You know that discussion about the Most Outstanding Player in Rouge Football? Is it Vernon Adams or Zach Collaros?
Well, fuhgeddaboudit.
I mean, after what transpired at B.C. Place on Friday night, there’s as much chance of Adams being anointed MOP as Trudeau the Younger has of sweeping Alberta in the next federal election.
Adams, you see, pulled a Jimmy Hoffa. Yup, disappeared. When it mattered most.
Oh, sure, B.C. Leos head coach Rick Campbell had a dude out there playing quarterback in the back half of their all-in skirmish vs. Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and the guy was even wearing Adams’ work clothing. But he didn’t fool any of the 23,512 witnesses. What they saw was a body double, not the QB who had been leaping tall buildings in staking the Leos to a 20-10 lead by recess. This second-half charlatan couldn’t run, couldn’t pass, probably couldn’t beat team bankroll Amar Doman in a foot race.
The consequences of the Adams vanishing act were dire: Bombers rallied to win 34-26 in OT, they jumped past the Leos to the top of the West Division table with a 12-4 record, and now the road to the Grey Cup game almost certainly will run through the south side of Winnipeg in mid-November, when the wardrobe du jour is apt to be a parka and mukluks.
The Leos had no business losing that game, and it was a “what could have been” moment for the Orange-and-Black, still trying to win friends and influence people out here on the Other Side Of The Rocks. Hosting the West final could have been a game-changer for the franchise and the on-field product. Including, of course, Adams.
I’m guessing the BC QB doesn’t place much stock on personal achievement and trinkets, but there’s no way he can be the MOP after coughing up that hairball the size of Grouse Mountain on Friday (seriously, 35 second-half passing yards until the final play of regulation time?).
So who’s left?
Well, don’t run off with the notion that Collaros is a shoo-in for the Canadian Football League’s highest hosanna for a third successive crusade, because nothing the Bombers QB has done this year takes my breath away, and his interception and two lost fumbles in the red zone Friday night didn’t beef up his case.
As I scribbled last week, the people who decide these things need to give a thought to one of the other guys in the blue-and-gold livery of Winnipeg FC—Brady Oliveira.
I have the Bombers running back down as the clubhouse leader, but I don’t get an MOP vote. That’s the province of news snoops and Oliveira’s head coach, Mike O’Shea, and the football reporters in Good Ol’ Hometown don’t always see it my way. Fact is, across the nation people with notepads and recording devices are fixated on those who fling the football, to the point of it being a fetish. Which would explain how only six non-QBs this century have joined the Official Order of the MOP.
Oliveira, however, surely has provided them something to ponder this time around, churning up more terrain than a prairie farmer at seeding time—1,426 yards running the ball, 465 after hauling in Collaros passes. I swear, there’s enough ground between Oliveira and the next leading rusher to start a new country. He’s good for six yards every time Collaros sticks the football in his ribs and 10.1 per pass, and he’s finished seven games with 100-plus yards.
Unless O’Shea sits him down in one of Winnipeg FC’s final two skirmishes, Oliveira will finish this crusade with 1,600-plus rushing yards, and that’s Jon Cornish country. It doesn’t get much more high and mighty than that, because Cornish set the standard for Canadian-born ball carriers in 2013, with 1,813 yards, and he’s the only homebrew to reach the 1,600 level.
What’s more, Oliveira is a product of the sandlots of Winnipeg and he rescues dogs when he isn’t terrorizing CFL defenders.
Don’t you think it’s fitting that a guy who rescues dogs is top dog?
Someone at TSN needs to clue in Paul LaPolice and Matt Dunigan. I mean, they’ve been involved in Rouge Football long enough to know there’s no MVP award for the regular season. It’s the Most Outstanding Player. Say it together with me, boys: M-O-P. Get with the program.
This is interesting: The Bombers-Leos skirmish was the game of the year in Rouge Football and neither Winnipeg paper had feet on the ground on the Left Coast. The Winnipeg Sun was absent because Postmedia keeps their three scribes chained to a radiator in a dark corner of the newsroom, so they’re excused. What about the Drab Slab, though? Well, let’s first recall what their beat guys had to say in the leadup to the match…
Jeff Hamilton: “The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have played some meaningful games this season, but none have meant more to their bid to recapture the Grey Cup than what’s in store at BC Place Friday night. It really can’t be overstated the importance of winning this game and no one knows that better than the Bombers.”
Taylor Allen: “This is not an exaggeration. Friday’s road tilt at BC Place is the most important regular season game the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have had in years.”
Yup, so meaningful and important that the decision-makers who count beans at 1355 Mountain Ave. chose to save the coin and have the boys cover the game off TV and radio, due to the two-hour time difference.
Keep that in mind the next time sports editor Jason Bell or one of his scribes thumps his chest about the Drab Slab being the only rag in Good Ol’ Hometown that covers all Winnipeg Jets and Bombers games home and away.
The natterbugs on the CFL on TSN panel did some serious gushing over Bo Levi Mitchell after he played just one quarter and hurled six passes in Hamilton Tabbies 38-13 decision over the Saskatchewan Flatlanders on Saturday. Milt Stegal said Bo Levi hasn’t looked that good “since 2018” and Jim Barker mentioned something about Bo’s performance “gave the people, most importantly his teammates, his coaches that belief that I’m gonna take you guys, we’re going to the promised land.” Let me just say this about that: Bo Levi is broken. Six passes doesn’t change that.
The Toronto Argos celebrated their 150th birthday the other night, and 14,246 attended the bash at BMO Field in the Republic of Tranna. Do you think they’ll get 15,000 for their 250th?
This from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Toronto: “Don’t remember a defensive Canadian player in the CFL more dominant than Mathieu Betts of the B. C. Lions. He could win top Canadian and top defensive player in the league and possibly be nominated as Most Outstanding Player by the Lions. The kid from Laval has been that great.”
Someone should introduce Simmons to Google. That way he could look up Brent Johnson and discover that the Kingston, Ont., native was a terror on the Leos D-Line for 11 seasons, most notably in 2005 and ’06 when he led Rouge Football in sacks with 17 and 16, respectively. He was Most Outstanding Canadian in both crusades, and Most Outstanding Defensive player in ’06.
This is what Bombers legendary D-man Doug Brown once said of Johnson: “Brent had to establish himself first, at a traditionally American position. He was a pioneer in that respect. Coaches didn’t necessarily think Canadians were on a par with Americans. With the work he did and the accolades he received, Brent changed that. He’s the gold standard for Canadian defensive linemen.”
I guess Simmons didn’t get West Coast games back then.
I remember the day I met George Reed. Like a lot of former jocks of yore, he had turned to selling suds in his after-football life, working as a Molson’s rep, and I was the sports columnist at the Calgary Sun, known to sample his employer’s product on occasion. We were at a function one day in the early 1980s and radio guy Billy Powers introduced us. “I just saw your face on one of those Sun ads on the side of a bus,” Reed said. “Man, you are uuuuuu-gly.” This is not something you expect to hear when meeting the greatest running back in Rouge Football history. “Ya,” I shot back, “and Willie Fleming was a better running back than you.” Reed, who died at age 84 less a day last week, laughed. He was a good guy and football deity on the Flattest Of Lands.
Also leaving the building was Dick Butkus, who didn’t just play middle linebacker. He looked like a middle linebacker is supposed to look. Angry, mean and gnarled. He even had a middle linebacker name. Butkus. No name said middle linebacker like Butkus, except maybe Ray Nitschke. He could never have been a Cardinal or a Dolphin. He had to be a Bear and play in the muck and the guck and the spit of Chicago’s Soldier Field. There are former NFL quarterbacks who likely still flinch at the mention of his name. But they can stand easy, because Butkus is gone now, dead at age 80, and it can be accurately stated that they don’t make ’em like that anymore. He was a football player to behold.
Who do you think would come out worse in a head-on collision between Butkus and Reed? Probably anyone who had the misfortune to be caught in the middle.
Every time Clayton Kershaw implodes in the playoffs, like he did in the Los Angeles Dodgers division series opener vs. Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday night, it occurs to me that some among the rabble believe he’s a better pitcher than Sandy Koufax, no matter how often Kershaw proves them wrong. Kershaw is 13-13 with a 4.49 earned-run average in post-season pitching. Koufax was 4-3, 0.95 ERA and two World Series MVP awards. So stop it already.
Here’s how the great scribe Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times described Kershaw’s disastrous outing Saturday: “It was the worst start of Kershaw’s career. It was the worst start in Dodgers postseason history. According to ESPN Stats & Info, it could have been the worst start in baseball postseason history, as he was the first pitcher to give up five runs on five hits without getting an out. There has been much speculation about when Kershaw would throw his last pitch as a Dodger. If the Dodgers don’t win one of the next two games, you might have just seen it. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.” Sad.
There’s been a shifting of the landscape out here on the Left Coast, and it wasn’t an earthquake, although I suppose it is in a sense. Vancouver Canucks employee extraordinaire Stan Smyl, you see, has vacated the hockey ops department to become a franchise ambassador, which is to say he’ll be slapping backs, glad-handing, cutting ribbons and making people smile. Steamer has been a player, coach, manager and go-to guy for sound bites for the past 45 years, and I remember him from my days covering the Western Hockey League and Punch McLean would bring Steamer and his New Westminster Bruins to the Ol’ Barn On Maroons Road. There was usually a raising of hell. I chatted with Stan on numerous occasions during Stanley Cup playoffs, and he always provided straight-up, honest answers, win or lose. A good guy.
Well, Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman surfaced not so long ago for a natter with Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic and, among other things, the Winnipeg Jets bankroll confirmed the club is in win-now mode. “We’re trying to win,” he told LeBrun. “This has been a long build for us and we think we’ve got a good team, a good core of guys that really like each other. The vibe, and the message I keep getting, is that these guys want to win. That’s encouraging because that’s what this has always been about.” Always been about winning, eh? Then perhaps the Puck Pontiff can explain giving up on seven first-round draft choices. And the one they should give up on, Logan Stanley, they won’t give up on. It hasn’t been about win-now in Winnipeg since 2019.
Can TSN be serious? Connor Bedard is No. 48 on its top 50 NHL player list? And he’s yet to play a game for keeps? That’s just stupid.
I don’t watch exhibition hockey, so I must ask: Is it true that Nick Kypreos is on the Sportsnet intermission panel? If so, let me guess: He’s been promoting cement head hockey. Thought so.
I’m no longer in the crystal ball biz, but let me make these two predictions for the NHL season: The Winnipeg Jets will earn a wild-card playoff berth. The Canucks will not.
You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t understand the new Hockey Canada changing room policy. The way I read it, all players must wear at least one layer of clothing. At all times. Just wondering: This will eliminate masculine toxicity from the game how? It will make the game more inclusive and safer for gay and racialized kids how? It won’t. It will, however, send some kids home stinking like a pair of rental bowling shoes, because they won’t change out of their game undergarments. Who comes up with this daft stuff?
And, finally, it’s 7:05 in the morning as I type these words and, on the street beneath my eighth-floor apartment, a leather-lunged man is singing O Canada. His audience at street level is zero, but he sounds happy. So happy Thanksgiving.
The River City Renegade 
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