Calgary Stampeders – Page 7 – The River City Renegade

About the Toronto Argonauts being no laughing matter…CFL shrinkage…a mad hatter at bluebombers.com…pigskin prayer power…when Michael Sam was the man…CFL power rankings…greybeard golf…and other things on my mind

One fried egg-and-cheese sandwich on whole wheat toast and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…

It has occurred to me, and many others, that we might be witnessing the death throes of the Toronto Argonauts—the franchise, if not this year’s on-field product.

I mean, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment’s motto is “Bringing The World To Its Feet,” but very few of those feet are parading to BMO Field. Unless, of course, Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley, Sebastian Giovinco and friends are having a kick-about.

Oh, yes, they love their footy in the Republic of Tranna. Red-clad, scarf-wearing locals traipse to BMO Field whenever Toronto FC is in frolic, and it matters little that the level of play in Major League Soccer isn’t a match for the English Premier League, the Bundesliga in Germany, Serie A in Italy, or Spain’s La Liga. Fitba is a “happening” in the ROT, and the Reds are averaging 26,591 customers this year, marginally down from a 27,647 head count in 2017.

The Argos, on the other hand, they’re a “happening” like the Don River is the Pacific Ocean.

How sparse are the audiences when the Boatmen are grabbing the real and fake grass at BMO Field? I’ve seen more circus clowns squeeze into a Volkswagen Beetle. The winner of the 50/50 draw at the last home game was later seen asking Yonge Street panhandlers for spare change.

We tend to joke about stuff like that because, let’s face it, cracking wise about The 6ix is what those of us who dwell in the colonies do. The ROT is always good for cheap laughs, whether it’s Drake making an ass clown of himself at a Raptors game, Premier Buck-a-Beer promising cheap suds, or the Maple Leafs’ 51st annual retooling season.

This Argos business, however, isn’t yuk-it-up material. Not if you’re a fan of the Canadian Football League.

I started following three-down football in the 1950s. Most of my heroes wore the blue-and-gold linen of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, but Dick Shatto, adorned in the double blue of the Boatmen, was among my favorite players. He was so smooth, and an impossibly handsome man. I remember reading about Tobin Rote, the gunslinger of a quarterback, and Cookie Gilchrist, the fierce and feared running back. I watched them intently, and with much admiration and awe, whenever the Argos appeared on the black-and-white screen of our rabbit-eared TV.

That’s why it pains me to see an ocean of unoccupied seats at BMO Field on Argos game nights/days.

In their 2017 crusade, the Boatmen attracted an average of 13,913 customers. This year the head count is worse—12,836 average, with a low-water mark of 10,844 for a visit from the Bombers. That’s cringeworthy, also alarming, and the hit to MLSE’s bottom line must be substantial.

I’ve never completely bought into the argument that the CFL absolutely needs the ROT to survive, and I’m confident that western football can exist without it. I will, however, submit that the three-down enterprise is much better with a robust Argos franchise in the mix. It would be a shame if MLSE chose to tap out.

After all, if not for the Argos, what would we have to laugh about in the summer and autumn? Oh, that’s right…there’s always the Blue Jays.

Damien Cox of the Toronto Star/Sportsnet posted this tweet last week after 35,623 folks showed up at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton for a showdown between the Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders: “A crowd of less than 36,000 is the biggest in the CFL this season and is considered a big success. My goodness, this league has shrunk.” Well, yes and no. Toronto and Montreal certainly have shrunk significantly, both in attendance and size of facility. The rest of the CFL, not so much. High tide for CFL attendance arrived in 1978, when the league averaged 31,879. The Montreal Alouettes and Argos led the way with 54,471 and 46,545, respectively. This year, they’re down to 17,861 and 12,836. That’s 36,610 customers lost in Montreal and 33,709 in the ROT. That’s what you call shrinkage.

Good bit on Bombers QB Matt Nichols by young Eddie Tait of bluebombers.com. I’m not sure if the highlight of the piece is the tale Nichols tells about almost being stuck with a huge restaurant tab while a member of the Dallas Cowboys, or young Eddie’s lid. He’s really rockin’ the funny hat. You might want to check it out.

Kirk Penton continues to crank out the good CFL stuff for The Athletic, and last week one of his insiders (a coach or GM) had this to say about the Argos switching from James Franklin to McLeod Bethel-Thompson at starting quarterback: “I have no idea if this played a role in it or not, but Franklin has a different personality. He’s not your average guy. It makes me wonder if the players have adopted him or not. He’s hugely religious.” Why would religion be part of the equation? The great Pinball Clemons is a man of deep faith, and I don’t ever recall it being a problem in his time as a player or coach with the Boatmen.

It’s three years ago tomorrow that Michael Sam became the only openly gay man to perform in a CFL game. Playing rush end for the Montreal Alouettes against the Ottawa RedBlacks, he was on the field for just 12 plays, making no tackles and, quite frankly, looking as out of place as the Pope in a pub. One week later, the former St. Louis Rams draft pick walked out on the Als, citing mental health issues, and never played another down on either side of the border.

The morning after Johnny Manziel made his disastrous CFL debut, TSN had nine videos of the Alouettes QB on its main web page. Sportsnet had one. But, hey, who’s counting?

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (7-0): The beat goes on.
2. Edmonton (5-2): Three wins vs. West outfits.
3. Winnipeg (4-3): Three wins vs. East outfits.
4. Saskatchewan (3-4): Terrell Owens anyone?
5. Hamilton (3-4): Alouettes were just what the doctor ordered.
6. Ottawa (4-3): Talk about coughing up an ugly hairball.
7. B.C. (2-4): Got screwed by a zebra, but still not good enough.
8. Toronto (2-5): What a comeback. Too bad no one cares in the Republic of Tranna.
9. Montreal (1-6): Getting worse in either official language.

Apparently, the hokey Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson mano-a-mano, greybeard golf challenge will take place on American Thanksgiving weekend. Just what everyone will need. Another turkey.

Max Domi says the Montreal Canadiens have the “pieces it takes to win,” in the upcoming National Hockey League crusade. And he would know this how? He spent the past three seasons playing in the Arizona desert, where the Coyotes did nothing but lose.

In the WTF department, the Ottawa Senators have agreed to pay Mark Stone $7.35 million to play right wing in 2018-19. That’s $1.75 million more than captain Blake Wheeler earns with the Winnipeg Jets. It’s $1.225 million more than les Jets pay Rink Rat Scheifele. How does Winnipeg general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff convince his players to sign on the cheap? Is he Reveen, the great hypnotist? Does he have damning photos? To date, only one player, Jacob Trouba, has had the strength to ward off Chevy’s mystic powers. Hard to figure.

Just wondering: Is it possible for Murat Ates of The Athletic Winnipeg to write an article on the Jets without mentioning salaries and advanced stats?

And, finally, I notice I have 312 followers on Twitter, a revelation that begat this simple question: Why? I mean, I wouldn’t follow me. But if you’re one of the 312, merci beaucoup. If you aren’t one of the 312, I don’t blame you.

About the Winnipeg Free Press not giving a damn and the Winnipeg Sun being overrun by Postmedia outriders…flag football…Jim Barker’s lid…tell us what you really think, Kate…CFL power rankings…Mario’s pricey biffies…peeing in a bottle…and a chill in Winnipeg’s hottest summer

Three soft-boiled eggs on whole wheat toast and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…

I cut my teeth in the rag trade by standing on the lumpy, pock-marked sidelines of local football fields, covering the Sisler Spartans, Churchill Bulldogs, Elmwood Eskimos and other outfits in the Winnipeg High School Football League.

If not at high school grid, I was courtside watching the best local tennis players do their thing on the clay courts of the Winnipeg Canoe Club or Winnipeg Lawn Tennis Club.

Major Junior/Junior/Senior hockey, kids curling, high school track and field, badminton, junior golf, bowling, figure skating, fastball, gymnastics, Junior baseball, hoops, amateur boxing…you name it, I was there to write about it. And if I wasn’t on site, I was on the Winnipeg Tribune sports desk, doing rewrites or laying out the pages that would prominently feature the games that local people played for no pay.

People continue to play those games today, but the sports sections of the two daily rags in River City have abandoned them. Almost entirely. And that is, indeed, sad and most unfortunate.

I mean, why am I reading about Miguel Angel Jiminez leading the Senior British Open golf tournament and a tie atop the ladies’ Scottish Open leaderboard in the Winnipeg Free Press instead of, say, the Manitoba Junior Baseball League playoffs, which are down to the short strokes and will feature two local outfits, the St. James A’s and Elmwood Giants, in the final?

Why does the Winnipeg Sun devote two full pages to a guy from Vancouver, Adam Zaruba, who’s in the training camp of the Philadelphia Eagles, two full pages to UFC blood-spilling in Calgary, and another two full pages to the Tranna-centric musings of Steve Simmons instead of the MJBL final four?

I know the reason behind the Sun’s dismissal of all local sports outfits that aren’t named Jets, Blue Bombers, Moose or Goldeyes, and I addressed it in January 2016, after parent company Postmedia adopted a centralized sports desk for its member papers:

“Some invisible head sitting behind some invisible desk in some remote outpost of the land now will decide what Winnipeg sports fans want to read. How this serves Pegtown provides serious pause for ponder. I mean, shouldn’t a sports editor be able to reach out and feel the pulse of the people? It’s easy enough to recognize that the Winnipeg Jets and Winnipeg Blue Bombers are the big dogs in town and, thus, generate the most talk. But what of lesser players such as the Manitoba Moose, the Winnipeg Goldeyes, the University of Manitoba Bisons, Junior hockey, local tennis, golf, curling, figure skating, etc.? My concern is that they shall be lost in the shuffle.”

The Moose and Goldeyes haven’t been ignored, but the others? Bupkus.

From July 15 until this very morning, the Sun printed 313 stories in 16 sports sections, and the professional-amateur split reads like a Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals scoreline—308-5. That’s a paltry 1.6 per cent of all copy devoted to amateur sports coverage, which has been sacrificed for Postmedia piffle from hither and yon, articles that have scant or zero significance to the River City rabble. Seriously. Steve Simmons taking issue with Kyle Lowry’s silence is something I want or need to read about in a Winnipeg newspaper?

It’s only marginally better at the Freep, where sports columnist Paul Wiecek wrote this at the start of the month: “A confluence of events over the Canada Day long weekend got me thinking about how we as Canadians so dramatically undervalue the contributions our amateur athletes make to this country, while simultaneously just as dramatically overvalue the contributions of our professional athletes.”

That particular column was more a gripe piece about greedy play-for-pay athletes, but the Drab Slab toy department and Wiecek then proved how little they value amateurs. From June 30 until this morning, they ran 614 articles and here’s the pro-amateur split: 558-56, or 9.1 per cent for amateurs. In that same time frame, Wiecek scribbled a dozen essays, 100 per cent aimed at pro athletes and pro sports (hmmm, 12 columns in 31 days…nice work if you can get it).

Like I said, I understand why the Sun has bottomed out on local amateur coverage. It’s marching to a national drummer. But the Freep has no excuse. It’s an independent paper with a sports section that doesn’t have any less space today than it did in the 1970s, and there’s no less staff. Which means there can only be one reason—they just don’t give a damn.

Speaking of pro sports, I must say, there was some gawdawful officiating on display during the Bombers-Tranna Argonauts skirmish on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, and it greatly benefited the home side. Winnipeg FC still would have beaten the Boatmen sans the generous flag-tossing, but, had the phantom infractions not been called, it might have made for a more compelling match.

The Bombers had a head count of 27,116 on Friday, their largest gathering of this Canadian Football League crusade, but Winnipeg FC is still 2,040 behind last-season’s three-game pace. That’s a dip of at least $57,000 in ticket revenue.

Rod Smith, Jim Barker, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall

I like Jim Barker’s input as one of the newbies among TSN’s cast of characters on CFL coverage, but he’s got to do something about his lid. If Barker’s grey-and-black locks aren’t flopping over his right eye, they’re sticking out at the back like he’s got bed head. Very distracting. As for that other newby, Davis Sanchez, if I want to listen to a man butcher the English language I’ll take Chris Walby any day. Bluto has better stories and he’s a lot funnier.

Listening to Kate Beirness of TSN glorify Johnny Manziel before and after the Edmonton Eskimos-Montreal Alouettes grass-grabber on Thursday night, I couldn’t help but wonder this: What does she really think about a guy who beat up his (former) girlfriend? What does she say about the Als quarterback once the camera is turned off? Is she being forced to promote him as the CFL’s shiny, new object?

I’ll say this for Paul Wiecek, he’s the only columnist in Canada who’s had the junk to write that Johnny Manziel’s doesn’t belong in the CFL due to his domestic violence history. If another scribe has spoken out, I missed it. So good on him.

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (6-0): Who’ll stop these guys?
2. Winnipeg (4-3): Feasting on Tranna.
3. Edmonton (4-2): All those penalties (17) won’t cut it against a top-level foe.
4. Saskatchewan (3-3): Has anyone figured out what Chris Jones is trying to do?
5. Ottawa (4-2): Not going to win many games kicking seven field goals.
6. B.C. (2-3): Not convinced Travis Lulay is the answer at QB.
7. Hamilton (2-4): Going…going…gone?
8. Toronto (1-5): Time to try another quarterback.
9. Montreal (1-5): Still awful in either official language.

I note that hockey legend Mario Lemieux is selling his shack in Mont-Tremblant, Que., for a mere $21,999,066 million. It has eight bedrooms and nine washrooms. That’s $2,444,340.66 per biffy, for those of you keeping score at home.

On the subject of bathrooms, tennis great Serena Williams is whinging about men in lab coats continually knocking on her door and demanding that she pee in a bottle. Apparently, the doping sleuths have visited her five times this year. So what’s the big deal? I’ve had to pee in a bottle six times in the past 10 months, and I’m not even a world-ranked tennis player.

Shouldn’t the promotion of Gina Kingsbury to general manager of Canada’s national women’s hockey team warrant more than an ‘oh, by the way’ blurb in the media? It was bottom-of-the back-pages news in the Free Press, and 10 pages deep into the Sun sports section.

And, finally, the silence since a National Hockey League arbitrator awarded Jacob Trouba a $5.5 million contract has been deafening. Nothing from Winnipeg Jets ownership/management. Nothing from the Trouba camp. Kind of puts a chill into Winnipeg’s hottest summer in 30 years.

About Public Enemy No. 1 in Winnipeg…Trouba’s gone…the Summer of Chevy…Johnny Rotten and Crescent Street in Montreal…Tiger, Tiger burning bright…and other things on my mind

Two eggs overeasy, toast and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…

Tough to tell who’s Public Enemy No. 1 in Good Ol’ Hometown today, Jacob Trouba or his paid mouthpiece, Kurt Overhardt.

I do believe, however, that Overhardt is ahead by a nose.

Here’s a small sampling of what the rabble has been saying since a National Hockey League arbitrator advised the Winnipeg Jets that they must compensate Trouba to the tune of $5.5 million in their next crusade, a pay bump of $2.5 million.

“With a different agent Trouba could have had a much happier outcome.”

“Trouba has an overinflated sense of self worth.”

“Mistake by Trouba. He is back to arbitration in one year. He could have gotten a big signing bonus plus long-term contract. His agent may need to be replaced.”

“He could have taken a (Matt) Dumba-type contract. Seems like he feels like he is worth more than he is.”

“Are we sure his known douchebag agent isn’t the problem?”

“Overhardt is overpricing him and giving him more bad advice.”

“He’s a bald-faced liar, a poor teammate, and not that great a player. Oh, and did I mention fragile?”

“Trouba has been wrongly directed by his controversial agent Overcharge.”

“Trouba has a fool for an agent and should have fired this doofus a long time ago.”

“He is not a Peg kind of guy.”

I’m quite uncertain what a “Peg kind of guy” is, except to suggest he likely has a cottage, shops wholesale, sucks on Slurpees and caves to the whims and desires of his employer. Apparently that ain’t Trouba.

Thus, the horse opera between the 24-year-old defenceman and les Jets continues, with guys in black hats and guys in white hats and no end in sight.

I must confess that I missed my guess on the Trouba-Jets dance. I thought they’d agree to a six-year partnership, then he’d ship out as an unrestricted free agent still at the peak of his powers. But I stand by what I wrote in early November 2016: “There’s as much chance of Jacob Trouba finishing his career in Jets livery as there is of palm trees sprouting at Portage and Main in January. He’s gone. It’s just a matter of when.”

Consider this, then cringe: It’s quite possible that les Jets will enter their 2018-19 crusade with a third defence pairing (Tyler Myers/Dmitry Kulikov) that earns more coin ($9.83 million) than its top pairing of Trouba/Josh Morrissey. This is good management of money how?

The Summer of Chevy has been hit-and-miss. Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff’s preference was to keep Paul Stastny in the fold, but he wasn’t willing to pay the veteran centre’s sticker price. He wanted to lock up Trouba long term, but he wasn’t willing to pay the sticker price. He did, however, manage to find the coin to keep goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, defenceman Tucker Poolman, press box squatter Marko Dano, and forwards Adam Lowry and Brandon Tanev happy. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a happy Stastny and Trouba than Lowry and Poolman.

If you’re scoring at home, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive dozen surrendered just four points in a 38-20 romp over the Argonauts on Saturday in the Republic of Tranna. A week earlier, it was 20 points, which will win you 97 per cent of Canadian Football League matches. So, do we still want to fire defensive coordinator Richie Hall?

Mix some things together and they don’t always end well: Gasoline and fire; drinking and driving; Johnny Manziel and Crescent Street in Montreal. Not predicting that the Alouettes newly minted quarterback will go bonkers in Ville-Marie, but there’s great temptation in them thar streets, especially for a frat boy.

Since the CFL insists on allowing the woman-beating Johnny Rotten to play the three-down game, the ideal landing spot for the former Heisman Trophy winner would have been the Republic of Tranna, where the Argonauts need fans as desperately as Donald Trump needs approval. Only 10,844 sets of eyes were in BMO Field on Saturday to watch the Bombers rout the Boatmen, prompting this tweet from Troy Westwood of TSN 1290 in Pegtown: “Bombers 14, Attendance 12.” That’s funny.

While most followers of three-down football are still wondering if Johnny Rotten has what it takes to make a go of it in the CFL, at least one pundit, Dan Barnes of Postmedia Edmonton, has already given him the seal of approval. “In Johnny Football, Montreal gets a legit quarterback,” he writes, “the crucial piece of the puzzle that it hadn’t been unable to unearth in the wake of Anthony Calvillo’s retirement four years ago.” There’s zero evidence to support Barnes’s belief, but whatever.

Manziel has yet to take his first official snap on Canadian soil and already his first CFL jersey is a collector’s item. Saw one on ebay this morning for $129.99—or best offer.

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (5-0): The juggernaut continues to roll.
2. Winnipeg (3-3): That’s more like it.
3. Edmonton (3-2): Took the week off, no damage done.
4. Saskatchewan (3-2): Brandon Bridge looking better at QB.
5. Ottawa (3-2): Hard to get a good read on these guys.
6. Hamilton (2-3): Suddenly, oh woe are the Tabbies.
7. B.C. (2-3): Tough way to go out for Wally Buono.
8. Toronto (1-4): Nothing without Ricky Ray.
9. Montreal (1-4): Still awful in either official language.

Quick takeaways from the Open Championship at Carnoustie in Scotland: I honestly thought I would never again see the name Tiger Woods atop the leaderboard of a golf major, but there it was on Sunday morning. Then came the 11th and 12th holes and reality for the 14-time Grand Slam winner. Too bad. A Tiger win would have been a terrific story. Mind you, he likely would have been a bit of a dink about it and whinged about all the naysayers who’ve written him off…Clearly, the one thing that helped power Woods during his heyday—intimidation—no longer exists. Nobody cowered once he took the lead…The champion, Francesco Molinari of Italy, has the kind of golf game we all should have—steady, risk-free. But, geez, it’s bloody boring…The Carnoustie course looks like a cow pasture with green spots…Is it my imagination, or was there an unsually large number of commercials during the broadcast? It seemed like there was 10 minutes of ads for every five minutes of golf…I no longer golf, but I can relate to something NBC gab guy Johnny Miller said during the final round Sunday: “Golf seduces you into trying things you have no business trying.”

And, finally, it’s about those fans who stood and cheered at Miller Park in Milwaukee when Brewers relief pitcher Josh Hader took the mound: Seriously? A standing O for a guy exposed as a racist, a bigot, misogynist and homophobic just days earlier? I won’t get into the gory details because the things Hader tweeted six years ago are vile, but saluting him as some sort of conquering hero is every bit as disgusting. It’s a bad look, Milwaukee.

About a billy goat named Richie…rookie mistakes by veterans…the inside word on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers…CFL power rankings…footy fans have left the pub…British broadcasters…Wimbledon talking points…and other things on my mind

Scrambled eggs, toast and some leftover thoughts for breakfast…

An argument can be made, I suppose, that Richie Hall’s defensive dozen let the side down on the shores of the Pacific Ocean on Saturday night.

Not only were they an obliging bunch when they needed to be unyielding in the game’s final throes, they were also incredibly dense. (Memo to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defence: Do not touch the quarterback after he flings the football. Do not even breathe on him. Do not say anything about his mother. Run from him like ABC ran from Roseanne Barr.)

The thing is, you don’t really want to hang Winnipeg FC’s shameful 20-17 paddywhacking at the hands of the previously inept B.C. Lions on D-coordinator Hall, who’s been wearing a pair of goat’s horns for so long he belongs in a petting zoo. His friends have taken to calling him Billy.

It seems to me, however, that this one’s on coaches not named Richie Hall. And the offence.

Seriously. Seventeen points. That’s the best you can do? You know how often an outfit scoring 17 or fewer points wins in the Canadian Football League? Only slightly more often than Banksy is seen in public. It’s happened once (in a rain storm) in 19 games this crusade. It happened twice in 86 games last season. It happened three times in 86 games in 2016. That’s 3.1 per cent, or about the same as Donald Trump’s approval rating in the U.K.

So, it was the offence that came undone on the Left Flank of the land, not the D.

If, during his three starts as the Winnipeg FC fill-in QB, Chris Streveler had performed as poorly as his head coach, his offensive coordinator and the starting quarterback on Saturday night, we’d be writing and talking about rookie mistakes and inexperience this morning. So what’s the excuse for Mike O’Shea, Paul LaPolice and Matt Nichols?

Kirk Penton of The Athletic delivered some interesting insider comments (from unidentified CFL coachs/general managers) about the Bombers prior to the weekend farce at B.C. Place Stadium.

Example 1: “Bombers-Lions last week was a typical CFL game. It gets out of hand early and usually stays that way. The real answer about each team will be defined by how their game goes this week. A major difference is the best non-head coach in the game right now is (Paul LaPolice). He’s running laps around these other guys.”

Example 2: “I think Hall is a symptom of the Bombers defensive problems, not the cause of it. The cause is deeper than him and his defence. From what I know, coach Hall has two Grey Cup victories as a defensive coordinator. Obviously, he can coach, or O’Shea would have made a change, because there were options open to him. Supposedly coach O’Shea has great input this year, so why hasn’t anything changed with all the talent they have? Their best corner (Chris Randle) gave up a 101-yard touchdown in Game 1 in man-to-man coverage, and people blame the DC. Maybe he is the easy scapegoat for enabled, undisciplined defensive players.”

If it’s true that the CFL season doesn’t really kick in until the Labor Day weekend, this is what the Bombers are looking at down the stretch: vs. Saskatchewan (three games), vs. Edmonton Eskimos (two), vs. Calgary Stampeders, Montreal Alouettes and Ottawa RedBlacks (one each). Winnipeg FC might want to go into squirrel mode immediately, which is to say they’d be wise to start collecting Ws before the weather turns.

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (4-0): As Bo Levi Mitchell goes, so go the Stampeders, but even if Bo’s a no-show this week they ought to be able to handle the Alouettes.
2. Hamilton (2-2): Didn’t play last week and gained ground.
3. Edmonton (3-2): Not impressed with their win over the Argonauts, but Mike Reilly is still a beast.
4. Ottawa (2-2): Only offence worse than Winnipeg’s last week.
5. Saskatchewan (2-2): A week off gave Chris Jones extra time to mess things up with his QBs.
6. Winnipeg (2-3): Still better than the Leos after a home-and-home split, but a lot dumber, especially the coaching.
7. B.C. (2-2): The win over the Bombers was a gift.
8. Toronto (1-3): Played Eskimos tough.
9. Montreal (1-3): Still awful in either official language.

The World Cup of diving and fake injuries is over, so can I have my pub back? It’s not like I spend a lot of time in my local watering hole (just two sessions per week), but I do believe I’ve had my fill of the footy fans who invaded Bart’s Pub and vented, quite loudly and passionately, every time Neymar performed his signature dive-writhe-and-roll. If it’s all the same to them, I shall return to regularly scheduled reading, writing and listening to enjoyable music while nursing a pint of lager.

One final thing about footy fans: Why is it that they must have the volume up while watching a soccer game in a pub? I mean, we watch hockey, football, baseball, basketball, tennis, horse racing, etc. without sound, so why not soccer? Are the British broadcasters who talk about “cheeky goals” that much better than the boys who occupy our towers of babble on? Come to think of it, they are.

Very strange headline in the National Post: “If Serena wins Wimbledon less than a year after giving birth, she really won’t have anything left to prove.” Excuse me, but the notion that Serena Williams has anything to prove on a tennis court is absurd.

In reaching the Wimbledon ladies’ singles final, where she lost to Angelique Kerber, 6-3, 6-3, Williams climbed 153 spots in the rankings and is now world No. 28 among women. As if. There are 27 female tennis players better than Serena Williams like there’s 27 rock bands better than The Beatles.

I don’t know about you, but the fifth-set marathons in the men’s draw at Wimbledon left me cold. I mean, Kevin Anderson and John Isner whacking big, booming first serves at one another for six hours is about as entertaining as watching snow melt. I tuned out long before Anderson prevailed, 26-24. Same with Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal in their semifinal match, which ended 10-8 in the fifth. It should have been compelling sports theatre, with two of the top three players in the world having at it, but it became tedious. Play a tiebreaker already.

I note that John Daly has withdrawn from the Open Championship at Carnoustie, Scotland. Who knew John Daly was still a thing in golf?

I’m old enough to remember when there were two Major League Baseball all-star games each summer, and I watched them faithfully. Now, not so much. I think it was the introduction of the dog-and-pony show (read: home run derby) that turned me off.

And, finally, just wondering: What treats does Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff have in store for the rabble this week? Do I hear a Josh Morrissey signing? Jacob Trouba?

About bringing your Eh game…no QB controversy with Winnipeg Blue Bombers…F-bombs on TSN…QB carnage in the CFL…more blah, blah, blah about Johnny Rotten…the real CFL power rankings…shinny and museums…hockey is not for everyone…putting the bite on Luis Suarez…and carpool karaoke with Sir Paul

I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Happy Canada day, kids. Great country. Best country. Land of maple syrup, peameal bacon, the McKenzie Brothers, the good, ol’ hockey game and the rouge. Wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Whatever you choose to do today, bring your eh game.

The suggestion that there might be a quarterback controversy on the boil in Winnipeg is, well, silly. Also totally asinine.

It’s the sort of thing a bored jock journalist might dream up on a slow news day, giving so many lumps on so many bar stools something to bark about when too much of the brown pop is flowing in their local watering hole.

So don’t run off with the notion that Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea will experience a moment of sheer madness once Matt Nichols is given the okie-dokie from medics and he’s freed from the repair shop. As sure as Donald Trump will tweet about “13 Angry Democrats,” Coach Mikey will insert Nichols behind centre Matthias Goossen, at the same time reducing Chris Streveler’s responsibilities to staring at tablets on the sideline.

O’Shea shall do this for two basic reasons: 1) He likes his job and would prefer to keep it; 2) Nichols gives Winnipeg FC its best chance to win, ergo O’Shea keeps the job he likes.

None of that is to suggest Streveler has been inept as Nichols’ stand-in. He’s done boffo business, a sketchy effort Friday night at Timbits Field in Hamilton notwithstanding. Raw like road kill, the greenhorn out of South Dakota finally looked the part of rookie in a 31-17 loss to the Tiger-Cats, but let’s keep perspective here: When a wonky leg felled Nichols during training exercises, what was expected of Streveler as the Canadian Football League’s first true freshman starting QB since Anthony Calvillo in 1994? Not much. The rabble hoped he’d win a game. Two if the pointy ball took a few favorable bounces. Well, he’s performed admirably enough to be 2-1 rather than 1-2 in three starts, but a Charmin-soft defensive dozen has betrayed Streveler and the Bombers, who sit at the bottom of a West Division that surely shall produce four playoff teams for the third successive season.

Here’s my take on Streveler: He’s provided ample evidence to support a belief that the Bombers have found their future starter and, in the present, he’s a most capable QB in a pinch.

But be certain, this never was about auditioning for Nichols’ job.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a jock journalist with too much time on his hands, or a lump on a bar stool who’s been overserved.

TSN’s “live mic” broadcast of the Bombers-Tabbies skirmish, with head coaches and quarterbacks wired for sound, was brought to you by the letter F, as in F-bombs. Mind you, I’m surprised there were so few of them. I heard just six, maybe seven F-bombs. Profanity is “part of the game,” advised the ever-enthusiastic Matt Dunigan, the one member of TSN’s panel of natterbugs who clearly wishes he was still on the football field getting his bell rung and cussin’ about it. Matty’s right, of course. Football players cuss. They sometimes couple their F-bombs with a reference to another player’s mother. It’s crude and raw. You know, the same kind of language you hear in most schoolyards.

This is never good: We’re only three weeks into the 2018 CFL crusade and already four starting QBs are on the wonk. Nichols, of course, couldn’t answer the opening bell for the Bombers, Zach Collaros of the Saskatchewan Roughriders is on the six-game injury list, Drew Willy couldn’t finish what he started for the Montreal Alouettes on Saturday night, and the fabulous Ricky Ray is probably lost to the Tranna Argonauts and the CFL forever. Watching Ray being carted off BMO Field last weekend was disturbing, and it reminded me of Chris Walby, perhaps the greatest of all Blue Bombers. That’s how big Bluto’s career ended, on a Gator cart. Such a sad and cruel way to go out for such grand performers.

Can TSN do us a favor and ditch the split screen feature, whereby we’re shown a replay on the left side and live ant-sized action on the right? Not all of us have a 70-inch flatscreen that allow us to count Johnny Manziel’s nose hairs, and I don’t think I should require the Hubble Telescope to watch a football game.

Speaking of Manziel (isn’t TSN always talking about him?), finally someone in mainstream media has called out the broadcaster for its shameless pandering to Johnny Rotten. That would be Mike Ganter of Postmedia Tranna, who, in his CFL Blitz package, writes about “the TSN-pushed agenda to make (Manziel) a starter in this league regardless of the stunning numbers put up by Jeremiah Masoli.” Last week on the The Johnny Manziel Network, the boys (Michael Landsberg, Dave Naylor, Mark Roe and Carlo Colaiacovo) discussed a possible trade of Johnny Rotten to the Argonauts, while Naylor and Davis Sanchez discussed a Manziel trade to either the Argos or Roughriders. Then, in the chin-wag preceding the Bombers-Ticats joust, gab guys Dunigan, Milt Stegall and Jock Climie spent more time talking about Johnny Rotten than Chris Streveler. I swear, if Manziel actually steps foot on the field and takes a snap, someone’s head at TSN is going to explode.

So let’s see if I’ve got this straight, the Tiger-Cats womped the Edmonton Eskimos 38-21 in Week 2, but Scott Cullen’s TSN power rankings had the Esks rated second in the CFL and the Tabbies No. 5. Go figure. Meanwhile, at cfl.ca, the Esks were listed at No. 2 and the Tabbies No. 3, and somehow the B.C. Lions, who had won their only game, were ranked lower than the Tranna Argonauts, who are 0-2 and don’t have a quarterback. Does any of that make sense? To anyone? I didn’t think so. Thus, I give you the first weekly River City Renegade power rankings:

1. Calgary: Same old, same old.
2. Hamilton: Won two of three against tough West Division opponents.
3. Edmonton: Back on track.
4. Ottawa: A split against tough West Division opponents.
5. Winnipeg: Defensive deficiency.
6. B.C.: Didn’t look sharp vs. Montreal and Wally Buono’s swan song took a big hit vs. Eskimos.
7. Montreal: Thought they’d go 0-for-2018.
8. Saskatchewan: Gotta get Duron Carter back on offence.
9. Toronto: No quarterback, no hope.

If rumors are true, Dougie Hamilton is the first National Hockey League player to be traded for a museum to be named later. Hard to believe that the Calgary Flames would ship out Hamilton because his head is shaped like an egg. I mean, so the guy would rather spend time in a museum or reading than join the boys for some back-slapping and hoo-rawing at Moxie’s. Last time I looked, being smart wasn’t the new stupid. The Hamilton situation brings to mind Kim Clackson, guard dog for the Winnipeg Jets during their final two World Hockey Association crusades. I don’t recall ever seeing Clacker without a book in his hands on road trips. Can’t say that I remember the subject matter, but he was always reading on team flights. Didn’t seem to bother his teammates or management when Clacker put down the book to chuck knuckles with Dave Semenko.

Caught an episode of Tim & Sid on Sportnets last week, with the boys and guest John Shannon interviewing Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Willie O’Ree, the first black man to play in the NHL. Immediately after the chin wag, they mentioned how “hockey is for everyone.” No. It isn’t. I’ll believe hockey is for everyone the day there’s an openly gay man on one of the 31 NHL rosters. I’ll believe hockey is for everyone the day a woman is standing behind an NHL bench. Major League Baseball has had an openly gay umpire. The National Basketball Association has had an openly gay player, female coaches and female game officials. The National Football League has female coaches and game officials. The Canadian Football League has had an openly gay player and a female general manager. Major League Soccer is the only major men’s team sport in North America that currently features an openly gay player, Collin Martin of Minnesota United FC. So I don’t want to hear about hockey being “for everyone” when the NHL is the least diverse of all major men’s sports leagues.

Luis Suarez is having a great World Cup. His Uruguay side is into the quarterfinals and he hasn’t bitten any Italians. It helps, of course, that the Italians didn’t qualify for Russia, but it’s comforting to know that soccer’s Count Dracula seems to have curbed his nasty biting habit. Three times the Uruguay striker has been punished for putting the bite on foes, including an incident in the 2014 World Cup, whereby he chomped on Giorgio Chiellini’s left shoulder. “I know biting appalls a lot of people, but it’s relatively harmless,” he wrote in his autobiography, Crossing the Line: My Story. “None of the bites has been like Mike Tyson on Evander Holyfield.” Like, that makes it okay?

Interesting comment from Tranna Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins when asked if pitcher Roberto Osuna would be welcomed back to the fold next month after serving a 75-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy: “Roberto is our closer. We’re running a baseball team and our goal is to win championships. Roberto could potentially be very much a part of that.” In other words, it doesn’t matter how many women Osuna beats the hell out of. As long as he throws a nasty cutter, he’ll be in the Jays bullpen.

Quote of the week was delivered by baseball’s non-steroid home run king, Hank Aaron: “Would I visit the White House? Would I go? I have no reason to go. I’ve been there once or twice. And there’s nobody there I want to see.”

And, finally, this item has nothing to do with sports, but it’s too cool by far, so I wanted to include it: I’m not a fan of James Corden or his late-night gab show, because he’s always shouting. I am, however, a big Beatles fan and Corden’s Carpool Karaoke with Paul McCartney was a brilliant and beautiful segment that should be shared. Watch it to the absolute end and enjoy.

About the Winnipeg Blue Bombers ending their manhunt…what’s with all those empty seats?…already calling for heads to roll…Bo Levi’s tired of hearing about Johnny Rotten…Kirk Penton’s byline is back…Lefty Phil is a cheater, cheater pumpkin eater…red cards to John Doyle and Donald Trump…who is Robbie Williams?…Steve Simmons’ alphabet farts…and Damien Cox blaming cyber bullying on the victims

I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

It’s easy to examine Winnipeg FC’s first frolic of this fresh football crusade and file it under ‘same old, same old’ because, let’s face it, Richie Hall’s defence looked like Richie Hall’s defence.

Which is to say, the Blue Bombers D-men couldn’t stop a sniffle, let alone Mike Reilly.

I mean, when it came down to the short strokes on Friday morning at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, Reilly and his Edmonton Eskimos offensive accomplices gobbled up land like Homer Simpson working on a box of Timbits. They covered more real estate than the first settlers to bring their ox carts to the Red River Valley. You know, just like last November, when they turned a spirited argument into a rout by rag dolling the Bombers defensive dozen to the tune of 28 points in fewer than 15 minutes.

So, ya, when the Eskimos seized victory in the final grunting of the 2018 Canadian Football League curtain-raiser, it was like a recurring nightmare.

But wait.

This was no ordinary skirmish. The game began on Thursday and ended in the small hours of Friday. It took them five hours and 40 minutes to complete 60 minutes of football. There were two lengthy, thunder-and-lightning delays that kept the large lads in their changing rooms, nibbling on munchies and chilling, for just shy of three hours. By the time the boys gathered to grab grass and growl for a third time, there was no grass to grab. The field looked like the Lake of the Woods. They could have sold cottage lots.

Thus, I’m reluctant to measure this match in any substantial way. Except one: Rookie Chris Streveler can play.

Although on the south side of a 33-30 score, Streveler provided ample evidence to suggest the longest manhunt this side of D.B. Cooper is over. The Bombers have found a quarterback.

Hey, I’m not prepared to say Streveler will make anyone forget about Kenny Ploen or Dieter Brock, but three touchdown tosses and some serious lickety-split in his stride are a noteworthy start. He could become the first in-house discovery to put his footprint on the CFL landscape since the Bombers brought Danny McManus north of the border in 1990.

Let’s just hope Streveler has more patience than McManus.

Danny Mac, remember, grew weary of holding a clipboard for Tom Burgess and Matt Dunigan, so he felt obliged to get out of Dodge and take his talents to the B.C. Lions after three seasons of mop-up duty in River City. Similarly, Streveler retreats to the backup role once the main man, Matt Nichols, returns from the repair shop in about a month. Nichols isn’t going anywhere. He’s only 31 and locked in through 2019. So, barring owies to Nichols, where is Streveler’s opportunity to start?

I’m not saying it will be deja Danny, but I’m guessing that Streveler is inclined to become something more than a career backup QB.

Where did everybody go? Aside from the weather, the sourest note struck at the Bombers-Eskimos to-and-fro was the official head count at Football Follies Field—just 25,458. That’s less than all but two home dates last season and 4,707 fewer than the 2017 home opener. It’s also down 5,096 from the Eskimos’ visit last August. Not sure if that downsizing has resulted in fretful, furrowed foreheads in the Winnipeg FC ivory tower, but it should. That’s a lot of lost revenue.

I always find media takes on Bombers games interesting. A case in point would be the scribblings of Paul Friesen and Paul Wiecek in the aftermath of the Bombers-Eskimos joust that droned on for five-plus hours.

Here’s Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun: “There was enough good in the marathon, 33-30 loss to Mike Reilly and the Edmonton Eskimos that it strangely felt like something of a moral victory for the Big Blue. The most important thing we learned is the loss of starter Matt Nichols for the first month might be survivable. With real victories. Not just moral ones.”

Here’s Wiecek of the Drab Slab: “How can a defence this good on paper still be that lousy on the field? The answer, of course, is that for all the changes made to the defence in the off-season—an upgraded secondary, defensive line and the addition of maybe the best middle linebacker in the game, Adam Bighill—the guys at the top remain the same, head coach Mike O’Shea and defensive coordinator Richie Hall. At some point, someone in authority down at Investors Group Field is going to have to figure out that the problem with this Bombers defence isn’t the players, it’s the scheme. It’s a long season and there is still plenty of time for redemption. But at some point, if Hall cannot figure out a way to make a defence this good on paper play a lot better than that on the field, he has to go. And if O’Shea cannot figure that out, then he should be the one to go.”

My take on those two takes? One game into an 18-game season and Wiecek is already writing about heads rolling? Tough crowd.

So, I’m watching the the Calgary Stampeders double down on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, 28-14, on Saturday and I’m thinking, “Okay, how in the name of Joe Theismann is TSN going to make this about Johnny Manziel?” I mean, the Tabbies starting QB, Jeremiah Masoli, put up some handsome numbers before his singular d’oh moment sealed the deal. Johnny Rotten, meanwhile, never set a cleated foot on the playing field at McMahon Stadium. He was an observer, just like any lump sitting on a bar stool. Manziel was a non-story. Totally. Except TSN decided he was a story, with three headlines on the website main page and two videos, one of which featured Milt Stegall in a barking-dog role:

Manziel sits in Tiger-Cats’ opening loss.
Masoli shines in Tiger-Cats’ loss, keeps Manziel at bay.
What does Mazoli’s performance mean for Manziel?

Sigh. I believe Stampeders quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell said it best in a chin-wag with Eric Francis of Postmedia Cowtown: “Any guy in the league that has already earned that respect is probably tired of hearing about him. That’s just truthful.”

So nice to see Kirk Penton’s byline appearing in The Athletic. When he was among the small stable of sports scribes at the Winnipeg Sun, Kirk became the best football beat writer in Canada, give or take young Eddie Tait, who went from the Sun to the Winnipeg Free Press to his role today as scribbler of quality stuff at bluebombers.com. The rag trade lost two very good people when they defected.

Phil Mickelson cheated, like a petulant, weekend hack. He should have be turfed from the U.S. Open on Saturday. Instead, he was allowed to soldier on after deliberately striking his moving ball lest it should roll off the 13th green at Shinnecock Hills in New York and add to the embarrassment of his inflated score. He then laughed, smirked and basically gave tournament officials and critics the finger, telling them to “toughen up.” He confessed that he’d thought of doing this very thing on numerous occasions, even at the Masters. One can only imagine how the humorless men in the ugly green jackets at Augusta National would have dealt with Mickelson had he pulled his sophomoric, unsportsmanlike stunt on their pristine, hallowed grounds. I’m guessing he’d have been on his way home faster than you could say, “Y’all never did see Arnie or Jack doing that.”

My first red card of the World Cup goes to John Doyle. Straight-shooting TV critic at the Globe and Mail, Doyle tends to stray from his comfort zone and join the kids in the sandbox whenever he sees Ronaldo or Messi playing footy. And so it was that he offered this nugget of nonsense last week: “Christine Sinclair is the best soccer player, male or female, this country has produced.” On a stupid scale of 1-to-10, that hits tilt! It’s like saying Nickelback is Canada’s greatest musical export. An argument can be made that Sinclair is our best-known soccer player, but to submit that she’s our finest player is an insult to Dwayne De Rosario, Owen Hargreaves, Craig Forest, Jason De Vos, Alphonso Davies, Atiba Hutchinson, Alex Bunbury, Brian Budd, Bob Lenarduzzi and so many others who would dribble circles around her. Back to your flatscreen, John.

I keep hearing that some dude named Robbie Williams flipped the bird to a global TV audience while performing “a slew of his hits” at the World Cup opening ceremony. Should I apologize if I have to ask who Robbie Williams is? Seriously. Never heard of him until he extended his middle digit, so I Googled him and discovered that he looks like the personification of middle-age crisis.

Did you know that you have Donald Trump to thank for bringing the World Cup to a North American stadium near you in 2026? Yup. President Tarrif tweets: “Thank you for all the compliments on getting the World Cup to come to the U.S.A., Mexico and Canada. I worked hard on this, along with a Great Team of talented people.” In related news, Trump also claims to have coached the Washington Capitals, played quarterback for the New England Patriots and will caddy for the winner of Sunday’s U.S. Open golf tournament.

Once again, I wonder if Steve Simmons reads the alphabet farts he produces for Postmedia Tranna before he hits the send button. I say that because of a tweet he posted on Friday after the Ottawa Senators suspended assistant manager Randy Lee, who, after an early-June incident, faces a charge of second-degree harassment for allegedly making lewd comments and rubbing the shoulders of a 19-year-old shuttle driver at the National Hockey League combine in Buffalo. “What took so long?” Simmons asked. Yet, when the CFL punted Euclid Cummings of the B.C. Lions after it was revealed that he’d been charged with two counts of sexual assault, one count of assault and one count of uttering a threat to cause death or bodily harm, Simmons wrote this: “Don’t like the fact the CFL voids contracts after players are charged with a crime. Being charged is one thing. Being convicted is another. CFL shouldn’t play judge and jury here with people’s lives.” So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight: Simmons believes a guy who allegedly touched another man’s shoulders and made lewd remarks should be out of work immediately, but a guy who sexually assaulted a woman and threatened her with death should still be working. Wow, just wow.

Interesting discussion on Hockey Central at Noon last week, whereby the natterbugs went off on the nasty social media spat featuring Erik Karlsson and Mike Hoffman of the Senators and their main squeezes, Melinda Karlsson and Monika Caryk.

The Karlssons have been subjected to the most vile bullying, including death wishes and accusations of drug use by Melinda and hopes for a career-ending injuries for Erik.

John Shannon wanted no part of the to-and-fro, but host Daren Millard and Damien Cox of Sportsnet/Toronto Star had at it. Not surprisingly, Cox made an ass-clown of himself, basically blaming victims of cyber bullying.

“I think the one thing about social media that we’re learning more and more and I think all of us have experienced, you can only be cyber bullied to some extent if you allow yourself to be,” he said. “If you go on social media, if you participate in social media, if it’s something that’s important to you, then you are vulnerable to that. If you say, ‘I’m not gonna have anything to do with that,’ then you’re not as vulnerable.”

In other words, if you step outside your house and get hit by one of the many stoned or drunk drivers on our roads it’s your fault because you stepped outside your house.

“Erik and Melinda (Karlsson) are a brand, they have the right to be on social media,” Millard said.

“They also have to recognize the dangers of social media,” Cox countered.

And yet Sportsnet, which trumpets its anti-bullying/harassment police and recently dismissed baseball gab guy Gregg Zaun for that very thing, keeps putting Cox on their air. Wow, just wow.

About the Winnipeg Jets secrecy in re-upping two guys without a playoff win…the Pope is on board…hockey discipline vs. tennis discipline…the ladies rock at the U.S. Open…the Vancouver Canucks odd youth movement…insults are Steve…and so long Steely Dan

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

Well, Darren Dreger and Elliotte Friedman were correct and both Kevin Cheveldayoff and Paul Maurice have been rewarded for chronic nonachievement, which begs this question: Why the secrecy?

I mean, Dreger tells us that Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman gave the only general manager the Winnipeg Jets have known a hearty pat on the back in the form of a contract extension “months ago.” Perhaps the deal was done scant days after the locals failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup derby for the fifth time in six whirls under Chevy’s watch. Or maybe it was in May, June or July.

Whatever the case, the Secret Society known as True North Sports & Entertainment chose to keep that morsel of information on the QT until this very morning.

Same with Maurice, the potty-mouthed head coach destined to become the losingest bench boss in National Hockey League history sometime during the 2017-18 crusade. Apparently, his endorsement of a job not well done arrived more recently, which could mean June, July or August, but, again, the Secret Society chose not to share that tidbit with the very people who fill the Little Hockey House On The Prairie 41 days/nights each year and purchase all that merchandise with the Royal Canadian Air Force logo.

In other words, screw the rabble.

Try as I might, I cannot scare up a single reason why the Secret Society adopted a mum’s-the-word posture vis-a-vis extensions for the GM and head coach, except that the Puck Pontiff likely didn’t fancy the bother of detailing the rationale behind re-upping two men accustomed to standing on the outside with their noses pressed to the window when the real fun begins in April. They’re a pair of oh-fers: 0-for-the playoffs. Zero wins. In six seasons for Chevy and 3.5 for Coach Potty-Mo. Tough to justify a reward for never failing to fail.

But, hey, maybe this is a Winnipeg thing. After all, the Blue Bombers handed their GM, Kyle Walters, and sideline steward, Mike O’Shea, a fresh set of downs even though they’d never won a Canadian Football League post-season match. Received three-year add-ons, they did.

Which leads me to believe that contract extensions are like skeeters in Pegtown: You’re gonna get ’em whether you deserve ’em or not.

Did the work of either Chevy or Maurice warrant renewals? Well, it’s a results-driven business, and booking tee times at St. Charles or Glendale while those about you are still playing hockey isn’t anyone’s idea of getting the job done.

Clearly, something is broken.

If, as has been suggested by numerous pundits, Cheveldayoff and his bird dogs have assembled an array of blue-chip talent, why no playoffs? Must be the coach. If it’s the coach, why the extension? And if not the coach, who? The players? Can’t be, because we’re told they’re blue-chippers. Unless they aren’t blue-chippers, in which case Chevy’s at fault.

Would I have gone all-in on either Chevy or Maurice? Or both? I’m iffy on the former, because it’s uncertain how much interference he receives from on high, but I’m definitely not sold on the latter.

I’d have allowed Coach Potty-Mo to enter the 2017-18 fray on his existing deal, which had a shelf life of 82 more games. This is a show-me season for Maurice. Show us you can coach without Chris Thorburn and Mark Stuart getting in the way. Qualify for the Stanley Cup tournament and you won’t have to change your postal code. Miss and we have some swell parting gifts for you.

Aha, you say. That would make him a lame-duck coach. Well, yes, it would. And your point is?

Delivering a contract extension to Maurice doesn’t make him a better coach. It doesn’t turn Steve Mason and Connor Hellebuyck into Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur. It doesn’t improve the penalty kill. It doesn’t even buy Coach Potty-Mo more time. It’s on him either way. If the Jets aren’t part of the post-season fun next April, the Puck Pontiff will be paying Maurice not to coach.

I just hope they don’t keep it a secret when and if they let the guy go.

It’s about the Declaration of Principles that several hockey organizations, including the NHL, signed off on this week, with the endorsement of the real Puck Pontiff, Pope Francis of Vatican fame: I’ll believe in the vow of inclusiveness when NHL players (hello, Andrew Shaw and Ryan Getzlaf) cease using gay slurs as their go-to insults, and when I see women on NHL coaching, management and scouting staffs and openly gay men on NHL rosters. Women’s hockey at the highest level is inclusive, men’s hockey at the highest level not so much.

You want inclusiveness? Try big-time tennis. At the U.S. Open in Gotham, we’ve seen women sitting in the umpire’s chair during men’s matches. Sadly, one of those women, Louise Engzell of Switzerland, was called a “whore” and a “cocksucker” by Italian No. 1 Fabio Fognini. Although slow to respond to the verbal assault, tennis officialdom slapped Fognini with $24,000 in fines and instructed him to vacate the premises, even though he had advanced to the third round of doubles play. Soon, the other shoe shall drop. It’s possible that Fognini will be banned from future Grand Slam tournaments and fined upwards of $250,000. By way of comparison, when Disney Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf barked out the same C-slur during an NHL playoff game last spring, he was docked pocket change of $10,000 and permitted to play on.

Fognini’s mea culpa was priceless. “I have nothing against women,” he insisted. “I have been called sexist, which I am not. I am a family man, I have a wife, a mother, a sister. I have always loved women, I have always respected them.” Reminds me of the homophobes who defend their actions and use of anti-gay slurs by saying, “I have gay friends.”

Three thoughts on the U.S. Open this morning: 1) The women’s draw has been much more compelling than the men’s, especially with the prospects and hopes of a Rafa Nadal-Roger Federer skirmish dashed by Juan Martin Del Petro. 2) I think it’s terrific that four American women have advanced to the semifinals of their national tournament. 3) Some of the women can really whack a tennis ball and get around the court (love Sloane Stephens), but how does Serena Williams ever lose?

This would be laughable if it weren’t so sad: Vancouver Canucks president Trevor Linden says his club’s “focus is on youth.” Right. Two-thirds of the Canucks’ No. 1 forward unit, the Sedin twins, are 37 years old. They just reeled in Thomas Vanek. He’s 33. The other two featured off-season recruits, Sam Gagner and Michael Del Zotto, are 28 and 27, respectively. Their big catch a year ago was Loui Eriksson, 32. If that’s putting the focus on youth, then Don Cherry is a spring chicken.

The question must be asked: Does Donovan Bennett of Sportsnet actually watch Canadian Football League games? I mean, the guy does weekly power rankings and he’s somehow determined that the Edmonton Eskimos are the No. 2 outfit. That would be the same Edmonton group that has been totally dismantled by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders in consecutive weeks. Bennett had the Eskimos ranked No. 3 a week ago, then they were blitzed by the Stampeders and he moved them into the No. 2 slot. I don’t know if Bennett is embarrassed, but he ought to be.

Speaking of totally losing the plot, Sportsnet 650 in Vancouver announced it will feature Todd Bertuzzi, he of Steve Moore infamy, on its air every Tuesday on The Starting Lineup, and Steve Simmons of Postmedia used the occasion to totally trash West Coast media with a completely unfounded statement of non-fact. You know, much like his piece about Phil Kessel and hot dogs. “One of the truly dumb things about Vancouver,” he tweeted. “It never took the Steve Moore incident seriously. Never covered it. Never shouted about it.” He later referenced “Vancouver Twitter idiots.” Apparently ignoring facts and name-calling is what passes for a national sports columnist these days. The great Trent Frayne and Jim Coleman must be spinning in their graves.

Can’t even guess the number of hours I’ve spent listening to Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, aka Steely Dan. Brilliant stuff. Becker died last weekend and we’re left with the music. These are my five favorite Steely Dan tunes…
1. Bodhisattva
2. Deacon Blues
3. Peg
4. Hey Nineteen
5. Do It Again

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

About the first-place (for a few hours) Winnipeg Blue Bombers…near-perfection…laughing it up about naked women…new wrinkles in curling…best of the Blue Jays…good writing…a strange tweet…and other 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 looked at the Canadian Football League standings on Saturday morning and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were atop the tables. I know, totally weird.

It was kind of like staring at a solar eclipse without eye protection.

I mean, these are the 0-for-a quarter-century Blue Bombers and, even though the Calgary Stampeders had slipped past them by the end of the day, I’m wondering if it’s now safe to say that general manager Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea actually know what they’re doing. Naw. Probably not.

As much as the Bombers are full marks for their 7-2 log at the midway point of their current crusade, we’ll reserve judgement until all the evidence is in. Six of their final nine skirmishes are against West Division foes, one of whom is a Saskatchewan Roughriders outfit that looked like two gimme wins three weeks ago but suddenly has a pulse.

I’m sticking with my suggestion that the Bombers should finish 14-4, though. Then I’ll agree that Walters and O’Shea know what they’re doing. At least until Coach Mikey asks kicker Justin Medlock to hoof a 61-yard field goal or play quarterback.

Nope. Didn’t watch the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Conor McGregor dust-up at T-Mobile Arena in Glitter Gulch on Saturday. I try not to spend my money in support of a man who spends his spare time beating up women.

I keep hearing how Mayweather broke some sort of a record with his 10-round TKO of McGregor. He’s had his hand raised in a boxing ring 50 times, and not once has he walked out a loser. Is 50-0 exceptional? You betcha. The best ever? Hardly. Julio Cesar Chavez was 87-0 before there was a blemish on his record (a controversial draw against Pernell Whitaker) and he wasn’t beaten until his 91st bout. Willie Pep went 62-0 before losing. Then he went 72-0-1 before his next defeat. That’s one loss in 136 bouts. When Ricardo Lopez hung ’em up, he was 51-0-1.

I don’t believe in perfection. A boxer can have a perfect record, but that doesn’t make him a perfect boxer. With that in mind, here’s today’s top-five list: Near-perfection…
1. Alison Krauss’s voice: Angelic.
2. Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes: The most breathtaking performance I’ve ever seen in sports.
3. Sandy Koufax: How did the great Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher ever lose?
4. Bobby Orr: He travelled a different orbit than any other hockey player.
5. Jimmy Stewart: Can’t think of a movie I didn’t like him in.

Will Mayweather now do us a favor and exit quietly? That would be nice, but, sadly, I suspect we’ll be hearing from him again, and we can only hope it isn’t because cops have been called to put the cuffs on him for beating up another woman.

Floyd Mayweather and Jimmy Kimmel sharing giggles about naked women.

Add Jimmy Kimmel to the list of Mayweather enablers. The late-night TV chin-wagger had the serial women-beater on his Jimmy Kimmel Live! gab-fest recently, and it was a shameful exercise in fan worship, fraught with weak humor and fawning. Not once during the schmooze did Kimmel mention domestic abuse. But, hey, we learned why Mayweather got into the business of having women remove their clothing at his Girl Collection strip club in Sin City: “Because I knew breasts, the vagina, music and alcohol would never go out of style,” he said. Jimmy Kimmel giggled. So did much of his audience. Sigh.

Steve Simmons of Postmedia, one of Mayweather’s hypocritical enablers on press row, wrote this in advance of Saturday night’s tiff against the excessively vulgar and obnoxious loudmouth McGregor: “Give Mayweather some credit on press conference Wednesday. He seems to want to say goodbye with some dignity.” Good grief. Dignity is a word that ought never be used when describing a man who beats up women.

Simmons, who fancies himself as a boxing expert because he’s covered more than a dozen prize fights, offered this prediction prior to Mayweather-McGregor: “It could end early. It could go eight or nine rounds. Or it could go the distance. That’s not being wishy-washy.” If that isn’t wishy-washy, then the Pope isn’t Catholic. Simmons then wrote, “Mayweather wins early, late or by decision.” What’s it going to be, Steve? “PREDICTION WITHOUT COMMITMENT: Mayweather in 9 rounds.” In other words, he didn’t have a clue.

Quick review on the Everest Curling Challenge in Fredericton: It was like eating a Sloppy Joe—really enjoyable but kind of messy. The concept is brilliant, with eight mixed all-star teams pieced together in a draft, then shooting for a $200,000 winner-take-all prize. And the bonus extra point for shot stone covering the pin hole is a terrific wrinkle. But the timing is off. Curling in August is like skinny dipping in January. The players, clearly not in fighting trim, were guessing on ice, guessing on weight, guessing in their decision-making. At one point, TSN talking head Russ Howard mentioned something about “amateur” mistakes. Find a better date and the event is a total winner.

Interesting that none of the four outfits skipped by women—Rachel Homan, Jennifer Jones, Val Sweeting and Chelsea Carey—advanced out of the first round in Fredericton. I’m not sure what to make of that. I mean, it’s not like male skips are better strategists.

I note that Sportsnet has declared second-sacker Roberto Alomar the greatest player to ever wear a Tranna Blue Jays uni. Can’t argue with that. When he wasn’t spitting on umpires, Alomar was wowing ’em in the field and at the dish.

Terrific piece on former Winnipeg Jets knuckle-dragger Jimmy Mann by Mike Sawatzky in the Winnipeg Free Press. Jimmy will always be remembered as GM John Ferguson’s most glaring d’oh moment at the National Hockey League draft, but he was a nice kid off the ice.

Bravo to Todd Fanning, winner of the Canadian Men’s Mid-Amateur golf championship last week in Regina. I remember covering Todd on the Canadian pro tour a number of years back. Good guy.

Interesting tweet from young Jeff Hamilton of the Freep: “Montreal update: guy that was using the urinal beside me was holding his toothbrush with his other hand.” Yo! Jeff! My gay friends want to know why you were peeking down there.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

About the Winnipeg Blue Bombers having ‘jump’…a theme song for bellies and butts…Grapes hitting a sour note in Chitown…mix-and-match curling…and an ‘ace’ reporter

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

The Green Bay Packers have their Lambeau Leap after touchdowns and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have their…well, I’m not quite sure what to call their post-TD ritual.

It certainly isn’t a leap, a hop, a jump or a skip.

I mean, watching Travis Bond or Jermarcus Hardrick try to launch themselves into the stands at Formerly Football Follies Field in Fort Garry is like watching an Orca try to climb a tree. An ATM machine has a better vertical. Calling what the Bombers’ O-linemen do a leap is like calling a manhole cover a frisbee.

If anything, it’s a splat. Those guys are all belly and butt. It’s 300-plus pounds of mom’s home cooking colliding with rubber padding and concrete.

And those fans who attempt to lift the large lads in pads off the ground and haul them into the pews? Good luck with that. You’ll see Hillary Clinton in the White House before you ever see daylight between the soles of Bond’s shoes and terra firma.

But the O-linemen TD hijinks is a hoot. It’s really big kids having little kids’ fun. It’s good energy. Even if they don’t have jump.

What the Bombers O-linemen need is an official TD celebration song. All those in favor of Jumpin’ Jack Flash by the Rolling Stones say “aye.” All those opposed, come up with a better jump song than these five and we’ll discuss it…
1. Jumpin’ Jack Flash—Rolling Stones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQSGw0hMd_I
2. Jump—Van Halen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EqWN4fT79s
3. Jump They Say—David Bowie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avJt0SQec0I
4. Devil’s Jump—John Lee Hooker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_d07EWNoAs
5. Leap of Faith—Bruce Springsteen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouWEZPkbznQ

The Big Splat Attack has become a fun part of the fabric of a crusade that likely has exceeded the expectations of most, if not all, in Bombers Nation. I certainly didn’t see 6-2 coming. Or a sniff of first place in the dog-eat-dog world that is the West Division of the Canadian Football League. Call me crazy (I’ve been called worse), but after the Bombers dismantled the Edmonton Eskimos, 33-26, I see just one outfit better than the Blue and Gold at this moment in history—the Calgary Stampeders. And the Albertans surely looked vulnerable during their 21-17 conquest of the B.C. Lions on Friday night, an intense skirmish that was more yawn-inducing than awe-inspiring.

Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea, who can safely get through another week without anyone with a poison pen writing about his short pants and smirk, wins this week’s prize for low-key after he described his club’s victory over the previously unbeaten Eskimos as “pretty pleasing all around.” Ya think? That’s the biggest understatement since Custer looked at the Indians and said, “Gee, there sure are a lot of them.”

Nice head count for the Eskimos’ visit to Formerly Football Follies Field in Fort Garry—a season-high 30,554. Guess we have to blame the empty 2,680 seats on O’Shea. If only the guy didn’t wear short pants and a smirk.

Sportsnet continues to treat the CFL as the red-headed, freckle-faced stepchild. They devoted two tiny lines on the front page of their website to the Bombers-Eskimos, while the main story was about the Toronto Blue Jays winning to remain on the “fringe” of the Major League Baseball playoff chase. There was also a riveting piece on “breaking down the best of NBA’s new Nike jerseys.” Stop the presses! Meanwhile, on the TSN website, Bombers-Esks was the main story and there were also three video features from the game. That’s how it should be done.

The difference between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats with and without Jeff Reinebold as defensive co-ordinator? A rouge. With Reinebold pulling the strings for the defensive dozen, the Tabbies were 0-6 and surrendered 39 points per game. Without him, they’re 0-2 while allowing 38 points per. But, hey, the guy had to go and head coach Kent Austin had to stay, right?

Grapes should feel the wrath of Cubs fans.

Two things we learned about Don Cherry this weekend: 1) He’s a horrible singer; 2) he’s a horrible house guest. If you missed it, the Chicago Cubs invited Cherry to warble Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh-inning stretch of a Blue Jays-Cubbies game at Wrigley Field. Blowhard Grapes can be forgiven for being off-key with his singing, but changing the lyrics from “root, root, root for the Cubbies” to “root, root, root for the best team” is beyond lame. That’s like messing with the National Anthem, man. A pox on his suits and ban him from any karaoke night at any pub near you.

Dumb headline of the week comes from the Toronto Star: “Shapovalov down to earth with expectations sky high.” Exactly what are the Star’s “sky high” expectations for Canadian tennis teen Denis Shapovalov? Do they, or anyone, expect him to go to the U.S. Open and go on the kind of run he had at the Rogers Cup in Montreal? He’ll be doing great if he qualifies and wins a match or two.

Only in curling do we find the elite of the sport competing on equal footing, regardless of gender, which is why I’m really looking forward to the Everest Curling Challenge, Aug. 25-27 in Fredericton. Skips Rachel Homan, Kevin Koe, Brad Gushue, Jennifer Jones, Chelsea Carey, John Epping, Brad Jacobs and Victoria Moiseeva will be drafting two-men, two-women teams in quest of a $200,000 winner’s payout. Ah, but there’s a hitch: The skips cannot choose players from their regular outfits. Winnipeg’s Jones, for example, is obliged to draft someone other than Kaitlyn Lawes, Jill Officer and Dawn McEwen. Should be fun and you’ll have to excuse me if I root, root, root for one of the lady skips to win.

Bravo to Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Sun, who scored two aces in one round of golf at Glendale last week. I do that all the time. In mini-golf and my dreams.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

About Mike O’Shea’s stubborn streak…clothes don’t make the coach…Kent Austin still has a job?…strange brew from a Postmedia scribe…and Genie’s charisma

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 and Bill Belichick: Clothes don’t make the coach.

For the record, I think Mike O’Shea is a seriously flawed head coach.

His most notable wart would be his mule-like refusal to acknowledge blatant blunders. I mean, when a man makes a mistake and then tells the rabble that, yes, given the opportunity for a do-over he would make the same stupid gaffe again, he’s not someone who should have the nuclear codes.

But that’s O’Shea.

Did he learn from an ill-advised 61-yard field goal attempt that fell seven yards short of the target and ended the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ season last November at B.C. Place Stadium? Nope. Three days after the fact, O’Shea advised news snoops that, “Yup, absolutely,” he’d ignore logic and again put his faith in Justin Medlock’s left leg.

Did he learn from an ill-advised faux punt that turned potential victory into defeat a little more than a week ago vs. the B.C. Lions? Nope. “We’d do it again,” he confirmed.

They say hindsight is 20/20 vision. I suppose it is. Unless your name is Mike O’Shea.

I swear, if it were up to O’Shea he’d have the Edsel back on the road. He’d say the guy at Decca records who rejected the Beatles made the right call. He’d let Custer have another go at all those Indians at the Little Big Horn.

So, ya, he’s stubborn like a Winnipeg winter is cold. It’s a flaw that, at some point, will likely cost him his job.

Until then, he’ll continue to keep us scratching our heads, and I’m guessing that he’ll keep doing it in a pair of short pants that somehow keep popping up as a talking point.

I’m sorry, but the significance of O’Shea’s pant legs escapes me. So the guy dresses like some shlub squatting on a street corner in Osborne Village, begging for nickels and dimes. Bill Belichick does, too. Even worse. He’s a hobo in a hoodie. But he’s also the best head coach in professional football. He’s just never let success go to his clothes, is all.

I can think of just one example of a coach’s wardrobe possibly impacting on team performance—Jeff Reinebold. He looked like a guy who got lost on his way to a beach volleyball game. He was a total goof-off. So were the Bombers under his watch. It was party time in flip-flops with Bob Marley until someone finally shot the sheriff, 32 games and 26 losses too late.

Calgary Stampeders 60, Hamilton Tiger-Cats 1. Hamilton Tiger-Cats 0-5. Only win-free outfit in the Canadian Football League. Fewest points scored, most points allowed. And head coach Kent Austin still has a job? How is this possible?

Pet peeve: Broadcasters and reporters who describe a short kickoff as an “onside kick.” All kickoffs are onside. They have to be, otherwise there’d be a five-yard penalty. Is that picky of me? Ya, about as picky as people who talk about O’Shea’s short pants.

So, here are the head counts at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry for the Bombers this crusade: 30,165 (Calgary), 25,085 (Toronto Argonauts), 25,931 (Montreal Alouettes). Average attendance: 27,060. Only the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Eskimos play to larger audiences. This is a problem how?

In the D’oh! Department: Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press refers to John Hufnagel and Wally Buono as “former coaches.” When last seen, Buono was standing on the B.C. Lions sideline and he wasn’t there as window dressing. He’s the Leos’ current, not former, head coach.

Some strange brew from Steve Simmons in his weekly three-dot column for Postmedia. Let me count the ways:

He describes Ted Williams as baseball’s “greatest hitter ever.” Well, let’s see. The Postmedia columnist was born in 1957. He was barely out of the cradle the day Williams last swatted a baseball in 1960, hitting a dinger in his final Major League at-bat. I hardly think someone who was a three-year-old boy at the time and never once watched Williams play with the Boston Red Sox is qualified to determine anything about the Splendid Splinter.
He writes this of three-down football: “I really wish the CFL faithful would stop telling people how many great games there are” Huh? You have a boffo product and you shouldn’t—repeat, should not—brag about it? And I thought Mike O’Shea said strange things.
He writes this of women’s tennis: “The top tennis player in the world, according to the WTA, is Karolina Pliskova. The No. 5 player is Elina Svitolina. If either of those women knocked on your door and said hello, would have any idea who they were?” Well, Stevie, you’re supposedly the most-read sports columnist in Canada. If you knocked on my neighbor’s door and said hello, would she have any idea who you are?

In the world according to Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail, tennis player Genie Bouchard is “this country’s most charismatic athlete.” Well, I’ve never met our girl Genie. Probably never will. So I can only go by what I’ve seen/heard/read on TV and the Internet, and she strikes me as sullen, guarded and totally lacking in charm. I can’t help but cheer for terrific young Canadian athletes like golfer Brooke Henderson and swimmer Penny Oleksiak, but I struggle mightily to root, root, root for our Genie. Henderson and Oleksiak are far more charismatic. So, too, is P.K. Subban. Henry Burris was charismatic. Pinball Clemons was the very definition of charismatic. Still is. Hey, I don’t want to sound like a Debbie Downer, because I’m sure little girls flock to Genie. Just like they flock to Justin Bieber. It’s just that I find both her and him disagreeable.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

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