a sexist bogeyman lurking in every sound bite and turn of phrase. Why, if you listen and read closely enough, they’ll have you believing that there’s as much raw sewage and garbage spewing out of the broadcast booth and press box as there is into Guanabara Bay.

Katinka Hosszu: Her husband made her do it.

I mean, I’ve probably read two dozen articles accusing the media of sexist reporting. It’s to the point where I’m thinking that Slip of the Tongue and Dangling Participles might be new Olympic sports.

If so, we can present the gold medal to Dan Hicks right now, because the NBC gab guy had the bad manners to credit Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu’s world-record performance in the 400-meter individual medley to her coach/hubby, American Shane Tusup, who is “the guy responsible for turning his wife into a whole different swimmer.”

Joining Hicks on an increasingly crowded podium would be a couple of his colleagues at the Peacock Network—NBC’s chief marketing officer John Miller and talking head Jim Watson—as well as Hannah Parry of the Daily Mail in the U.K. and a twit of a tweeter at the Chicago Tribune.

But are we dealing with sexism or thin skin here? Let’s take a sober second look at a handful of the alleged sexism cases.

Dan Hicks: At first blush, yes, his comment sounds horribly sexist. A case, however, could be made that Hicks’s timing and news evaluation, if anything, were wonky.

Verdict: Did Hicks make the coach the story because Tusup is a he and Hosszu is a she? I doubt it. Clearly, in the immediate aftermath of her accomplishment, the focus ought to have been squarely on the Hungarian Hosszu. She was the lead story and deserved to be lavished in praise. Tusup should have been assigned as an afterthought. A sidebar, if you will. Hicks is guilty of a colossal gaffe in editorial judgment. He got it bass ackwards.

U.S. women's gymnastics team: Let's all celebrate at the mall, girls. — U.S. women’s gymnastics team: Let’s all celebrate at the mall, girls.

John Miller: The NBC marketing poohbah reacted to criticism of the network’s delayed coverage by saying, “The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans. More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”

Verdict: Guilty. Must-see TV coming to NBC next season—Real Housewives of Rio. No matter how you slice and dice Miller’s remarks, he’s guilty of sexist tripe of the highest order.

Jim Watson: The United States women’s gymnastics team wowed ’em in the qualifying round and, upon observing them smiling, giggling and glowing on the heels of their performance, Watson said the women “might as well be standing in the middle of a mall.” Yes, Jim, nothing delights a woman more than hanging out with all her mall-rat friends while the menfolk are off doing the heavy lifting in life.

Verdict: Guilty of sexism, as charged. Watson is sentenced to an entire afternoon of traipsing behind his wife (girlfriend?) while she travels from shoe store to shoe store to shoe store with all her mall-rat besties. And, of course, while the ladies are inside slipping in and out of pricey pumps, he must stand outside holding his wife’s purse. Then pick up the tab.

Katie Ledecky: Man oh man, what a swimmer.

Hannah Parry: Can a female reporter make sexist comments about female athletes? Well, I know gay people who are homophobic and transphobic. So sure. But is it sexist for Parry to write that American swimmer Katie Ledecky is being “touted as the female Michael Phelps?” By way of comparison, consider Canadian soccer star Christine Sinclair, long regarded as the best female footballer on the planet. If I were to write “Christine Sinclair is the female Lionel Messi” am I guilty of sexism? Must I write, “Christine Sinclair is to women’s soccer what Lionel Messi is to men’s soccer?” I’m saying the same thing, only using a different turn of phrase.

Verdict: Not guilty. Parry did not betray the sisterhood. She is comparing Ledecky favorably to the greatest swimmer of all time, which is not faint praise. It is, in fact, the highest manner of praise.

Chicago Tribune: After U.S. trap shooter Corey Cogdell-Unrein reached the podium, someone at the Trib posted this Twitter tease: “Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics.” Yikes. That old “wife of” thing just doesn’t cut it. Not even when the husband plays for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League.

Verdict: Guilty on the lesser charge of making a woefully lame attempt at localizing an international story. I mean, if Hillary Clinton is elected president of the United States and the Trib tweets, “Wife of former President wins White House” I’ll scream “Sexism!” In this case, though, trivializing Cogdell-Unrein’s achievement by linking her to her hubby is more an example of pathetic news judgment than it is sexist.

In summation, your honor, yes sexism has reared its ugly head at Rio, some of it outrageous and some of it exaggerated. And it’s a lot like the garbage in Guanabara Bay—there’s probably more to come.

About the Heritage Classic and Tom McVie…classic Winnipeg Jets uniforms…wearing the ‘C’…$465,000 lost in bike spokes…Queen Liz… and whinging from Rambling Rosie

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Tommy McVie and one of his ugly sports jackets, congratulating Terry Ruskowski after the Jets won their third WHA title.

Love the unis. Love the rosters. Most of all, I love the fact that Tom McVie will be coaching the Winnipeg Jets in the Heritage Classic fossil frolic with the Edmonton Oilers at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry.

There’s nothing not to like about the Heritage Classic, except perhaps the reality that some of our dearly departed—Ben Hatskin and John Bowie Ferguson and Lars-Erik Sjoberg and old friend Friar Nicolson et al—won’t be around to participate in the hijinks and shenanigans.

I truly hope the Jets squeeze in a tribute to Hatskin during the Oct. 22-23 soiree, because there would be no National Hockey League franchise in Winnipeg had it not been for Benny (yes, I know, I’m repeating myself here, but it bears repeating until something is done about it) and his foresight that helped create the Jets and the World Hockey Association in 1972.

That aside, it’s brilliant that McVie will be on board to provide the laugh track for the weekend. He might be the funniest man in hockey.

Tommy is also the last man to coach a championship outfit in River City. You’ll have to ask your grandparents about this, kids, but once upon a time the Jets actually qualified for the playoffs. And won championships. Three of them in four years, in fact.

Yuk-a-minute Tommy and his real ugly sports jackets had arrived in River City toward the tail end of the 1978-79 WHA crusade to guide the Jets to their third and final World Avco Trophy triumph. On one pit stop in Quebec City during the playoffs, I checked into my room at Le Chateau Frontenac and was alarmed at its size. I mean, you could squeeze more circus clowns into a phone booth than this cubbyhole.

“Tommy,” I said when we met in the lobby, “I’ve never stayed in such a small room. I can barely get my suitcase into the room.”

“You think your room is small?” he countered. “My room is so small that when I put my key in the door I broke a window inside!”

The following autumn, I was sitting with Tommy during a pre-season workout when Morris Lukowich burst in off the left wing and snapped a laser-like wrist shot into the top corner, glove side.

“Watching that,” McVie said, “is better than having sex.”

“Geez, Tom,” I responded, “that doesn’t say much for your wife.”

“Maybe not, but she didn’t score 60 goals last season.

“I never had as much fun working a beat during my 30 years in mainstream jock journalism as I did while Tommy and his ugly sports jackets were behind the Jets’ bench.

This is what you call a classic uniform.

What’s the official sound of the NHL Heritage Classic? Ka-ching!!!!!!!! Oh, yes, the Heritage Classic is also the Heritage Cash Grab, with True North quickly shifting into Black Friday/Boxing Day sales-like mode by offering the pre-purchase of one-off jerseys, t-shirts, hoodies and pennants. You can get your Heritage Premier jersey for $139.99, or your Heritage Premier Plus jersey for $164.99, or you Heritage Authentic Pro Jersey for $349.99. The ladies haven’t been ignored. We can purchase a Heritage Premier Women’s Jersey for $114.99. Why, by the time the shelves and display racks are empty (and they will be empty in short order), the Jets will be able to afford Jacob Trouba’s asking price.

I’ll say this for the Jets Heritage Classic uniforms: They truly underscore how butt ugly the Jets’ current logo is. I’ve never made any secret that the Jets 2.0 logo leaves me cold. I think it’s a regrettable bit of business. Set your eyes on Mark Scheifele in his Heritage Classic linen—that’s a classic uni and logo.

Why do people think Scheifele is too young to be captain of the Jets? He’s 23. Gabriel Landeskog wore the C in Colorado at age 19. Ditto Sidney Crosby and Vincent Lecavalier in Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, respectively. Jonathan Toews captained the Chicago Blackhawks at age 20, while Dale Hawerchuk, Steve Yzerman, Trevor Linden and Eric Lindros were C-men at age 21. I say if a guy’s old enough to grow a playoff beard, he’s old enough to wear the C. And, last time I looked, those were whiskers on Scheifele’s chin, not soup stains.

The skies lit up, then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers lit it up, and now everything is hunky dory in Bomberville. Well, okay, not really. The local football heroes remain on the south side of .500 on their 2016 Canadian Football League crusade, but, hey, they’ve won two games in succession. For the Bombers, that’s totally pigging out. I mean, they hadn’t gone back for second helpings in two years. And they’re in a playoff position, because the Edmonton Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders keep cooperating by losing games. What can possibly go wrong now? Other than head coach Mike O’Shea changing quarterbacks, that is.

I note that a Wayne Gretzky rookie card sold at auction for $465,000. How many kids didn’t realize that that little hunk of cardboard they stuck in the spokes of their bike tires was worth a small fortune? Do they realize what $465,000 can get them today? A down payment on a one room condo in Vancouver, that’s what.

Just in time for that hard-to-shop-for monarchist on your Christmas list: A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. This isn’t just any portrait of Queen Liz, mind you. You’re going to need high ceilings. Like 16 feet worth of high. It’s the painting of Her Royal Highness that once adorned the rafters and north wall of the old Winnipeg Arena. The monstrosity is 16 feet high, 14 feet wide and weighs twice as much as any member of the Blue Bombers O-line. It’s available on Kijiji. There’s no asking price, but I’m guessing it won’t fetch as much as a Gretzky rookie card. It won’t fit in bike spokes, either.

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star doesn’t think much of surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing joining the Summer Olympics menu “four years yon” in Tokyo. Apparently men’s baseball and women’s softball are okay because they’re “definitely sports,” and Rambling Rosie gives karate her blessing, as well, if only because it will make the host Japanese happy. But skateboarding? “Good grief. What your kamikaze kid does on the sidewalk.” That’s right, you tell ’em, Rosie. No sport that a kid can play on the sidewalk, street or driveway belongs in the Olympics. You know, like hockey, which our kamikaze kids play on the road (“Car!”) spring, summer, winter and autumn. Get a grip, girl.

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