Let’s talk about the decline of the sports columnist in Canada…the Broadway Brouhaha…P.K. gushing over the gong show…hockey balls…and so long to Steady Eddie

Matty

There’s a matter I touched on last Sunday that I’d like to expand upon today.

It’s about an endangered species up here in Canada—the daily sports columnist.

Time was when the toy department at every major newspaper on Our Frozen Tundra featured at least one scribe tasked with delivering a daily yarn meant to make you think. Or inform you. Or make you PO’d like someone piddled on your Corn Flakes. Or make you laugh. Or entertain you.

The sports columnist was “the man” (or, in rare cases, “the woman”).

You’d reach for the morning rag on your doorstep, or at the newsstand, knowing his/her words would either enrage or captivate you. Depending on one’s perspective, “the man” was either a doofus with the IQ of a garden gnome or a genius (okay, that’s a stretch; no one has ever mistaken any sports scribe for Einstein).

In my youth, “the man” was Jack Matheson.

I couldn’t wait to read Matty’s “stuff” when the Winnipeg Tribune landed on my doorstep at 89 Helmsdale Ave. in East Kildonan, and, in one of my life’s blessings, I had the privilege of working for and with him until the day in August 1980 when a stooge from Southam Inc. stood on a desk in the newsroom and told both of us that we were out of work.

I often handled Matty’s copy, but I never actually edited it. None of us did. We held a pencil in hand, prepared to correct a typo or a misspelled word, but no. It was pristine. Always. And there was never any thought given to tinkering with structure or his turn of phrase. That would have been like painting a goatee on the Mona Lisa. Or telling Paul McCartney that he might want to have another go at the lyrics and melody to Yesterday.

The point is, there was a Matty at dailies across the land—Trent Frayne, Milt Dunnell, Jim Taylor, John Robertson, Dick Beddoes, Cam Cole, Jim Hunt, Terry Jones, Hal Sigurdson, Eric Bishop, Christie Blatchford, Allen Abel, Stephen Brunt, Dink Carroll, Jim Coleman, Shakey Johnson, Hal Walker, Jim Proudfoot, Ed Willes, etc.

Their copy might not have been as clean, but they all had their own style and all were must-read, sports-front scribes in their respective markets.

Today, the sports columnist on Our Frozen Tundra is a dying breed, mainly due to Postmedia’s ransacking of toy departments hither and yon.

Who’s left as a stand-alone, full-time general jock columnist? Well, there’s Cathal Kelly, Steve Simmons and Dave Feschuk. Three guys in the Republic of Tranna.

Other people write columns, of course. Just not daily, or at least four per week.

Paul Friesen, as an e.g., does a superb job supplying opinion for the Winnipeg Sun when granted the space to do so. Sadly, Postmedia has left the tabloid with a bare-bones budget, a bare-bones staff and a bare-bones sports section that some days has so few pages it couldn’t line the bottom of a budgie cage. As a consequence, Friesen’s opining seems to be hit-and-miss. Is he working the Jets beat, the Bombers beat, the curling beat, writing a feature, or on his soapbox? Who knows from day-to-day?

Meantime, opinion is a gaping hole on the other side of the street at the Winnipeg Free Press. The Drab Slab toy department features a fine roster of reporters, from top to bottom, but it’s lacked a definitive jock voice since Paul Wiecek swanned off into the sunset in 2018.

Oddly enough, the sports column is disappearing at a time when it should be more vital than ever.

Think about it. By the time we open (or call up) our favorite fish wrap in the morning, we already know who won, who lost, who scored, which jock the FBI is targeting in a gambling probe, and which U.S. state is the latest to kick female transgender athletes to the curb.

Thus, I don’t need a rehash of something like the old fashioned shinny square dance New York and New Jersey engaged in the other night, a Gotham gong show featuring throwback-to-the-1970s Rangers rookie Matt Rempe and more fighting than you’ll see in a John Wayne western. I want to know the sports columnist’s take on the mayhem at Madison Square Garden. Tell me, is it a black eye on the National Hockey League, or is a circus-like sideshow a selling point for a sport that struggles mightily to attract attention in the U.S.?

The Broadway Brouhaha is what’s known as “the talker.” You know, what the rabble is squawking about at the water cooler and in watering holes the next day.

The “talker” once was the sports columnist’s wheelhouse, but, alas, he/she appears to be as outdated as a telephone land line.

More’s the pity.

Perhaps you don’t think a daily columnist adds anything special to a sports section. After all, they’re just paper blowhards, right? Except opinion sells. Give a look and a listen to jock talk on TV shows with a made-in-America sticker. What do they deliver in heaping helpings? Opinion. Gums flap like flags in a stiff breeze. Men and women debate the talker of the day. They disagree and sometimes shout at each other (hello, Stephen A. Smith and Mad Dog Russo) as they flog or rain hosannas on a player/coach/manager/owner. Either way, none of the gasbags is looking for a fence to sit on. And a good portion of them are former sports columnists (hello, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon). Opinion is the reason a podcast like Winnipeg Sports Talk exists. Hustler Paterson and Michael Remis don’t sit in front of a mic and read scores. They opine, as do their guests. Yet, newspapers have moved away from that very thing. Go figure.

As a rule, the squawk boxes on TV jock talk stateside discuss hockey about as often as the Bidens and Trumps get together for a night of Trivial Pursuit. I mean, they’ll prattle on at length about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelse frolicking on a beach in some tropical locale, but give Connor McDavid or Nathan McKinnon a bit of oxygen? As if. (According to a December Gallup poll, the NHL ranks fifth on the food chain, behind the NFL 41%, MLB 10%, NBA 9%, MLS 5%, and barely a speed bump in front of the fast car crowd and fancy skating.) That, however, all changes when there are five fights two seconds into an NHL game, and eight skaters are excused for the night two seconds into an NHL game. Cement-head hockey cannot escape their notice, and gums flap at full gallop. Indeed, the boys on Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption weighed in on the Rangers-Devils romp of last Wednesday, as did the regrettable Pat McAfee, who was thoughtful enough to cover up his arm pits for the occasion. “Hockey’s the only sport that’s left that isn’t scared to go ahead and throw some hands. Settle some businesses,” the ESPN host said, as his stooges provided the backup vocals and grunted in agreement. So, yes, hockey’s Cult of Dumb extends to the TV studio. And the biggest nincompoop was McAfee’s guest, P.K. Subban, former NHL practitioner of the slewfoot. “This is the most exciting thing in sports, I don’t care what anybody says,” the ESPN gasbag gushed. “We need this in hockey. This trumps everything in sports. This is great for the game. This is what hockey’s all about.” Oy.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 1,176: According to Subban, “There’s an element of toughness and testicular fortitude that goes into being a hockey player.” Hmmm. Wasn’t it just the other day that Philly Flyers head coach John Tortorella suggested his players might not have “enough balls” to be successful. Which begs the question: How many balls is an NHL player expected to have?

Isn’t it time media stopped giving oxygen to the angry-man act Tortorella has been selling lo these many years? Why do they continue to highlight his pathetic hissy fits? He isn’t funny, he isn’t clever, he isn’t entertaining, and rant No. 8,957 certainly isn’t news. He’s a nasty bit of business, is all. I suppose we’ll always have the occasional public flogging of athletes by coaches, managers and/or owners, but when it becomes chronic a case could be made that it’s a workplace issue. I mean, in what other business would employees be expected to put up with such a high level of bullying and denigration from a supervisor?

I’ve heard some mutterings about an eastern media bias that will work against Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks in voting for the Norris Trophy as top defenceman in the NHL. According to the conspiracy theorists, since eastern-based news hounds are in the kip when Hughes is playing on the West Coast, they don’t observe his brilliance, thus they look past him in balloting. Pure piffle. Postal or zip code has nothing to do with it. Drew Doughty won the Norris trinket in 2016, and, like Vancity, there’s oceanfront property where he hangs his hat. Ditto Rob Blake. Erik Karlsson and Brent Burns both took the Norris home while wearing San Jose linen and, last time I looked at a map of the U.S., you can’t step any closer to the Pacific Ocean without getting your toes wet. So spare us the phony narrative, fellas.

Loved this quote from hoops hall-of-famer and current talking head Charles Barkley on the Dan Patrick Show: “We got enough idiots and fools on television that act like they know everything about every sport. I watched more women’s college basketball the last three weeks than I have all year. So, I don’t want to get on here like some of these fools on other networks, who talk about every sport like they’re an expert on every sport. And quit using the damn word ‘expert.’ There’s no such thing as an expert. It’s just somebody’s opinion. I hate when these guys say, ‘Well, he’s an expert.’ No, he’s not. It’s just some fool giving his opinion.”

I keep awaiting evidence that the Drab Slab is giving female athletes/teams an increased share of space in the sports section. Alas, it isn’t happening. Here are the numbers for articles exclusive to females/males in the first three months this year vs. 2023:

2024
January: 280 M; 73 F…30 local F
February: 244 M; 76 F…25 local F
March 255 M; 70 F…33 local F
Totals: 779 M; 219 F…88 local F

2023
January: 362 M; 74 F…22 local F
February: 306 M; 86 F…38 local F
March: 347 M; 80 F…36 local F
Totals: 1,015 M; 240 F…96 local F

In fairness, it must be pointed out that, in a nickels-and-dimes decision, the Drab Slab ceased posting its Sunday e-edition last July, thus the total numbers for the first three months this year vs. 2023 are bound to be lower. However, the average number of articles exclusive to female athletes/teams per edition is almost identical—1.17 to 1.07.

And, finally, Eddie Dearden has left us at age 96, and his death cuts close to home because he was second-in-command in the Winnipeg Tribune sports department when I broke in more than 50 years ago. Eddie worked the golf beat in the summer and the Jets in the winter and, as mentioned, he gave us our marching orders whenever sports editor Jack Matheson had traipsed off to track down the Bombers, our elite curlers or the national men’s hockey team. Also gone from my original June 1971 roll call in Trib sports are Matty, Vince Leah, Gus Collins, Harold Loster and Ronny Meyers, leaving just Vic Grant, Larry Tucker and myself on the green side of the sod. Although they weren’t on board in ’71, we also lost Murray (Swamp Dog) Rauw and Bob (Doc) Holliday not so long ago. Trib Sports was special people, special talents. I think about them often.

Let’s talk about jock journos who played the game (or not)…TSN’s phantom tripleheader…Argos still snubbed in The ROT…The Big Freakout in E-Town…Genie’s in a pickle…obnoxious New Yorkers…and other things on my mind

Mina Kimes

I watched Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn on TSN this past Thursday and Friday.

The natterbugs on the two sports squawk shows were Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Woody Paige, Clinton Yates, Frank Isola, Emily Kaplan, Kevin Blackistone, Marcel Louis-Jacques, Pablo Torre and Israel Gutierrez. They covered a vast range of subject matter, speaking with authority, conviction, insight, personal experience and mixing in a dab of humor.

To the best of my knowledge, none among them has ever drawn pay to hit a baseball, fling a football, boot a soccer ball, shoot a puck or launch and land a three-pointer in hoops.

Heck, some of them would be doing well to bend over and touch their toes without requiring prompt medical attention, let alone go mano-a-mano vs. Nikola Jokic.

So here’s the question: Should it matter that they never played the game?

I mean, is there a section in the jock journo manual that stipulates a talking head or scribe must have played the game before he or she is paid to talk or write about the game?

That became a matter for some chatter this past week because ESPN has agreed to compensate Mina Kimes to the tune of $1.7 million per year to flap her gums about the National Football League. Given that she’s no bigger than a bar stool, Mina has not played the game at an elite level, something her critics didn’t hesitate to introduce to the discussion.

Examples:

“Kimes’ role is particularly interesting when you consider that, well, she never played NFL football. Or any football, for that matter,” wrote Bobby Burack in OutKick, the Fearless Sports Media Company that leans far right politically. “In fact, she is the only general NFL analyst at the network who never played. Her counterparts include Marcus Spears, Dan Orlovsky, Bart Scott, Domonique Foxworth, Robert Griffin, and Ryan Clark. And while that group hardly impressed in the NFL, they at least spent time under coaches and film directors. They know more about football than Mina Kimes.”

Nick Adams submitted that Kimes “doesn’t know the difference between defensive holding and pass interference.” He also took aim at ESPN, claiming the re-upping of Kimes serves as a clear signal that the Worldwide Leader in Sports is on a mission “to advance communism and take jobs away from alpha males.”

Oh my. Kimes managed to get up those, and other, noses simply because she’s never had to cover Travis Kelsey on a quick slant? Oh, and she’s part of a plot to spread communism? Oy.

Those boys are permitted their opinions, of course, but it’s rubbish and they know it, especially the cartoonish Adams, a right wing blowhard who’s a parody of himself. He likely doesn’t believe half of what he says and doesn’t expect us to believe the other half. He’s spoofing us. He’s a Saturday Night Live skit and not a very good one. Unless you consider female-bashing clever humor.

Still, there are many among the rabble who genuinely subscribe to the notion that one need play the game at the elite level to talk and/or write the game.

Like I said, rubbish. It never has been and never will be a requirement for journalism school.

Look, if it’s life, I prefer someone who’s been there and done that to tell me about it. I mean, only 12 men have walked on the moon, so only 12 men can speak about the experience with any measure of authority, and eight of them are dead. If I’m going under the knife to fix a wonky heart, I want the doctor with scalpel-in-hand to have a medical degree in a frame on the office wall before she or he commences slicing and dicing.

But we’re talking the yadda, yadda, yadda and scribbling of sports here. No reader, viewer or listener is at risk of dying from a dangling participle, a run-on sentence or tripping over a tangled tongue, although I’ve known countless writers who’ve spilled buckets of blood agonizing over a lede.

Jock journos need to be informative, accurate, detailed, knowledgeable, insightful, truthful, curious, passionate, and have good contacts. It’s a bonus if they’re colorful and entertaining. All those traits can be acquired without spending time in a huddle with Patrick Mahomes.

Dave Naylor is a case in point. His sole flirtation with playing Rouge Football at the highest level was a gimmicky gig at the Saskatchewan Roughriders rookie training sessions in 1995. Yet he sits in with the hall-of-famers and former coaches on the CFL on TSN panel, and he doesn’t defer to them when the gums are flapping. His Canadian Football League knowledge is vast, and Nails is living, breathing evidence that grabbing grass is not a necessity.

That also applies to movie or music critics.

Roger Ebert delivered thousands of film reviews in print, on TV and online that influenced actors, filmmakers and movie-goers, but he was never a leading man on the silver screen. He never played the game.

Simon Cowell is a man of no known music or acting skill, other than playing the heel on TV talent shows. Yet even though he never played the game, one word from him, favorable or scathing in negativity, changes lives every week. Ask Carrie Underwood about that.

Mina Kimes certainly doesn’t hold that degree of sway as a talking head on ESPN, but she’s not there to help Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers win another Super Bowl trophy. It’s her task to critique, inform and entertain. She does a good job…even if she’s never played the game.

If a sports scribe or broadcaster was required to play the game at the elite level in order to cover the game, there would be the grand sum of zero female jock journos writing and talking about the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB or MLS. Think about it.

I once participated in a Winnipeg Jets rookie camp, playing in the final of four exhibition games at the request of GM John Ferguson. Did that experience (assisted on the first goal) at the National Hockey League level make me a better sports scribe? Many hundreds (nay, thousands) and the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame will tell you no, and I won’t disagree with them.

Look, there are numerous reasons why we can dis a sports broadcaster or scribe, but the bottom line is talent. That is, are they good at the job or not? And that, kids, is a matter of personal taste.

I mean, what’s appetizing to me is likely very different from what suits your fancy, especially if your preference is listening to Ron MacLean prattle on about Plato and Aristotle rather than Connor McDavid.

I think MacLean has become an insufferable gasbag whose pun-ish links to ancient philosophers and obscure authors on Hockey Night in Canada is nails-on-a-chalkboard creepy. Also idiotic. It’s as if he’s trying to impress, not inform: “Hey, listen to me…I read a history book this week! I am so smart!”

Others, however, embrace the MacLean shtick when he goes full pun-meister and works two or three Freudian references and at least one quote from a war general into a second-period natter on the complexities of a goaltender interference review.

It’s a trash and treasure thing: You says it’s treasure, I say it’s trash.

Similarly, I like Jennifer Botterill’s sound bites on HNIC, most notably when she engages Kevin Bieksa in a hissing match about cement-head hockey. Jennifer frowns on fisticuffs. She has no appetite for the dark side of shinny. Bieksa, on the other hand, is a strong and loud advocate for ruffian tactics because, hey, he’s a guy’s guy who played when a guard dog sat at the end of every National Hockey League team bench. It was beat ’em in the alley, take no prisoners and do whatever dirty deed necessary to get a mention from Don Cherry on Coach’s Corner or, better yet, featured on one of his rock ’em, sock ’em videos. Well, I think Bieksa is a boor. I think Botterill is a beauty. For many, many others it’s the opposite.

So there I was in the small hours of Saturday, watching a promo for TSN’s Super Saturday of three-down football. Three games, kicking off at 10 a.m. I made a mental note to hunker down for the day. Alas, what TSN didn’t tell me is that there was no Super Saturday out here on the Western Flank. While others in the great sprawl that is Canada watched the Montreal Larks-Toronto Argos and Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Saskatchewan Flatlanders, we were force-fed SportsCentre, mixed doubles tennis, Countdown to UFC, Amazing Race Canada, and the U.S. Open women’s singles final on TSN1. So you can mark me down as PO’d. Royally PO’d. Fact is, only one of the five TSN channels showed the tripleheader. Pathetic.
Saturday on TSN
TSN1: Stamps vs. Elks
TSN3: Als vs. Argos; Riders vs. Bombers; Stamps vs. Elks
TSN4: Stamps vs. Elks

The Toronto Argos are Grey Cup champions. They are the finest collection of grass-grabbers, growlers and creators of snot bubbles in Rouge Football, with a 10-1 record. Does anyone in the Republic of Tranna notice? Just the 14,415 who found their way to BMO Field to watch the Boatmen and Montreal Larks frolic on Saturday afternoon. If the citizenry in The ROT won’t support that outfit, there’s no hope.

I noted that the Winnipeg Jets were trending on Twitter yesterday. Just don’t ask me why.

Oh, dear, official training exercises have yet to commence for the 2023-24 NHL season and the rabble in E-Town, including the media, have already begun The Big Freakout over the potential adios of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl from the Edmonton Oilers. The Edmonton Sun ran this headline the other day: “Will they stay or will they go?” Good grief. Rein it in, people. Draisaitl and McDavid have two and three more springs, respectively, to disappoint Edmonton Oilers fans.

Has the rag trade changed so much since I left in 1999 that sports scribes are now openly cheering for teams that they write about, or might write about? Apparently so. I mean, when I read a tweet rooting on the Toronto Blue Jays to qualify for the Major League Baseball post-season (“please and thanks”), it tells me the ‘no cheering in the press box’ rule has disappeared like a stack of hot dogs in front of Joey Chestnut.

Just wondering: Will people still be talking about the Spanish Soccer Smooch 2,000 years from now, or is Judas’ record for longevity safe?

When you dream of Genie, is she on the cover of a glam mag or a pickleball court? Well, our one-time tennis darling, Genie Bouchard, is joining the Professional Pickleball Association Tour in 2024. Just wondering: Does Pickleball Illustrated have a swimsuit issue?

The U.S. Open tennis tournament has been a strange bit of business: Daniil Medvedev predicted “one player gonna die” from the swelter of a late Gotham summer, a customer was booted from Arthur Ashe Stadium for singing a Hitler-era Nazi anthem, and another glued his feet to the floor in an environment protest. Between the heat, the Hitler groupie and Glue Boy, hardly anyone noticed that John McEnroe put his foot in his mouth again.

Hey, I consider Johnny Mac to be the best commentator in tennis, if not all sports, but he shoves his foot in his yap so often that I don’t know how he has room for food.

I get that most among the rabble at Arthur Ashe Stadium were rooting for their girl Coco Gauff in the women’s singles final vs. Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday, but booing when the Belarusian botched her serves? That’s lame. Also a New York kind of obnoxious.

And, finally, on the subject of boorish behavior, former pitcher David Wells attended a New York Yankees oldtimers gig on Saturday and offered this nugget of pure bile: “We’re in a different world. It sucks. That’s why everyone should carry a gun.” There are no words.