Dave Naylor – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about hosannas for Chevy …Bones gives Jets a public flogging…silliness on TSN…another Brier bust for the Buffalo Boys…UFOs…and other things on my mind

Hustler and Remis of Winnipeg Sports Talk.

Top o’ the morning to you, Kevin Cheveldayoff.

Well, Chevy, I just bet you’re peacock proud right about now, given your handiwork during the just-concluded National Hockey League swap-and-shop session. Yes, sir, you generally managed the Winnipeg Jets with such derring-do that you must be the envy of every other GM, with the exception of Kelly McCrimmon, of course.

It’s tough to keep up with Kelly, though. He sees someone who strikes his fancy and he pounces, like a pit bull on a pork chop, and—presto!—the Vegas Golden Knights are primed and prepped for another push toward the Stanley Cup.

Many believe there’s something sinister about McCrimmon’s methods, most notably the way he plays hide-and-seek with players on the limp, but, like yourself, he’s a good Saskatchewan boy and we aren’t about to accuse anyone from the Flattest of Lands of skulduggery, are we, Chevy.

But, hey, I’m not here to discuss Brad McCrimmon’s hocus-pocus.

This is about you, Chevy, and you should know the hosannas are raining down from Portage and Main to the Republic of Tranna. Lend an ear:

Paul Friesen, Winnipeg Sun: “Winnipeg’s wheeler-dealer hasn’t had this kind of deadline, with this kind of a team, since 2018, when he pulled Paul Stastny out of thin air.”

Mad Mike McIntyre, Drab Slab: “This seems like just another in a growing list of terrific Kevin Cheveldayoff deadline deals.”

Hustler Paterson, Winnipeg Sports Talk: “If you were doing a GM of the year from last year’s deadline to right now…hey listen, Cheveldayoff would get serious consideration. I would say going back to the Dubois trade in particular, he is going to get some significant consideration for some accolades he hasn’t been considered for in the past.”

Luke Fox, Sportsnet: “On paper, this is veteran GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s best deadline to date.”

Ryan Dixon, Sportsnet: “Manitobans have to be thrilled with GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s work.”

Cheryl Pounder, TSN: “I think that Kevin Cheveldayoff made an unbelievable move today in acquisitioning Tyler Toffoli. You can’t forget what he did earlier with getting Sean Monahan.”

Then there’s the rabble, Chevy. They might not fill the Little Hockey House On The Prairie anymore, but they’re as giddy as kids at a carnival, and perhaps some, if not most, of those 2,000 unoccupied chairs will be occupied by the time the Jets return home with the two new kids on the block—Tyler Tofolli and Colin Miller—in tow.

I swear, Chevy, you could run for mayor and dog catcher and win both elections in a landslide.

Come to think of it, Mayor Scott Gillingham and his cronies might want to put the giddyup on plans to reopen Portage and Main to foot traffic. You know, in time for the Stanley Cup parade in June.

Whatever the case, Chevy, the kids in Good Ol’ Hometown haven’t been this geeked up since the Beatles touched down at the airport in 1964, but you’ll have to excuse me if I hold my applause.

No, I’m not being a Debbie Downer. You’ve done boffo work. Fetching Toffoli from the New Jersey Devils in barter for a couple of wannabes/neverwillbes was wizardry, and the arrival of Miller shouldn’t be overlooked, especially if it convinces head coach Rick Bowness to keep Logan Stanley confined to the press box.

Yes, I know, Chevy. Stanley is so tall he has to duck low-flying airplanes, but last time I looked tall wasn’t a skill.

Anyway, before I join the hallelujah chorus, I’d prefer to see how it shakes down once the two newbes have joined the fray.

On first blush, it’s all good, Chevy. Toffoli’s 26 lamp-lighters indicates he’ll fill a goal-scoring need, while your hope is that Miller shores up the blueline, even if he’s half a foot shorter than Stanley. Your roster tinkering has positioned the locals for a deep dive in the NHL’s spring runoff, and maybe—just maybe—Tyler Toffoli will become your Butch Goring.

If that’s the case, it’ll be applause all around in June.

Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette wonders why Toffoli has made more stops than a lost dog. “I don’t get why Tyler Toffoli is always the guy who gets traded,” Todd tweets. “He scores goals, he’s a great guy, his wife is a terrific member of the community—and yet he bounces around like the ping-pong balls on lottery day.” This will be the sixth different NHL jersey that Toffoli pulls over his head, but not to worry. Paul Coffey wore nine different jerseys. Ditto Jaromir Jagr. One’s in the Hockey Hall of Fame and the other will get there if he ever realizes there are more than 50 candles on his birthday cake.

Oh dear. Bowness delivered a public flogging to his players in the wake of their no-show vs. the Canucks on Saturday night in Lotus Land. Called the 0-5 drubbing their “worst game” in his two years as Jets bench puppeteer. “We didn’t have one player play a good game. Not one,” he told news snoops. So, do we cue the whine and cheesy party? I mean, I’m sure you recall how the workers reacted when Bones roasted them scant seconds after their ouster from the Stanley Cup tournament last spring. Their little egos were as bruised as bad bananas and, led by one-time Captain Cranky Pants Blake Wheeler, they mounted a counter attack, boo-hooing about their coach’s bad bedside manner. Well, Wheeler’s taken his exit, stage Gotham, so perhaps we won’t hear a group gripe this time.

True confession time: I did the couch potato thing on Friday. Yup, watched almost all the silliness on the TSN Trade Centre show, otherwise known The James Duthie Goof-a-Thon. (I know. Get a life.) It truly was silly (host Duthie called it “stupid,” but I’m not that harsh a critic). Still, I like silly, and the intro featuring Bruce Boudreau made me smile, while Jeff O’Dog and the Quiz Master champion skit made me laugh out loud. “It’s difficult to take myself seriously in this outfit,” O’Dog said. Ya think? … Can someone at TSN please explain Frankie Corrado in 25 words or less … Fashion review: Lindsay Hamilton looked striking in her fire engine red pant suit with the bell bottoms, but Tessa Bonhomme should sue the head of wardrobe for forcing her into a forest green pant suit. The jacket would have been loose fitting on Zdeno Chara. Meantime, Cheryl Pounder still can’t find her hair brush, and the knot in Craig Button’s neck tie was the size of a VW Beetle. Finally, do any men still wear dress shoes with a suit, or has it become sneakers all around? … When Duthie promised there’d be no lamas on the show, I thought, “Hey, I’m fine with lamas. Just don’t show me O’Dog’s butt cleavage again.” … At one point in my comatose state, I switched to Sportsnet and saw Paul Bissonnette among the talking heads. Gong. Back to TSN … Funny trade day tales from Wayne Simmonds. Good stuff … Button mentioned the possibility of a Toffoli-the-Jets transaction near the top of the show. Great call … Quote of the day goes to the aforementioned Corrado: “Sometimes as a player you are a little bit human.” Sometimes they’re human?

Among the great mysteries in life—right up there with the Caramilk chocolate bar and Trump worship—is this: Why can’t the Buffalo Boys win the Brier anymore? Manitoba has produced 27 national men’s curling championship outfits, but none since 2011, when Jeff Stoughton, Jon Mead, Reid Carruthers and Steve Gould toddled off with the Tankard. Our guys are one-for-the-21st century. By way of comparison, Buffalo Girls have won six Scotties titles since 2011 and 10 this century (12 if we count Chelsea Carey as ours). It makes no sense that our female Pebble People kick butt and the guys stub their toes every March.

Nobody asked me, but Joanne Courtney is an excellent voice on the TSN curling broadcast team. She’s knowledgeable, insightful and the banter between her, Hurray Hard Howard and Vic Rauter is healthy and good-spirited. Joanne is a keeper.

Not so good on TSN is that Anytime Goal Challenge by the SportsCentre anchors. Do they actually believe an in-house staff contest is entertaining? It’s a minute and a half of gasbagging. It’s stupid, and they should know that by now.

Lovely International Women’s Day feature by Dave Naylor on Maya Turner, the first female to play and score in a U Sports football game. The lady kicker with Brian Dobie’s University of Manitoba Bisons side was among the best feel-good sports stories in 2023.

Every International Women’s Day, I’m reminded of my favorite female athletes. Still atop the list is Wilma Rudolph, the sleek and elegant American sprinter who wowed ’em at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. I thought her to be the most fascinating athlete I’d ever seen, male or female. I suspect that won’t ever change.

So, how’s the Professional Women’s Hockey League getting on in its third month of existence? Well, the women are still popping up on late-night highlights shows on both TSN and Sportsnet, the dailies in Montreal and the Republic of Tranna are still paying attention, and the rabble hasn’t abandoned them. These were the head counts in the past week: 2,479, 2,554, 4,585, 4,459, 4,607, 10,172 and, oops, 728. That embarrassingly low crowd count was at the New York franchise’s game in Bridgeport, Conn., but they attracted 4,459 to their skirmish vs. Minnesota at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., home of the New York Islanders. And, with the playoff push on, the level of feistiness has been amped up. Ponytail Puck is holding steady.

Good grief. Sideshow Jake Paul and Mike Tyson plan to go dukes up at AT&T Stadium in Dallas in July. Tyson, former heavyweight champion of all the world’s fist-fighters, will be 58 when he and Paul touch gloves. That’s old enough to qualify for a suite in my seniors building (the notion of Iron Mike living across the hall is kind of creepy). I’m not sure what they’re trying to prove, other than there are thousands of suckers born every day, but, even at age 58, Tyson should be able to chew up Paul and spit him out. Starting with his ears, of course.

Apparently there were 570 UFO sightings reported last year in Canada. Imagine that, at least 570 people saw little green men, or their space ships, in one year, but no one in the country has seen the Stanley Cup in the past 31 years.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 1,162: A woman is suing Victoria Golf Club, the District of Oak Bay and Kane Wyatt because she claims a ball came through her car’s open window and struck her in the face. Among other things, she alleges Wyatt negligently hit the golf ball. Hmmm. That sounds like every tee shot I ever made.

Seems there’s trouble with the new Major League Baseball unis: The pants are see-through. Gives new meaning to the first line of the Star-Spangled Banner—“O say can you see?”

Congrats to Andrew (Hustler) Paterson and Michael Remis on the third anniversary of their Winnipeg Sports Talk podcast. That’s a lot of blah, blah, blah.

And, finally, I had left the rag trade by the time Dave Ritchie showed up as sideline steward of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, so I can’t share any stories about the curmudgeonly coach. But he’s the fourth former Bomber that the Grim Reaper has taken from us (Kenny Ploen, Gerry James, Craig Roh) in recent days, and that’s always a sad bit of business.

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

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.

Let’s talk about the great Bud Grant and a watermelon…the great Matty’s take on the great Grant…TSN buries the lede…Separatist Sundays?…swapping wives in The Bronx…and other things on my mind…

Bud Grant has left the building, at age 95, so you’ll excuse me if I wax nostalgic this morning…

When I hear the name Bud Grant, two things immediately pop to mind: The Grey Cup and the Day of the Watermelon.

Way back in the day, you see, my friend Chester and I would hop on our bikes and pedal from Melbourne Avenue in East Kildonan to Packers Field, a parched patch of earth across the street from a meat rendering plant in St. Boniface.

We would make this journey twice every day, morning and afternoon. We did so because Packers Field is where we would find our football heroes, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. These were the late 1950s/early 1960s Bombers of Kenny Ploen and Leo Lewis and Ernie Pitts and Pepe Latourelle and Herb Gray et al, and while they grabbed grass and growled in what would hopefully become another Grey Cup-winning crusade, we stood on the sidelines of this sun-scorched field and observed as if we were familiar with the inner workings of football.

“I see the jury has arrived,” Pitts said as he greeted us upon arrival one day.

Chester and I looked at each other. The great Ernie Pitts, the all-star receiver, had spoken to us. We didn’t know how to respond or react, so we did what most kids would have done—we gave one another a gob-smacked look and giggled.

Shortly thereafter, Grant, the legendary coach, blew his whistle to signal a halt to the on-field activity. He gathered his players, spoke to them briefly and they began to trudge toward the sideline, most of them walking past Chester and I as they headed toward a white cube van parked near the west end of the field.

This had been the final session of their two-a-day workouts, the most demanding, onerous and imposing portion of training camp, and our football heroes were sweaty, stinky and as parched as the field beneath their cleated feet. We followed them and watched with urchin-like curiosity as a man with a lumpy waistline raised the back door of the van. Watermelon. Behind that door was a truckload of beautiful, refreshing watermelon.

That was the players’ post-practice reward for making it through the two-a-days.

Chester and I collected our bikes and were about to leave when we heard a voice call out. We turned and looked back. It was Bud Grant.

“Here,” he said, “you kids have been out here all week just like the players. This is for you.”

He handed us a watermelon, about the size of a football. A member of the training staff cracked it open and two kids sat eating watermelon and spitting seeds with the Grey Cup champions.

How many kids could say they sat and spat watermelon seeds among sporting deity? Only Chester and myself from our neighborhood. It was magical.

The Bombers, after all, were top dogs. The Winnipeg Jets had yet to arrive to adjust the sports pecking order in Good Ol’ Hometown, and our gridiron gods had brought us great glory, winning the Grey Cup in 1958, ’59, ’61 and ’62.

I’ve told the Bud Grant watermelon story a few times, because those morning/afternoon sessions at Packers Field are among my most cherished childhood memories and serve as the first stirrings of my life-long fling with the Canadian Football League.

I was fortunate. Actually, blessed would be a better word. I grew up when the CFL mattered from the Left Coast to Montreal (and perhaps even in the Maritimes), then I got to cover it for 19 years in three locales—the Republic of Tranna, Calgary and, finally, Winnipeg.

And I’ve been a member of Bombers Nation since that Day of the Watermelon, all thanks to Bud Grant.

History records that Grant served as Bombers sideline steward for 10 crusades, 1957-66, making six trips to the Grey Cup game and winning four times. Fifty-seven years later, those totals remain Winnipeg FC standards, as does his tally of 102 regular-season Ws. Legend.

After learning of Grant’s passing, I was curious about what one legend, Jack Matheson, had to say about another legend bolting from the Bombers to the Minnesota Vikings in March 1967.

Here’s what Matty scribbled for the Winnipeg Tribune:

“You knew about class, just by looking at his athletes milling about an air terminal; or riding 35,000 feet high on a diet of coffee, tea or milk; or checking into a hotel. Ask the stewardi, or the desk clerks, and they’ll tell you the Blue Bombers were winners. A white shirt and tie wasn’t good enough, it had to be a CLEAN white shirt and tie, because that was Grant’s style.

“If you’re going to go in style, you might as well go first class, I always say. That was Bud Grant’s way, and it was a good feeling, knowing he was in charge. Now that you mention it, I never really did see him walk on water, but he was right about so much, so often, that most of us got to the stage when it wouldn’t have surprised us.

“I guess we always knew that Bud would be leaving some day, because ambition drives big men to bigger things and it was naive to think that Grant would be part of the scenery until the end of time, if not longer. When I called and wished him well on Saturday I said I understood about him wanting to coach in the big leagues. ‘Don’t forget this is the big leagues here, too,’ he said. That’s class.”

Just so you know, Grant made his exit Stage South for a fabulous National Football League adventure (one NFL title, four trips to the Super Bowl) on March 11, 1967, just one month after he had signed a five-year deal to remain on Maroons Road. Some among the rabble thought him to be quite the Benedict Arnold for going over the wall, but most of us, like Matty, understood his desire to try his hand stateside.

Interesting how the two dailies in Good Ol’ Hometown played the Grant story: The Winnipeg Sun has it on the front of the paper today, plus three pages inside, with quality articles from Paul Friesen and Ted Wyman, both of whom picked up a phone and talked to people who knew the man. Over at the Drab Slab, apparently everyone took the day off. There was just one article, written by wire services, and one canned quote from Bombers CEO Wade Miller. So very lame.

Let me say this: I’m glad there’s a TSN, even if its devotion to all things Republic of Tranna is insufferable. But who decides the story lineup for SportsCentre? Circus clowns? A couple of kids playing rock, paper, scissors on a street corner? I mean, a pair of the deepest pockets in Canada are now bankrolling the Montreal Alouettes, and it was item No. 6 on the docket Friday. Apparently, an NFL swap of mostly draft picks, NBA highlights of 3-pointers, NHL highlights, soccer and the second round of a PGA tournament were more newsworthy than noted Quebec separatist Pierre Karl Péladeau picking up the tab for the Larks with a portion of his $1.9 billion fortune. Sigh.

This was TSN insider Dave Naylor’s take on the Larks time slot: “As the reporter who covered this story for TSN, let me state I believe it is appropriately placed in our SportsCentre lineup. 23 minutes into a 1-hour show in March? No objections at all.” Good grief, man. What in the name of Rod Black does the calendar have to do with it? News is news 12 months of the year.

The Péladeau takeover is hugely significant because the other eight Rouge Football outfits won’t be required to pay the bills in Montreal, and Pierre Karl’s abundance of wealth puts the Larks on sturdy financial footing. Mind you, if he starts acting like the second coming of the Glieberman guys, all bets are off. We don’t need Separatist Sunday game-day promotions.

Here’s Damien Cox of the Toronto Star on Twitter: “Pretty clear the men running national sports federations will never treat female athletes equally until they are forced to, or forced out of office. They always have believed male athletes deserve more, and should play by a different set of rules.” Oh for gawd’s sake. That’s like Tiger Woods telling Max Verstappen he has to be more alert behind the wheel. I mean, has Cox ever looked at his own business? When have major newspapers on Our Frozen Tundra ever treated female athletes equally? Or even close to equal? Never, that’s when. Because the guys who run the rag trade in this country “always have believed male athletes deserve more.”

In today’s Star, only three of 19 articles articles focus on female athletes/teams: Premier Hockey Federation, skier Makaela Shiffrin, NWSL. Perhaps Cox can have a fireside chat with his sports editor. If the Star has a sports editor, that is.

I note the Winnipeg Sun is still running Steve Simmons’ Republic of Tranna-centric alphabet fart on Sundays. So I ask once again: Why? Oh, wait, I forgot: It’s actually the Torontopeg Sun.

Just wondering: Does anyone truly believe Tom Brady is retired, and does anyone believe Aaron Rodgers will make up his mind? Here’s a better question: Why don’t the Green Bay Packers make up Rodgers’ mind for him? Like, let Mr. Tin Foil QB leave for parts unknown, then lure Brady to Wisconsin.

I don’t know if the Toronto Jurassics will qualify for the NBA playoffs, but if points were awarded for whining about game officials they’d be in first place.

And, finally, it was 50 years ago last week when New York Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich completed the most oddball trade in Major League Baseball history: They swapped wives, children and family pets. True story.

Let’s talk about the Rouge Football playoffs and the MOP…the Blue-and-Gold’s best in show head count…creepy things in sports that creep me out…Hot Dog! Phil’s the NHL Iron Man…a rinky dink rink…jersey fling in the Republic of Tranna?…and other things on my mind…

Forget about the CFL gas bags on TSN. For the best take on all things Rouge Football, lend an ear to my two favorite gridiron girls, Lady Portage and Dame Main, both unabashed admirers of large lads in blue-and-gold. Take it away, ladies…

Lady Portage: “Well, girlfriend, another Canadian Football League regular season has arrived at the finish line and we move on to the playoffs to see if our Winnipeg Blue Bombers can threepeat.”

Dame Main: “Oh, wouldn’t that be special?”

Lady Portage: “You know it. Not even the Bombers of the glory days brought the Grey Cup home three years in a row. The Bombers of Kenny Ploen and Leo Lewis and Herbie Gray won the thing four times in five years back in the 1950s/60s, but not three straight.”

Dame Main: “If they pull it off, wouldn’t that make these the glory days?”

Lady Portage: “I suppose it would, for a younger generation. But it’s going to be a tall task.”

Dame Main: “You aren’t sold on the Big Blue?”

Lady Portage: “I am. They’ve got the best quarterback in the league, Zach Collaros, and that rookie receiver, Dalton Schoen, has made people sit up and take notice. Richie Hall’s D-dozen is as stout and as stingy as ever, and I imagine guys like Biggie Bighill and the J Men—Jefferson and Jeffcoat—are plenty geeked up about another championship ring. But I think the Calgary Stampeders will be a tough out. They’ve got a defence to match Winnipeg’s, and their running back, Ka’Deem Carey, is a beast. If the weather’s foul on Nov. 13, he could be the difference-maker. I like him more than our guy, Brady Oliveira.

Dame Main: “So you’re saying the Stampeders will take out the B.C. Lions in the semifinal next weekend?”

Lady Portage: “The Leos are done like burnt toast. Hey, I’m sold on Lions QB Nathan Rourke—fan-tabulous!—but I’m not sold on him as a QB who’s played part of one game since August.”

Dame Main: “He didn’t look like he was wearing a coat of rust against the Bombers on Friday night.”

Lady Portage: “No, but he didn’t look other-worldly, either. Not like before he suffered the foot owie that put him on the shelf for two months. If I can use just one word to describe his play, it would be ‘meh’. I fear he’s in for an afternoon of hurt courtesy the Stamps D-men. Total misery.”

Dame Main: “What do you think would have happened if Rourke hadn’t been injured? Think we’d be talking about Zach Collaros as Most Outstanding Player?”

Lady Portage: “What if Willie Jefferson had alligator arms instead of a wing span that stretches from Winnipeg to Kenora? I’m not into what-ifs, girlfriend. Rourke got hurt and played in 10 games. Zach didn’t get hurt and led the league in TD tosses and wins.”

Dame Main: “Ya, but the guy in Toronto, Mcleod Bethel-Thompson, had more passing yards and completions than Collaros. Maybe he’s the MOP.”

Lady Portage: “And maybe somebody spiked your tea. You and I will land a gig singing backup vocals for Lady Gaga before McBeth gets the nod as East Division MOP. The guy looks all-world for 30 minutes, then he looks like a kid trying to tie his laces with one hand. Sorry, but Eugene Lewis or Tim White deserves the East nomination. But, hey, the girls and boys on the beat are smitten with QBs, so…”

Dame Main: “I sure hope Zach wins. He seems like a wonderful young man, with an adorable family. And it’s so nice that he’s staying around for a few more years.”

Lady Portage: “As sure as O-linemen like second helpings of mashed potatos and anything that moos, Zach repeats as MOP, then it’s just a question of whether or not the Bombers threepeat. All they need is two more Ws—one vs. Calgary on our Frozen Tundra on Nov. 13, then vs. the Toronto Argos on the Flattest of Lands, Nov. 20.

Dame Main: “So that’s your call? Bombers-Boatmen? Who wins the Grey Grail?”

Lady Portage: “The good guys, of course. Best QB always wins, and that’s our boy Zach. He’ll be flinging TD passes while Bethel-Thompson is trying to figure out how to tie his boot laces with one hand.”

Dame Main: “Guess that’s a wrap for us, girlfriend. We’ll have to do this again Grey Cup week. Ya think the Calgary mob will bring a horse to Regina and clomp him into a hotel?”

Lady Portage: “For sure. And if the nag takes a dump in the hotel lobby, Rob Vanstone and the boys at the Regina Leader-Post can write it up as an editorial comment on the Saskatchewan Roughriders season.”

So, Milt Stegall tells us the Bombers have enjoyed “sellouts through the season.” I demand a recount. I mean, it’s nice that Milt wants to tout Winnipeg FC as the showcase franchise in Rouge Football, but he doesn’t need to fudge facts for the CFL on TSN panel. Here’s the reality: The folks in Good Ol’ Hometown packed the Football Field In Fort Garry twice this crusade, both times in September and both times with a Pil-swilling mob from the Flattest of Lands in town for a visit. But Milt’s correct about the Blue-and-Gold being a model operation, on and off the gridiron. Head counts this year:

26,002 (Ottawa)
23,600 (Hamilton)
29,746 (Calgary)
31,053 (Montreal)
30,062 (Calgary)
33,234 (Saskatchewan)
33,234 (Saskatchewan)
27,159 (Edmonton)
23,685 (B.C.)
Total: 28,641 average (best in show and up from 25,947 in 2021).

Dave Naylor asked this question of the TSN panel on Friday: “When’s the last time Zach Collaros stunk the joint out?” Answer: July 22, vs. Edmonton Elks when he was 7/16, 188 yards, 2 TD, 2 picks. But, hey, the Bombers still won, 24-10.

Collaros and Nathan Rourke aside, I can’t remember a more iffy crop of QBs in Rouge Football than what we’ve seen in the past two crusades. Bo Levi Mitchell and Cody Fajardo have become spare parts, Mcleod Bethel-Thompson is as uneven as the back roads in Alabama, we’re still trying to get a reading on Dane Evans, Jeremiah Masoli and Trevor Harris, and Tayler Cornelius might be the next Mike Reilly in Edmonton or the next Great White Nope.

Bytown RedBlacks QB Caleb Evans rushed for a QB record 16 TDs this season. Total yards traveled on those 16 TD rushes: 16.

It’s oft said that the CFL season doesn’t truly begin until the Labor Day weekend, so here’s how the nine teams stacked up in crunch time:

It’s Halloween eve and it’s scary out there, kids. Here are five things/people in sports that really, really creep me out:
1. Ron MacLean’s puns and librarian-like references to ridiculously obscure footnotes about historical events/people. The puns are mostly lame and the detours into the unknown are as baffling as they are painful. Just tell the guy to put on a cardigan, call his Hockey Night in Canada gig Mr. MacLean’s Neighborhood and be done with it. He’s become creepy, kids.
2. Conor McGregor. He’s rude, vulgar, obnoxious, a bully, objectionable on every level, and probably thinks mashed potatoes is finger food. Every time I see him on my flatscreen, I feel the need to hose down. He’s creepy, kids.
3. Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. I don’t know which of the two aging, slower-than-Sunday NFL quarterbacks creeps me out more. My problem with Brady is simple: His ego is the size of Texas, thus his plan apparently is to force himself upon us until he’s older than every tortoise on the Galapagos Islands. (Fittingly, Brady and the turtles move at the same pace.) Rodgers, meanwhile, has a matching ego and seems to fancy himself as a svengali, determined to bend and shape the Green Bay Packers into his image with his every thought. Or maybe it’s his idea of a Zen thing, where he props himself up as the Dalai QB. I’m uncertain. And when they lose? Never his fault. But it’s creepy, kids.
4. Ever since Phil Mickelson teed it up on the Saudis’ LIV Golf Series, he always looks like he needs a bath. That’s creepy, kids.
5. The fawning by news snoops over Tiger Woods and Serena Williams, two more ego-fueled jocks who refuse to take the off-ramp. Woods has three tournament titles since 2013, his most recent in 2019, then he drove his SUV into a ravine. Williams has won one event since becoming a mom five years ago. Yet both are gabbed and written about like they’ve ended the scourge of global homelessness. Can Woods and Williams still win? I suppose, if all the planets align favorably, but they’re both deep on the downside of the slope and I wonder what part of over-the-hill do the talking heads and scribes not understand? They’re creepy, kids.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Brady looks like he’s on a hunger strike? I realize he’s flying solo these days and probably can’t be bothered cooking for himself, but has he not heard of Skip the Dishes?

Things you don’t expect to read or hear in the same sentence: Donald Trump and humility. Andrea Bocelli and sour notes. Phil Kessel and NHL Iron Man. But a tip of the bonnet to Kessel, who hasn’t skipped a day of work since 2009, or 991 games ago. Not too shabby for a guy reportedly on a tube steak-a-day diet.

Hey, fans have stopped flinging $250 jerseys on the ice in Vancouver, which can only mean the Canucks are no longer playing like a bunch of ankle-benders. Most likely next stop for the Jersey Fling: The Republic of Tranna. The Toronto Maple Elites, after all, are second-last in the Atlantic Division and run the risk of going 0-for-California tonight vs. the Disney Ducks in Anaheim. Another L makes them a sub.-500 outfit, and that simply won’t do in a town where they’re accustomed to winning the Stanley Cup every October. Ladies and gentlemen, start your jerseys.

Nothing but positive dispatches from Mullett Arena, jazzy new playpen of the Arizona Coyotes in Tempe. It’s the size of a college dorm, which is fitting since it also houses college hockey, and we’re told those 5,026 fans crammed into the joint can really raise a ruckus. Well, so do kids in an elementary school playground, but that doesn’t make it college. A rinky dink rink is rinky dink rink is rinky dink rink.

Where did TSN dig up this Frankie Corrado dude? What are the bona fides that compelled TSN to prop him up as a hockey analyst? Well, Google tells me he spent time with 10 teams in 11 seasons of pro hockey, some of it in the NHL (76 games), some of it in Sweden and Russia, and that’s fine. But this is part of a recent Q&A Frankie did with Ben Kuzma of Postmedia Vancouver:
Kuzma: “Why are the Canucks struggling?”
Frankie: “I think that team is in trouble.”
Wow. Move aside, Sherlock Holmes. There’s a new super sleuth in town. And, yes, that’s sarcasm. I mean, the Canucks were the only NHL outfit without a W. What was Frankie’s first clue? If that’s the type of penetrating analysis he’ll bring to TSN, I’ll switch channels and listen to Ron MacLean’s puns.

In a dog-bites-man story, this headline from The Athletic: “PWHPA still working toward a new women’s pro hockey league.” In other news, WWII is over, JFK is dead, Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and The Beatles broke up. I mean, we’ve been hearing about a league for the Ponytail Puck renegades for nigh on four years. When will they tell us something we don’t know?

How ironic that the first World Series since 1950 with zero U.S.-born Black players on either roster might be won by a Black manager, Dusty Baker of the Houston Astros. I’ve liked Dusty ever since my one and only visit to Dodger Stadium in the 1980s. Every inning when he trotted out to his post in left field, he’d stop and natter with us fans in the bleachers. Nice man.

I want to go on record as saying I like Camila Cabello and Gwen Stefani on The Voice. John Legend is agreeable and Blake Shelton is Terry Bradshaw with a good head of hair, but not necessarily a better singing voice. Hee haw.

Here’s all you need to know about the Saudi/Greg Norman LIV Golf Series: PGA Tour defector Pat Perez was handed a four-year, $10 million deal, just to show up. “Look, I know I can’t beat those kids anymore. This was a great opportunity for me. I have nothing against the PGA Tour; they did a lot for me, but I had to earn everything I got out there.” What a concept. Earning your wages. Meantime, Peter Uihlein collected $11.3 million in seven LIV events, compared to $4 million in 126 PGA tournaments. But, remember, it isn’t about the money.

And, finally…

Let’s talk about the ongoing iffiness of the Canadian Football League

So here’s how I’m reading what went down in the Canadian Football League this week:

The iffiness of a 2021 crusade is no less iffy today than the last time commissioner Randy Ambrosie surfaced to inform us that a 2021 crusade was iffy.

That was back in early March, when Commish Randy was mostly “talking about talking” with Dwayne Johnson and his new toy, the XFL. On Wednesday, “talking about talking” with The Rock had become a secondary squawking point, because Amrosie had moved on to flapping his gums about “backup plans and backup plans to the backup plans and backup plans to back up those plans.”

Welcome to Bafflegab 101, kids.

Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel would be proud of Commish Randy’s word gymnastics, but it’s not like the front man for the Lords of Rouge Football had anything definitive to tell us.

To recap: The very deep-thinkers who chart course for the good ship CFL gathered on Tuesday and, after considerable natter, they instructed Commish Randy to inform the rabble of their findings. Among other things, it was determined that they’d prefer to kick off a 2021 crusade on Aug. 5, that each team would play a runted 14-game schedule, and that Ambrosie would present the Grey Cup to a bone-chilled champion on Dec. 12 at Timbits Field in Hamilton.

And, yes, now that you mention it, I can think of better places to be than sitting outdoors on a hard, cold bench in the Hammer just 13 days before carving the Christmas turkey, but iffy weather holds a special place in three-down football folklore so, sure, let’s pull on a pair of extra-thick longjohns and watch the large lads grab frozen grass.

Anyway, we all know the proposed start and finish points are target dates best peed into a snow bank than chiseled in stone.

Which is why Commish Randy couldn’t swear on a stack of pigskin-covered playbooks that Aug. 5-Dec. 12 Rouge Football is a done deal. Oh, sure, he informed us that “we’re gonna have a CFL season,” but you have to remember that he’s part politician and assumes we have short memories and won’t hold him to promises.

So he kind of talked in tangled tongues while assuring us that he is “supportive of vaccinations” (well, duh), that there are no guarantees in life except “death and taxes,” that “every kid” should play football because of the life lessons it teaches, and, perhaps my favorite, he and the Lords of Rouge Football have developed “a rather elaborate decision-making matrix.”

I’m not 100 per cent certain, but I believe that makes Ambrosie the first CFL commish to ever use the word “matrix,” although I suppose G. Sydney Halter might have gone there since he was a distinguished fellow and lawyer who knew and appreciated the value of a well-crafted sentence.

At any rate, Commish Randy has a matrix and he advised Dave Naylor of TSN that “the cells in that matrix will be populated with information.”

Until then, it’s all iffy. Just call it the Ifth Estate.

Meanwhile, go ahead and call me skeptical and cynical, but that’s the product of 30 years in jock journalism and listening to too many people with rose-tinted glasses propped on their nose. Believe me, I want to see a 2021 crusade and I’m glad Commish Randy stepped forward with a message that many among the rabble view with optimism.

It’s just that we know the CFL is at the whims of COVID-19 and a hit-and-miss vaccine rollout that differs from precinct to precinct, thus Commish Randy’s we-will-play promise is built of straw rather than brick and mortar.

“We know that we’re gonna have to be willing to be flexible in order to pull this off,” he conceded.

So let me just say this: If you plan to watch three-down football on Aug. 5, you’re free to circle that date on your calendar, but I suggest you have a backup plan and a backup plan for your backup plan and backup plan to back up that plan.

In other words, circle it in pencil rather than a Sharpie, and make sure there’s an eraser handy.

Let’s talk about the chicken, the egg, the Argos, the CFL and the media

I stumbled upon an interesting Twitter to-and-fro last week involving three of the nation’s notable jock journos, two of whom are widely respected and the third not so much.

The exchange—between Winnipeg Blue Bombers longtime voice Bob (Knuckles) Irving, veteran observer of three-downs football Dave Naylor of TSN, and Damien Cox of the Toronto Star—centred on the Toronto Argos and the reason(s) behind woeful head counts whenever the Boatmen come up for air at BMO Field in the Republic of Tranna.

The Argos, be advised, don’t attract crowds to BMO. It’s more like pockets of stragglers. You know, folks who get lost while looking for something better to do.

Officially, average attendance in 2019 was 12,493, although we know better. That might have been tickets sold, but it wasn’t bums on benches. My guess is that the audience numbered sub-10,000 more than one day/night, meaning the Canadian Football League’s largest market has the smallest following, a level of neglect challenged only by indifference on the Left Flank of the land, where people won’t even come in out of the rain to watch the B.C. Lions.

One reason advanced for Argos apathy is a generation thing. That is, Rouge Football doesn’t appeal to anyone without age in their eyes and grey in their temples, which set off this Irving-Naylor-Cox exchange:

Irving: “Part of the reason for that is the Toronto media basically ignores the CFL—not good enough for most of them.”

Naylor: “Come on Bob, it’s the media’s fault? The Winnipeg media reports aggressively on the Bombers because there is a demand for information. If that existed in Toronto, the media would respond accordingly.”

Cox: “Individual media people don’t make these decisions. Sports departments do. In Toronto, sports staffs are stretched to the limit, fewer ppl doing more. There’s a lot more sporting events to cover in Toronto than Winnipeg.”

Okay, let’s unwrap that.

First, Knuckles Irving is correct when he submits that mainstream media in the Republic of Tranna treats the Argos and Rouge Football as an afterthought.

For example, the Toronto Star no longer cares enough about the CFL to dispatch a scribe to the Grey Cup game unless it’s played in The ROT, and Tranna-based Sportsnet pays only token attention to the CFL simply because its competition, TSN, holds the broadcast rights. (No one expects Sportsnet to promote the other guy’s property, but it is a news gathering and distributing outlet and, as such, has a responsibility to inform viewers of CFL games/stories on air and on the website with an expected level of substance.)

Meanwhile, when Rouge Football went dark last August, the cancellation of the season was front page of every sports section of every daily on The Prairies, but the story served as inside filler (pages 8 and 9) in the Toronto Sun. (I don’t recall what made the Sun front that day, but I suppose Auston Matthews might have been trimming his mustache, which would have warranted a lede, sidebar and a 150-point headline.)

In terms of the Argos-media, it really is a chicken-and-egg riddle. Is the media indifferent because the rabble steers clear of BMO on Argos game days, or does the rabble steer clear of BMO on Argos game days because the media is indifferent?

It certainly isn’t the responsibility of news snoops to do the bidding of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which bankrolls the Boatmen and BMO’s more popular tenant, Toronto FC. But, although historically the most successful of The ROT’s pro sports franchises (17 Grey Cup championships, including three this century), the Boatmen have fallen to fifth on the pecking order, behind the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays and Toronto FC. That isn’t about to change anytime soon, no matter what the local rags put on their sports pages or radio/TV puts on their air.

Which brings us to Cox’s point that “there’s a lot more sporting events to cover in Toronto than Winnipeg.”

What a load of hooey.

Had Cox said there were more “pro sporting events,” I’d agree. But overall sports? No.

It’s all about priorities, and they differ from town to town. In the Republic of Tranna, the major beats are the Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays and Toronto FC, with the Argos the runt of the litter. In Winnipeg, it’s the Jets, Blue Bombers and…curling.

Pebble People have made the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press sports section 23 times this year. That’s right, 23. I doubt curling has been on the sports front of either the Toronto Star or Toronto Sun once this century, let alone 23 times in a three-month, one week time frame.

Also making the front page of the Freep sports section were two levels of junior hockey, high school hockey, women’s amateur hockey, volleyball, university sports, auto racing, etc. At different points in the year, they make room for local golf, tennis, high school football/hoops, Usports, and more of what you’ll never find in the Toronto rags.

The Sun and the Star have become pro sports sheets, whereas the Free Press continues to cover the peripheral sports, during a pandemic with a stable of scribes that has shrunk to four.

Dating back to my start in the rag trade in 1969 when the Bombers were top dog, it’s always been that way in Good Ol’ Hometown. Lower-level sports were never given short shrift, even after the Jets arrived to nudge the Bombers down a notch, and I suspect the Freep will carry on that way.

I just wish I could say the same for the Winnipeg Sun. Unfortunately, the suits at Postmedia in the Republic of Tranna ruined a good thing.

Let’s talk about panhandling on Parliament Hill…a new CFL might look like the (really) old CFL…the PWHPA pity party…a tip of the bonnet to Melissa Martin…the week in jock journalism…dead weight and dead horses…and other things on my mind

Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime?

How about 300 million of them? Do I hear 1,500,000,000?

Apparently Randy Ambrosie doesn’t think that’s too much of an ask, because he’s panhandling on Parliament Hill these days, hoping that Prime Minister Trudeau the Younger is a fan of three-downs football and has a spare $30 million to $150 million stashed in his couch at Rideau Cottage.

If not…well, that’s the part of the big beg that Ambrosie has yet to spell out, but it suggests the end could be nigh for the Canadian Football League. Final score: COVID-19, CFL-0.

And, no, now that you’ve asked, I don’t think that’s being alarmist or extremist.

Look, I realize the CFL already has had more sticks of Acme dynamite blow up in its face than Wile E. Coyote, but the COVID-19 pandemic is a different kind of beast. The sports world will be harder to put together than a broken egg, and our quirky game requires a special kind of fix.

Rouge Football, you see, isn’t doable without fannies in the pews, even if the Argonauts and the dismissive citizenry in the Republic of Tranna do their best to prove otherwise. It can’t work. Not in The ROT, not in Good Ol’ Hometown, not on the Left Flank, where the locals won’t even come in from the rain to watch the Lions.

Thus, if turnstiles aren’t turning, it’s folly to discuss a Coles Notes version of a 2020 CFL crusade commencing on the Labor Day weekend.

Which means, yes, short of Trudeau the Younger morphing into PM Pigskin and tossing $30M into Commish Randy’s begging cap immediately (and another $120M if this season is a no-go), the CFL as we know it is likely a done deal.

“What would happen if that $30 million assistance was denied?” TSN’s Dave Naylor asked Randy the Panhandler the other day.

“I’m not indulging in the question what happens if it doesn’t work because I believe we’re going to find a way to make it work,” came the answer.

No surprise that Commish Randy would decline to engage in doomsday talk. He’s one of those dudes who’ll tell you his watch can’t possibly be broken because it shows the correct time twice a day. He’s never seen a half-empty stadium. Not even BMO Field in The ROT. Always half full. He knows what an empty piggy bank looks like, though, and he recognizes that saving the CFL will take more than a GoFundMe page.

And that’s a very grim reckoning for many of my vintage.

I remember when the CFL was the big dog in town, because we didn’t have National Hockey League outfits to call our own out in the colonies. But we had Kenny Ploen, the Lincoln Locomotive, Bud Grant and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Saskatchewan had the Little General, George, Gluey Huey and the Roughriders. Calgary had Eagle Day, Earl the Earthquake, Ham Hands and the Stampeders. Edmonton had Spaghetti Legs, the China Clipper, Johnny Bright and the Eskimos. B.C. had Peanut Butter Joe, Willie the Wisp, Nub and the Lions.

So a Canada without Rouge Football? Sorry, that’s not my Canada.

It would be like a pub without pints. A church without prayer. The McKenzie Brothers without brown pops, toques, earmuffs and a “beauty day, eh.”

But that’s my take, owing to the fact I was weaned on the game when single-bar face masks were still in vogue, and east was east and west was west and never the twain did meet until the Grey Grail was up for grabs.

Others, however, won’t be swayed by notions of nostalgia and Canadiana culture. They don’t want their tax dollars used to pay Mike Reilly’s and Bo Levi Mitchells’ $700,000 salaries, and certainly not Commish Randy’s reported annual stipend of half a million loonies. That’s an impossible sell when many thousands among the rabble are forced to feed at the public trough due to COVID-19, and going-out-of-business signs are popping up like dandelions.

I’ve heard the CFL described as a mom-and-pop operation and, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose it is. It’s dwarfed by the goliath that is the National Football League, and robust broadcasting contracts allow the other main players (National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer) to re-enter the fray sans customers. At least temporarily.

Not so Rouge Football.

Pundits suggest Commish Randy’s beg is a Hail Mary pass, and I’m inclined to agree. But, hey, Trudeau the Younger is a good Catholic boy, so he probably owns a rosary and might have an “in” when it comes to answered prayers.

If not, I fear there’s a very real possibility the CFL will run out of downs.

I don’t want to pay Bo Levi Mitchell’s wage anymore than the next person but, for the record, I have no problem with the CFL panhandling on Parliament Hill. I’d do the same thing. That doesn’t make it the right thing, but it doesn’t make it wrong, either.

The hardest part of Commish Randy’s sales pitch? Convincing the feds that people hither and yon actually give a damn about Rouge Football. He can wax poetic about the beauty of the three-downs game, how it’s a significant and historic thread in the country’s fabric, but he can’t sugar coat the head counts in our three largest markets—the Republic of Tranna, Montreal, Vancouver. I’ve seen more people at a neighborhood flea market than the Argos attract to BMO Field. The Lions are a rumor in B.C. Montreal showed a pulse late last season, but it was faint. So never mind the odious notion of bailing out millionaire and billionaire owners, how does Commish Randy sell the feds on a product that most of the rabble is meh about?

No matter how this all shakes down, I’m convinced we’ll see someone ride a horse into a big-city hotel lobby on the final Sunday in November once again. But not this year. A post-pandemic CFL won’t look the same, at least not initially. I see reduced rosters, more Canadians and fewer imports on game-day rosters, wage shrinkage (on and off the field), and two leagues under the CFL banner: The Western Football League and the Eastern Football Union. No more interlocking play. Just West v. West/East v. East until the Grey Cup game. You know, like it was in the 1950s and into the ’60s. And road trips on the bus (except to B.C.) to lower costs. That’s what the tea leaves are telling me, so remember where you read it first. Or not.

What a surprise—the CFL asks for money from the feds and we hear squawking from other athletes, notably Liz Knox, one of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association mouthpieces. “We’re asking for peanuts compared to a $150-million ask,” she bleated, recalling the collapse of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League last spring. “When the CWHL was folding, we were talking in the hundreds of thousands to get us in the clear so the league didn’t have to fold. We’re talking two or three CFL salaries. That would (have) made the difference of us literally surviving or not. Women’s sport is often seen as a charity, but that’s not the narrative that we’re hearing about the CFL and their situation right now.” Well, actually, that’s exactly what many among the rabble are calling the CFL these days—a charity case. Liz might want to try a different narrative.

Why is it that members of the PWHPA seem to be caught in a never-ending pity party, constantly griping about the sorry lot in life that they’ve created for themselves and demanding what they “deserve,” yet we never hear similar grumbling from the National Women’s Hockey League? NWHL leaders simply go about their business, adding an expansion franchise in the Republic of Tranna, conducting a player draft, and prepping for the 2020 crusade. At last report, 26 women are already on board for the NWHL’s sixth season, and none of them are bitching about “deserving” a living wage. That’s what they’re building toward—a better tomorrow for Ponytail Puck—and I’d say they’re going about it the right way.

In the winter of 2015, I was having a discussion with friend/former colleague Judy Owen about sports scribes at Winnipeg’s two dailies, and I directed her attention to a young writer still trying to find her way in the rag trade. “I really like Melissa Martin’s stuff,” I told Jude. “She doesn’t cover things the same old, same old way. She has a different style, and I like different. She’s the best pure writer they have at the Freep.” Jude didn’t disagree, but she seemed genuinely surprised, if not mildly amused, that I harbored such high regard for Melissa. Well, fast forward to spring 2020: Melissa won her second National Newspaper Award the other night, as top columnist in the country. Like I was saying five years ago, she’s the best they’ve got at the Drab Slab. Still. Too bad she only makes cameo appearances in the toy department.

The week in jock journalism…

Really nice read from Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab on Ralph Wild, a 101-year-old who’s been root, root, rooting for the Blue Bombers since Buddy Tinsley almost drowned during the Mud Bowl at Varsity Stadium in the Republic of Tranna. If you’re scoring at home, that was in 1950, so Ralph has seen some football…Shrinkage alert: The Winnipeg Sun sports section was reduced to just four pages three days last week. And, get this: They managed to fill those pages mostly with local copy. Imagine that. Running local copy by local scribes instead of all the usual flapdoodle from the Republic of Tranna. What a concept…Mind you, it was back to normal for today’s edition, with a Toronto-centric piece on the sports front and more on the inside…Made a point of watching the Her Mark show on TSN, but I’m afraid it totally missed the mark. The guest list included Christine Sinclair, Tessa Virtue, Marie-Philip Poulin, Kia Nurse, Natalie Spooner and Hayley Wickenheiser, and host Kate Beirness said, “I hope the stories they share will be as uplifting to viewers as they have been to me.” Excuse me? What stories? It was a series of public service announcements. So let’s just call it an opportunity lost for female athletes…Why does TSN, or anyone for that matter, think Will Ferrell is funny? He isn’t. Ferrell pranked the Seattle Seahawks on a Zoom gathering the other day, expressing his “love” for quarterback Russell Wilson and saying “let’s make a baby.” Beirness described the bit as “fantastic.” No. It was totally lame, just like Ferrell’s gig in the TSN curling booth…Sad news out of Calgary: Longtime broadcaster Russ Peake died at age 80. You’d have to look long and hard to find a nicer man than Russ.

If you have a spare 50 minutes in your day (and who doesn’t?), grab a beer or a glass of vino and check out Road to the Grey Cup, a documentary on the Bombers’ journey to their three-downs title last November. It’s the handiwork of Rheanne Marcoux (creative director), Riley Marra (producer, editor, videographer), Jeremy Derochers and Sam Calvert (videographers) and it’s boffo stuff.

There was considerable ballyhoo on Saturday when an extremely large Icelandic lad named Hafthor Bjornsson established a world record for dead-lifting 1,104 pounds. What’s the big deal? The Cleveland Browns have been carrying that much dead weight since the 1960s.

There’s also been much natter about the incomparable Secretariat winning NBC’s virtual running of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Big Red out-galloped a field that included 12 other Triple Crown champions, including 1919 winner Sir Barton, who finished last by about 15 lengths. Talk about flogging a dead horse.

The talented Murat Ates of The Athletic has scanned the Winnipeg Jets roster and determined that there are five untouchables: Connor Hellebuyck, Rink Rat Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, Josh Morrissey and Neal Pionk. That’s right, he’ll trade away Twig Ehlers, Kyle Connor or Puck Finn, but not Neal Pionk, whose only a top-pairing defenceman by default. I admire Murat’s way with words, but I’m not hiring him as GM of my hockey team.

And, finally, if the last month and a half has seemed more like an entire year, and if you can’t tell one day from the next, you’ve got an idea what life is like for a lot of seniors. Isolation can be very numbing, physically and mentally.

Let’s talk about Ted Green OF THE WINNIPEG JETS…a “family discussion” in The ROT…double speak from Mike O’Shea…Edmonton Eskimos fans eat well, Winnipeg Blue Bombers fans drink well…no female news snoops in Canadian Football Hall of Fame…a twit on Twitter…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and bravo to the 20,907 souls who trudged through the white stuff and made it to Football Follies Field in Fort Gary for the Bombers-Larks skirmish on Saturday…

I remember the day Teddy Green retired. He cried.

Not for himself, understand. I don’t recall Teddy ever feeling sorry for himself, even though he never experienced a pain-free day after Wayne Maki clubbed him over the head with a hockey stick.

So, if the tears couldn’t possibly have been for the one-time toughest dude in hockey, who?

“I remember a guy who used to play on the Million Dollar Line before he came to Boston,” Green explained the day he stepped away from a professional playing career that had come full cycle, starting in Winnipeg with the Warriors in 1959 and concluding with the Jets in 1979. “He went out and busted his butt every game and then would sit at the end of the bench spitting out blood. Murray Balfour was dying of cancer. I’d like to think I fashioned some of my courage from Murray Balfour.”

None of us who traveled with the Jets back in the day ever questioned Teddy’s sand.

We’d watch him hobble onto buses and through airports like an old man on a pair of knees that had endured the slicing and dicing of a surgeon’s scalpel five times, and we knew all about the headaches that often put him into a state of paralysis. But Teddy was tire-iron tough. He played through all the searing discomfort, and did so admirably. We marveled.

“I only missed one game in seven years because of the headaches,” he said with a proper level of pride on the January 1979 day he bid adieu to his playing career, but not the game.

The headaches, of course, were a reminder of his ugly stick-swinging duel with Wayne Maki of the St. Louis Blues on Sept. 21, 1969. They had clashed near one of the nets in a National Hockey League exhibition game, Teddy wielding his lumber first, striking Maki with a blow to the shoulder. The St. Louis forward retaliated and, unfortunately, he had better aim, chopping down on Teddy’s head with Bunyanesque force.

Teddy lay on the freeze in a contorted mess and was whisked away from the rink to an Ottawa hospital, where medics spent five hours repairing his fractured skull and keeping the Grim Reaper at bay. By the time Teddy was fit enough to rejoin the Boston Bruins, in 1970-71, there was a plate in his head and a helmet on top of it. He helped them win the Stanley Cup in the spring of ’72.

“I never met a guy with more intestinal fortitude,” Phil Esposito said of his former teammate, who drew his final breath the other day at age 79.

The thing you should know about Teddy, is that his on-ice persona didn’t match the man away from the freeze. A bonfire burned in his belly in battle, but once removed from the fray he was gentle, thoughtful and soft spoken, sometimes to the point of mumbling. His words were often accompanied by a devlish cackle, as if he’d just pulled a prank, and he probably had.

The 1959 Winnipeg Braves. Teddy is second from the left in the back row.

As mentioned, Teddy’s career began and ended in Good Ol’ Hometown. He started on the frozen ponds of St. Boniface, and upper-level hockey people began taking notice of the tough guy on defence when he lined up on the blueline with les Canadiens in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. Legendary shinny lifers Bill Addison and Bill Allum recruited Teddy to join the Winnipeg Braves for their Memorial Cup crusade in 1959, and they won the national Junior title, beating the Scotty Bowman-coached Peterborough Petes in five games.

Teddy added a Stanley Cup with the Bruins, he captained the New England Whalers to the inaugural World Hockey Association title, and he added two more after joining the Jets in 1975-76.

“I ended up in Winnipeg, which was a real plus, and I won a couple of championships,” he told me at his retirement presser. “I also got to play with one of the best forward lines ever put together in hockey in Ulf (Nilsson), Anders (Hedberg) and Bobby (Hull). And I was part of the European influx.”

Teddy always kept good company on the freeze, dating back to his time with the Braves, an outfit that included Ernie Wakely, Bobby Leiter, Gary Bergman, and local Junior legends Wayne Larkin and Laurie Langrell. He played with Bobby Orr, Espo and the Big Bad Bruins, Hull, Hedberg and the two Nilssons, Ulf and Kent, with the Jets, and he coached Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, Mark Messier and the boys on the bus in Edmonton.

Most of the headlines and dispatches since his death have been devoted to Teddy’s time with the Bruins and Oilers, but his formative years on the rinks of River City and three-plus winters with the Jets should be more than a footnote.

He was one of us, a local lad who found his way home to bookend his Memorial Cup championship with two WHA titles.

Great career, better guy.

Shame on the Drab Slab for reducing Green’s death to a sports brief. That’s all he deserves? What, no one at the broadsheet has a phone that works? They couldn’t call some of his former teammates? Do they not realize this guy was hockey royalty in River City? The Winnipeg Sun, meanwhile, ran a nice piece by Jimmy Matheson of Postmedia E-Town, but it was totally Oilers-centric. It’s as if Teddy never played hockey in Good Ol’ Hometown. Well, he did, dammit. He earned his chops on our frozen ponds and he was a significant part of the Jets’ WHA glory days.

Oh dear. After three straight losses, the Tranna Maple Leafs felt obliged to conduct a special think tank to discuss their repeated face plants. “A family discussion,” is how head coach Mike Babcock described the behind-closed-doors to and fro. “It’s just honest. Like any family, you keep each other accountable.” So, when les Leafs huddle on the QT it’s a “family discussion,” but when les Jets do that very thing some zealots in the media tell us the changing room is “rotten to the core” and “fractured.” Go figure.

I note that Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has declared a state of emergency. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ quarterbacking situation is that bad.

Ever wonder why news snoops become such cynical SOBs? Well, consider the sound bites delivered by head coach Mike O’Shea when asked if his Bombers would recruit a veteran quarterback to baby sit Chris Streveler:

Sept. 30 (to Knuckles Irving on the CJOB Coach’s Show): “That’s not gonna happen, and I’m good with it. I like our guys. Very confident in our guys. Dance with the one you brung.”

Oct. 2: “To really think that a guy’s gonna come in and change your franchise this late in the season, it’s pretty difficult in football. Even if you trade for a veteran presence, unless he knows your guys, it’s really hard for even a veteran guy to come in late in a season and lead. I really just don’t think those scenarios work or can be applied to football this late in the season. Especially (a quarterback). Quarterbacks usually do a lot better when they’ve got a playbook and a training camp and exhibition games to play with.”

Oct. 10 (after the signing of veteran Zach Collaros): “I think it’s a good move. We said right from the get-go about bringing in a veteran guy. Now we got a seasoned veteran who comes in and, you know, will have a role and it’ll definitely be a good guy to have in the building. Knowing Zach, he’s a smart guy, a competitive guy, he’s going to pick things up very quickly. I’m sure the concepts are very familiar to him. The terminology will be probably different, but, I mean, that’s the reason we talked about a veteran guy, because it comes that much quicker and understanding CFL defences is something these guys do no matter what the play call is. That’s important.”

So, to sum up: O’Shea never wanted a veteran QB but he wanted one “right from the get-go,” and even a veteran QB is too stupid to pick up the system in a short time, except Collaros isn’t too stupid to pick up the system in a short time. Good grief.

Well lookee here. According to Gaming Club Casino, there’s no better burg to be a Canadian Football League fan than Edmonton, with Winnipeg a solid second. First thought: Obviously, it has nothing to do with winning. Sure enough, the folks at GCC used six measuring sticks, only one of which—touchdowns—

involves the on-field product, so findings were based mainly on ticket costs, precipitation, pollution and the tariff on burgers and beer. Turns out that E-Town has the best burger prices and the second-lowest admission fees, while Good Ol’ Hometown has the cheapest booze, which is probably a good thing. I mean, when you’ve been watching your team lose every year since 1990, chances are you need a drink or two.

A couple of peculiarities in the GCC study: B.C. Lions received the worst mark for all the wet stuff than falls in Lotus Land, except for one thing—the Leos play in the air-conditioned comfort of B.C. Place Stadium. Indoors. Under a $514-million umbrella. Meanwhile, Ottawa scored high marks for being the least-polluted city. Hmmm. Apparently they didn’t watch either of last week’s federal election debates.

This year’s inductees to the media wing of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame are former colleagues Steve Simmons (Calgary Sun) and Larry Tucker (Winnipeg Tribune). That brings to 14 the number of CFHofFamers that I worked beside at one time or another during my 30 years in jock journalism. My all-time all-star team from that bunch: Trent Frayne, Jack Matheson, young Eddie Tait, Shakey Hunt, Jim Coleman and Knuckles Irving.

It’s worth noting that the media wing of the Canadian grid hall is the ultimate boys club. There are now 99 card-carrying members and, unless I missed something when I called up the CFHofF website, not one of them is female. Zero. Nada. Seems to me that they should have made room for trailblazers like Joanne Ireland, Ashley Prest, Robin Brown and Judy Owen by now.

The CFL has always been blessed by quality news snoops on the beat, and I don’t think anyone covers Rouge Football better today than Dave Naylor of TSN. Just saying.

This week’s Twit on Twitter: The aforementioned Simmons of Postmedia Tranna. The Vancouver Canucks put on the glitz for their home opener last week, and the production featured an on-ice, in-uniform cameo appearance by Todd Bertuzzi, he of the infamous Steve Moore goon job. That prompted Simmons to tweet, “Sad.” My oh my. How thoughtless of the Canucks for not clearing their guest list with a mook columnist from the Republic of Tranna. Never mind that Bert is among Vancity’s favorite hockey sons and the Canucks had every right to include him in their puck pageantry. A mook columnist from The ROT says it was wrong, so it must be. As freaking if. Simmons’ morality metre is sorely out of whack. He believes Bertuzzi should be persona non grata for mugging Moore, yet he celebrated the arrival of a woman-beater, Johnny Manziel, to the CFL. “Personally, I think the CFL is stronger, maybe more fun, possibly more fan-appealing, with Manziel playing or trying to play the Canadian game,” he wrote. “Where do I sign up?” So, if you’re scoring at home, Simmons believes an on-ice mugging is a more egregious trespass than beating up, and threatening to kill, a woman. The mind boggles.

When soccer’s purple-haired diva Megan Rapinoe shouted “Gays rule!” during last summer’s women’s soccer World Cup, she wasn’t kidding. Rapinoe, a lesbian, was anointed FIFA female footballer of the year. Jill Ellis, a lesbian, was anointed FIFA female coach of the year. Elena Delle Donne, a lesbian, is the Women’s National Basketball Association MVP and league champion with the Washington Mystics. Katie Sowers, a lesbian, is an assistant offensive coach with the San Francisco 49ers, who remain unbeaten this year in the National Football League. Meanwhile, all the gay guys remain in hiding.

Price comparison: A standing-room ticket to see the Jets and Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday in the Toddlin’ Town was $27. Meanwhile, a standing room ticket to watch the Buffalo Beauts v. Boston Pride, or Metropolitan Riveters v. Minnesota Whitecaps, of the National Women’s Hockey League went for $20. I don’t know if the NWHL is overpricing its product or the Blackhawks are underpricing, but a $7 difference seems out of whack to me.

Hey, check it out. Head coach Tim Hunter of the Moose Jaw Warriors has hired a female, Olivia Howe, as one of his assistants. That’s a first for the Western Hockey League, and I say good on Hunter.

And, finally, if you’re having a gobbler dinner with all the fixings today or Monday, be thankful that turkeys don’t fly.

About the great escape of CFL stars to the NFL…Mexico, Commish Randy and Martha Stewart…chasing Mr. Reilly…lady power in the NFL playoffs…backup goalies and backup QBs…and so long to Jim Taylor

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and I wonder how many Corona CFL execs sucked back during their dog-and-pony show in Mexico…

Will the last all-star to leave the Canadian Football League please turn out the lights.

Already among the dearly departed are Alex Singleton, Bryant Mitchell, Duke Williams, Marken Michel, Diontae Spencer, Jameer Thurman, James Vaughters and Samuel Eguavoen. Most oustanding player Bo Levi Mitchell soon may follow.

I swear, we haven’t seen this many good men flee since the disciples abandoned Christ.

At least those guys had a legit excuse. It was either leave Christ to fend for himself or become a starving lion’s lunch. That’s kind of a no-brainer.

This southbound exodus of quality CFL talent is another matter. The large lads are skipping town because they want to compete with the best of the best, plus they’re tired of bashing their brains for chump change. And collecting it in Canadian coin. Up here, signing bonuses are paid in Canuck Tire money and wages in Monopoly money. At least that’s how the American import might see it.

But, hey, make a National Football League roster and he collects Dead Presidents and Founding Fathers. Scads of them.

A practice squad shlep, for example, earns $7,600 per week in four-down football. That’s $129,200 per season. For doing squat. Minimum wage for an NFL freshman in 2019 will be $495,000. A two-year guy can’t earn less than $645,000, even if he does nothing more than spend an entire Sunday afternoon standing on the sideline staring at a Microsoft tablet.

In comparison, the CFL minimum last season was $54,000. That isn’t a typo. Do not add a zero. And it’s only $40,559.40 on the U.S. exchange. That makes staying home in Alabama to offer Big Macs and large fries to drive-thru customers a viable option. Especially if it means you don’t have to leave a bride and kids behind.

We won’t know the 2019 CFL salary structure until the league and the Players Association agree on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, but we do know the bottom feeders won’t see more than five figures on their pay stubs.

So, ya, head south young man.

What puzzles me is that CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie is cool with the high volume of defectors.

“The NFL thing is just evidence of how fundamentally close the talent level in our league is to the talent level in the NFL,” he told news snoops last week at the winter meetings in Mont-Tremblant, Que. “That’s been a long and important story as it relates to our football. Our guys are world-class athletes and I’m always happy for them when they get a chance to take a shot at the NFL.”

Oh, sure, let’s all paste on our happy faces like Commish Randy. Losing quality people to the NFL is a meh issue. Why, we can replace all those lost all-stars with any scrawny Mexican who can crawl under, climb over, or run around Donald Trump’s wall and make his way to Canada. So not to worry.

“Wonderful, young players,” Commish Randy said of Mexican talent while laying out his global scheme during a fireside chat with Dave Naylor of TSN. “It’s a brand new world, a brave new world out there.”

Sure is. But if Bo Levi Mitchell bolts to the NFL, I doubt John Hufnagel and Dave Dickenson of the Calgary Stampeders will be “brave” enough to replace their starting quarterback with Juan Valdez.

Sorry, but the CFL climbing into bed with Liga de Futbol Ay Chihuahua isn’t the feel-good story Commish Randy makes it out to be. Not when we’re witnessing the football equivalent of a jail break by our premier performers.

Seems to me his time would be better spent working on a CBA that doesn’t pay in Canuck Tire money.

In another fireside chat at the CFL winter meetings, Commish Randy channeled his inner Betty Crocker and advised Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun that he wants to “build the mother of all pies. We want to build a big pie.” Terrific. Martha Stewart can succeed him as commissioner when his world vision falls flatter than a sad soufflé.

Commish Randy began building his pie at Estadio Azul in Mexico City on Sunday, with cooks and bottle washers from the nine CFL teams assembling for the inaugural Look Under Every Rock Talent Tour. After observing 50 aspirants run, jump, pass, catch and kick, the consensus seemed to be there were a “couple of guys” who “wouldn’t embarrass themselves” at a training camp. I say we let the Tranna Argonauts have all 50 players. If they fail to make the team, maybe they’ll stay and buy season tickets. That would double attendance at BMO Field from last season.

According to Commish Randy and others, this Mexico’s Got Talent dog-and-pony show is all about growing the game globally. How about growing the game in the Republic of Tranna, Montreal and B.C. first.

The CFL prides itself on diversity, but the NFL one-upped our league this weekend when Sarah Thomas and Terri Valenti worked playoff matches. Thomas became the first woman to officiate a post-season game, serving as the down judge in the American Football Conference division skirmish between the Los Angeles Chargers and New England Brady-Belichicks, while Valenti was the replay official for the Kansas City Chiefs-Indianapolis Colts joust. Awesome.

Moving to a more seasonal topic, I don’t understand why so many people are saying and writing that Rink Rat Scheifele is the engine that drives the Winnipeg Jets. Seems to me that it’s captain Blake Wheeler. Still.

In my next life I want to be a backup goalie or a backup quarterback. They’re always the most popular player with the rabble. A case in point would be Laurent Brossoit, currently Connor Hellebuyck’s caddie with les Jets. Listening to the faithful, Brossoit is boffo and Hellebuyck sucks. And the numbers suggest that. But, no, you don’t want to turn the blue paint over to Brossoit. It’s that old nugget about not fixing what ain’t broke. The Jets sit atop the National Hockey League Central Division leaderboard. They ain’t broke.

The West Coast said goodbye to one of Canada’s jock journo legends when Jim Taylor cashed out at age 82 last week on Vancouver Island. There was much to admire about Skull’s scribblings, but what I liked most was his approach to writing sports: Taylor recognized that the games people play aren’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things—hence the term ‘toy department’—so he went about it with a wink and a nod. Taylor used wit and sarcasm, irreverence and cheek to deliver his message of the day to Vancouver Sun and Province readers for 30 years. Sometimes he did it with the bite of a bulldog, other times the purr of a kitten. The main ingredient, however, was humor. He was a funny guy who poked fun and had fun. If there were any sacred cows in his world, no one noticed it in his writing. That’s why he was among my favorites.

Taylor had a quirk: He would run his one-liners by you before he’d ship his copy off to his editors. It was his idea of a test drive. He didn’t have to do that, though. They were all funny and made you laugh. Out loud. And you’d laugh again the next morning when you saw the same line in print.

Taylor’s passing provided pause for ponder on the state of sports writing in our vast nation. There are some fine wordsmiths, people who can spin a yarn and turn a phrase, but I don’t find much cheekiness and humor in most scribblings. The scribes all seem to take themselves so bloody seriously, and I often wonder what some of them are so angry about. It’s probably why I rag on guys like Steve Simmons and Damien Cox so much. They just don’t appear to be having any fun with the gig.

And, finally, is the Drab Slab known as the Winnipeg Free Press ever going to hire a sports columnist? It’s been more than three months since the last guy left the building. Get on with it already.

About the Three Lions…Winnipeg Blue Bombers taking a hit at the box office…that empty feeling at BMO Field…the Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll…Tiger vs. Lefty…Shapo vs. Milos…the Nayl Gun does Johnny Rotten…CFL power rankings…and other things on my mind

Bacon, eggs, toast, but no bangers or beans, and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…

I have Irish blood pumping through my veins—or so I’ve been told—and I know the Irish and British have had their squabbles through the centuries, but I’ve got no quarrel with them, so I’m root, root, rooting for England in the World Cup? Go Harry Kane and all you Three Lions!

In the good news-bad news department, I present the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

First the glad tidings: The local lads delivered a proper paddywhacking to the B.C. Lions on Saturday evening, a result that leveled their performance sheet at 2-2 and puts them on equal footing with the Edmonton Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders in the mosh pit that is the West Division of the Canadian Football League.

Now for the bad tidings: The head count at Football Follies Field was 26,567. Measured against any franchise in the eastern precinct of the land, that’s a boffo bit of business. Measured against their own bottom line, not so much.

Winnipeg FC has attracted 52,025 to its fancy digs in Fort Garry for the first two home skirmishes of this Grey Cup crusade, down 3,225 from Games 1-2 a year ago. That’s a minimum of $90,000 in lost ticket revenue (based on a $28 ticket), and only the club bean counters and Wade Miller know how much of a hit they’ve taken in concessions and merchandise. Do the math and the Bombers are staring at a dip of $405,000 (minimum) in ticket sales for their nine home dates unless there’s a sharp reversal. Ouch.

It could always be worse, of course. In the Republic of Tranna, home of the Grey Cup champion Argonauts, only 12,196 souls were coerced into spending Saturday afternoon at BMO Field, where quarterback James Franklin put up a surprising W in his first start in Ricky Ray’s stead. Total for two home dates in TROT: 28,656. Seriously, how long can the Argos stay in business? And should those of us in the colonies care?

It’s 11 a.m., does Senators Nation know where Erik Karlsson is?

Aside to any National Hockey League outfit that might be contemplating a contract offer for wife-beating, disgraced defenceman Slava Voynov: Just say “no” to Slava.

Why is it that when any of our baseball, football or hockey teams prevent a foe from scoring, we call it “a shutout” but soccer people call it “a clean sheet?”

Does anybody miss the Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll at the World Cup? I do. The Brazilian’s antics were comedy gold, even if his thespian skills are suspect. Jim Calder, acting coach from the University of New York, provided the New York Times with this critique: “Neymar does what all beginning actors do. They oversell the event. All humans are acting. You learn when you’re a baby. If I cry, my mother will come over. If I cry, this guy will get a red card. It’s the same thing.”

I note that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are talking about a mano-a-mano, winner-take-all $10-million challenge in Las Vegas. Apparently, both golf legends have agreed to a special concession that allows ol’ Lefty to hire English goalkeeper Jordan Pickford as his caddy. Pickford won’t be carrying Mickelson’s clubs, though. His sole duty will be to block any of Phil’s putts that roll past the hole and are in danger of skidding off the green.

What’s the over/under on how many restricted free agents Kevin Cheveldayoff will sign this week? Three? I have a hunch the Winnipeg Jets general manager will deal with most of his pertinent paper work swiftly, and that includes Jacob Trouba.

I’ve read and heard a lot about how Denis Shapovalov had usurped Milos Raonic as Canada’s top tennis player, an assessment based solely on one match between the two and the world tennis rankings. But look who’s still playing at Wimbledon. That’s right, Raonic, not Shapo, who can’t advance through the second round of any tournament that matters. I never bought into the Shapo over-hype. He’s a terrific, young talent (although far too geeked-up on court for my tastes). He might be the best tennis talent every produced in our country. But, for now, the kid’s still on training wheels. The gushing last year after wins over Rafa Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro should have been tempered.

TSN just won’t let the Johnny Manziel narrative go. In the wake of the CFL’s four Week 4 matches, there was plenty of fodder for interesting chatter, but not at TSN. Rather than talk about quarterbacks who actually played in the games, it always has been and, apparently, always will be about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats backup QB for TSN’s gab guys. Thus, Frick and Frack (more commonly know as Jay and Dan) invited football insider Dave Naylor to their show for something they call the Nayl Gun. Here’s how it went:

Dan: “At this pace, I don’t see Johnny Manziel hitting the field at all for the Ticats.”

Naylor: “I’ll tell ya, if you’d taken a hundred people who’ve studied the Ticats quarterback situation and said, ‘Do you think they’ll get to the bye week without Johnny Manziel taking a snap?’ a hundred people would have told you ‘No way’ and I’d have been to the front of the line. Look Jeremiah Masoli played really well, he’s had three 300-yard games, four 300-yard games, but the one issue that I think has been there, there’s been two games—Week 1 in Calgary and the other night in Saskatchewan—you know, he had the ball in his hands late in the game, down by less than a touchdown, and he couldn’t produce a win. Until he does that, I think there’s still gonna be a lot of scrutiny over his play. Will Johnny Manziel go through the year without getting on the field? No way. He’s gonna play at some point, and I think we’re getting close to that time. Is it possible he doesn’t start all season? I do think that’s possible because Jeremiah Masoli has earned the right to stay as the Ticats starter.”

Jay: “What do you think is more likely…gonna throw you a quick one here…more likely that he plays for the Tabbies this season or gets traded at some point this season?”

Naylor: “I think it’s far more likely he plays. Look, if we get to the end of this year and Jeremiah Masoli puts up the kind of numbers he put through the first four weeks, I think we will see a trade in the off-season. And I think there’s an understanding, ‘Hey, Johnny Manziel committed for two years in the Canadian Football League,’ but after a year of backing up, the Ticats would owe it to him to either trade Jeremiah Masoli or to trade him to somewhere where he can get on the field. So, I think a trade this season, highly unlikely, a trade within the division ever is unlikely, but can I see him traded out west or Masoli traded out west after the year? Ya I could.”

Yo! Boys! It ain’t news until Johnny Rotten actually takes a snap. Until then, talk about the guys who are, as Matt Dunigan would say, gettin’ ‘er done.

And, finally, this week’s CFL power rankings:

1. Calgary (3-0): Only unbeaten outfit will be tested by the RedBlacks in Ottawa.
2. Winnipeg (2-2): Highest scoring outfit in the league, and defence stepped up vs. B.C.
3. Ottawa (2-1): We’ll know if RedBlacks are the real deal this week.
4. Hamilton (2-2): Seriously? A loss to the Roughriders?
5. Edmonton (2-2): Seriously? A loss to the Argonauts?
6. Saskatchewan: (2-2): I don’t care if they beat the Ticats; Chris Jones has created a mess.
7. B.C. (1-2): Quarterback issues aren’t going away.
8. Toronto (1-2): The win over the Eskimos is an anomoly.
9. Montreal (1-3): Really bad in either official language.

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	pattidawnswansson on Let’s talk about hosanna…
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