domestic violence – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about white guys telling white guys what to do…what was Nazem Kadri saying about Cassius Clay?…homophobia in the press box…baseball cards in bike spokes…the CFL and the Edsel…ARod and JLo a no-go for the Mets…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and I’m not protesting against anything today, but you might protest my still being here…

Social issues like racism, domestic violence, homophobia, sexism and misogyny tend not to have lengthy shelf lives around the ol’ sports hot stove, at least not with mainstream media.

They’ll use it as a chew toy for a few days—sometimes as long as a week—then abruptly turn their attention back to the scoreboard and more pressing matters, such as the Tranna Jurassics’ bid to repeat as rulers of the hardwood or Tiger Woods’ duck hook.

There’s a reason for the short attention span: They can’t relate.

I mean, the toy departments of Canadian newspapers are diverse like a Chihuahua is an elephant. It is an enterprise consisting of 99 per cent men, all of them white. They’ve never felt the sting of the barbs. Thus, it is head-shakingly laughable and absurd that numerous jock journos, print division, have been lecturing and preaching about proper protest protocol re racial injustice.

Worse, they’ve been scolding the National Hockey League and its players for a stutter-step before Planet Puckhead joined a professional athletes’ “racism is bigger than sports” call-to-action last week.

Some samples:

Ed Willes, Postmedia Vancouver: “On Thursday, the NHL bowed to pressure from the players and cancelled the two playoff games set for that night. Predictably, it was followed by a self-serving statement in which the league—along with the NHLPA in a joint statement—pledged unwavering support to the fight against racism. But it also came a day late and a dollar short. It was also perfectly in keeping with the league that it sat on the sidelines for 24 hours and let the players take the responsibility when it should have been leading the way.”

Mad Mike McIntyre, Drab Slab: “One thing we were reminded of today: The NHL and the vast majority of its players will care about a cause when it’s convenient to them, their schedule and their bottom line. Otherwise, all bets are off and the games go on. Actions really do speak louder than words.” He later called the NHL players’ retreat from the rink “an overdue step.”

Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star: “Instead of Black Lives Matter, they said We Skate For Black Lives. They said they were fighting against racial injustice and for health care workers, like it was a buffet menu. The NHL is a small white town on the US-Canada border and the same people have been in charge forever.”

Damien Cox, Toronto Star: “Apparently response from most NHL players will be ‘we didn’t know.’ What they don’t know is how clueless that makes them sound.” And: “Hockey players are really demonstrating themselves to be clueless.” And “By playing on, NHL is basically saying racial unrest is someone else’s problem. Undermines all the words said earlier this summer.”

Terry Jones, Postmedia Edmonton: “Hockey missed its moment to make a major statement and act in solidarity with the basketball players the night before. The way it worked out, however, was better late than never. The puck players got it right in the end and doubled down for effect. The NHL players thus managed to pull themselves up by the skate laces and emerge by making a significant statement after all.”

Steve Simmons, Postmedia Toronto (in a string of tweets): “Shouldn’t somebody on the Boston Bruins, who share a building with the Celtics, have taken a knee? Anybody? The NHL players tonight didn’t even take a knee. Sad. If you want to be disappointed, be disappointed in how NHL players responded last night.” Later he wrote: “The fact that NHL players chose to play on Wednesday night without any kind of sign of political awareness or togetherness—not a symbol, not a knee taken, not an arm locked—is a condemnation of them, not the league. This didn’t reflect on the league. It reflects on the players.”

Whoooo, boy. That’s a tall can of righteous ranting. Basically, what we have here is a bunch of white men from a very white business telling white men from another very white business what to do about something they’ve never experienced.

What next? They tell Paul McCartney how to write songs? Show Eric Clapton how to play the guitar? Explain method acting to Tom Hanks?

Look, racism ought to be an everybody issue, but it seems to me that the sports scribes should be asking questions, listening and learning, not telling people what to do and how to do it. Nor should they be tsk-tsking anyone, not when their own operation is naked in its whiteness.

Really what does it matter that NHL players were a day late and a dollar short in moving into lockstep with athletes from the National Basketball Association, the Women’s NBA, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball and tennis players, who walked off the job earlier last week? As venerable Zen master Dalai Jocklama has been heard to say, “One is never late to the party if one brings good wine.”

Since I was knee high to Howdy Doody, athletes have been using their voices to pitch products from Gillette razor blades to ravioli in TV commercials, but now they’re using them to hopefully change minds, change habits and change built-in biases. More significant, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. before them, they’re speaking with their feet. That’s boffo stuff, but it’s also a risky bit of business. What happens the next time a cop kills a Black woman or man? Do they walk away again? If so, do the fans they still have give a damn if they ever return?

Not sure what message Nazem Kadri was trying to send when he wore a Cassius Clay hoodie for a show of solidarity re racism by NHL players last week. Muhammad Ali considered Cassius Clay his “slave name,” so I don’t get it. I’ve been waiting for Kadri to enlighten us, but so far no explanation.

Lived experience is, of course, the best of teachers and, yes, I have felt the sting of the barbs. Too many times and to the point of suicide ideation. I have been denied work, denied service, bullied, ridiculed, taunted, stalked and groped. I’ve been made to feel a lesser-than based on gender, and I’ve received physical threats. I once was told that I shouldn’t be allowed to sit at the bar in the very nightclub I cleaned for a living. “This is where the boys sit,” a longtime regular advised me, his voice dripping with contempt. “You should respect that and sit somewhere else.” All that in the past 12 years. Which is the reason I’ve written more than 100 essays on sports/social issues since I began blogging. Awareness leads to conversation and conversation hopefully leads to understanding and change.

Devin Heroux, a terrific CBC Sports reporter who happens to be gay, tells us he hears homophobic slurs “with alarming frequency during media scrums and in the press boxes and at sporting venues today.” That’s very disturbing. I mean, experience has taught me that the language on press row can get rather raunchy and salty, but homophobic? Call me naive, but I thought that would be strictly taboo in the year 2020.

Devin’s essay recounting his experiences listening to anti-gay slurs as a closeted gay kid playing sports (“I quit hockey because of it.”) is excellent. It’s the kind of stuff you’ll rarely find in a mainstream newspaper sports section because, again, the jock journos can’t relate. Thus they ignore issues like homophobia, sexism, misogyny and domestic violence until it becomes an inconvenience they can’t avoid.

Hey, for the bargain-basement price of $349, you can have your name engraved on the new base of the Canadian Football League’s biggest bauble, the Grey Cup. Which is sort of like having your name engraved on the hubcap of a 1958 Edsel. I mean, neither the CFL or the Edsel are up and running.

If CFL Commish Randy Ambrosie and the three downs overlords insist on panhandling shamelessly, why not go all in? Hold a nationwide telethon. If folks across the land care about our quirky game—and they surely do on the Prairies—they’ll pony up. If not, I guess it’s garage sales, weekend car washes, bake sales and lemonade stands.

Telethons have worked for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who were near extinction more than once. Rob Vanstone of Postmedia Flatlands has an interesting piece on the club’s history of financial challenges, which included a bank account that once showed a balance of exactly 30 cents. It’s worth a read.

So, a Mike Trout rookie bubble gum card has sold at auction for $3.936 million. Scant seconds later, millions of parents across North America grounded their kids indefinitely for putting baseball cards in the spokes of their bike wheels.

Just wondering: Do they still include that rock-hard, sugary bubble gum in a pack of baseball cards? I’m guessing dentists everywhere hope so.

Well, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriquez are no longer in the bidding to buy the New York Mets, and that’s really too bad. It would be nice to have another female owner in baseball not named Marge Schott.

Last week I suggested some local news snoops went double-ply Charmin soft on the Winnipeg Jets after their failure to qualify for the NHL Stanley Cup tournament. Basically, they gave the local lads a high-five because they tried really, really hard. Ugh. Therefore, it was with much interest that I read Stu Cowan’s take on the Montreal Canadiens, who, unlike the Jets, actually won a qualifier series and took the Philly Flyers to six games before bowing out. “This year, the Canadiens were a bad team that didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs,” he wrote in the Montreal Gazette. “There aren’t many NHL cities that will celebrate a first-round playoff exit, and Montreal definitely shouldn’t be one of them.” I trust the softies on the beat in Good Ol’ Hometown are paying attention.

And, finally, what’s the over-under on the number of positive COVID-19 tests it will take before the U.S. Open tennis tournament is double faulted? And, if they manage to finish what they start this week at Flushing Meadows, will it be a walkover for Serena Williams in the women’s draw, since six of the world’s top eight players have chosen to give the Grand Slam event a pass?

Let’s talk about sexism and homophobia in the blurt box…taps on the CFL season…some good reads on Ducky…Coach Potty Mouth believes he’s still the man…a participation badge for the Winnipeg Jets?…the hair on Friedman’s chinny, chin-chin…greybeard boxing…and other things on my mind

A return of the Sunday morning smorgas-bored after a pause that was supposed to last a month…and you’ll have to forgive me if I play a bit of catch-up…

Whenever I see the name Mike Milbury trending on Twitter, it tells me that he’s said something stupid and has undergone an emergency footectomy, whereby one of his large feet has been surgically removed from his even larger yap. Yet again.

It also prompts me to check my calendar to confirm that this is 2020, not 1960.

Whenever I hear someone like Thom Brennaman spew an anti-gay slur on-air and then, in delivering a mea culpa, he assures us that “this is not who I am, it never has been,” I sigh, then wait for my eyeballs to roll back into their sockets.

And, again, I glance at the calendar to confirm that we are post-Stonewall, not stuck in the ’60s.

Sadly, it was a messy week in the sports blurt box, and it’s frustrating and wearisome in the extreme that we’re still listening to the “did he really say that?” natterings of dinosaurish men unable to drag their hairy knuckles into the 21st century.

One of them, Milbury, is a product of the 1950s. The other, Brennaman, is circa ’60s.

Milbury is a former National Hockey League player of plodding mediocrity, his career noteworthy only because he one night clambered into the seating area of Madison Square Garden and whacked a paying patron on the head with a shoe. In terms of shinny theory, he’s a direct descendant of rock ’em, sock ’em Don Cherry, a lineage that failed him miserably as an NHL general manager and has racked up similarly unfavorable results in the NBC Sports broadcast booth.

Milbury, is a serial sexist, with strong leanings toward homophobia.

Mike Milbury would have us believe women’s college hockey is played in empty rinks, like this one in Minnesota.

He laments the “pansification” of hockey. He once observed the play of NHL scoring champions Henrik and Daniel Sedin and called the supremely talented twins “Thelma and Louise.” Years after Slava Voynov was sent to jail and deported to Russia for thumping the crap out of his bride, Milbury described the wife-

And another empty rink for women’s college hockey in Wisconsin.

beating as an “unfortunate incident.” He called fellow talking head Pierre McGuire a “soccer mom.” More recently, he drew a parallel between empty NHL rinks and women’s college hockey, even though numerous American female college teams attract robust audiences. And, of course, there’s his latest bit of sexist misspeak during a New York Islanders-Washington Capitals skirmish the other night. Discussing the impenetrable playoff bubble the NHL has established in the Republic of Tranna, he noted, “Not even any women here to disrupt your concentration.”

Apparently, it has escaped Milbury’s notice that each year, scant seconds after the Stanley Cup has been awarded, the smiling, giddy victors are joined on the freeze and at rinkside by smiling, giddy wives and girlfriends.

Imagine that. Winning a championship with all those pesky women on site to “disrupt” their concentration. How is that even possible?

But, hey, maybe this explains why Milbury was such a colossal flop as GM of the Islanders: The poor sap went home to a woman every night. She was such a disruption to his concentration that he traded away Zdeno Chara and Roberto Luongo.

Brennaman, meanwhile, was raised by baseball broadcasting royalty, his dad Marty the voice of the Cincinnati Reds for nearly half a century. He insists he isn’t homophobic (he’s a “man of faith,” don’t you know), except the evidence supports the notion that he’s very much anti-gay. He was heard, on-air, calling an unidentified locale “one of the fag capitals of the world” during a bit of banter with co-workers, and his emphasis on the word “fag” carried an unmistakable tone of contempt.

“That is not who I am. It never has been,” Brennaman said while apologizing “for the people who sign my paycheque, for the Reds, for Fox Sports Ohio, for the people I work with.”

Notably, he did not apologize to the very people he thinks he might have offended—the LGBT(etc.) collective.

It was an “I’ve gotta save my ass,” clichéd mea culpa. At no point did he mention the word gay. Or homosexual. Or the LGBT(etc.) community. Worse, he followed the next day with Part 2 of his exercise in ass-saving: “I had no idea it was so rooted in hate and violence,” he said of his slur.

Oh, shut the hell up, man. Nobody’s that thick.

Brennaman believed his mic was dead when he uttered the offensive word, which suggests he’s quite comfortable using anti-gay language in his work space, and only the most naive among us would conclude that this was a one-off.

Look, there’s no crime in growing old. It happens to most of us. But there is something terribly wrong with networks hiring wrinkled men who can’t adjust to the motion of life. Some of what was acceptable in the 20th century doesn’t cut it anymore. That’s not hard to figure out.

Those who can’t—or refuse—are the true disruption. And a great many of us are tired of it.

Turns out the boys in the NBC Sports blurt box will have to get along without Milbury’s mangled mutterings for the remainder of the Stanley Cup runoff, because he’s retreated from the Republic of Tranna bubble. No word on how he plans to spend his downtime, but perhaps he’ll go on a search for the real Seattle Space Needle.

Honest, I hadn’t planned on returning to the keyboard until the Labor Day weekend. You know, the same time the Canadian Football League was supposed to kick off its Coles Notes version of a 2020 crusade. But here I am. Back early, even if Rouge Football isn’t and won’t be.

The cancellation of the CFL season brought to mind an incident a few years ago while I was walking to my home on the hem of downtown Victoria.

I passed a pair of panhandlers and tossed two toonies into their begging cap.

One of the men politely thanked me. The other made a crude comment about my skirt. I reached down, withdrew both toonies from the cap and handed one to the fellow who had expressed his gratitude for the offered alms. The guy with the potty mouth squawked mightily, but there would be no toonie for him.

Moral of the story: Panhandlers cannot afford to be dumb.

And so it was with CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie and his three-downs overlords, who thought it would be a swell idea to put the squeeze on Trudeau the Younger for a COVID-19 handout. We’re told the ask was $150 million in early May. Then $30 million. Then $42.5 million. Then $30 million again, interest free.

Considering Trudeau the Younger and his pals on Parliament Hill have earmarked many billions of dollars for at-risk businesses and salary-strapped working stiffs since spring, the CFL beg was chump change.

Alas, the buck stopped with Rouge Football. No funds for you!

Thus the three-downs overlords—some of them (hello, Wade Miller) absolutely aghast that the feds had no appetite for propping up an enterprise that took a $20 million bath in red ink a year ago—put the kibosh on the 2020 crusade. No hub in Good Ol’ Hometown, no six-game season, and no swilling of bubbly from the Grey Cup for the first time since Prohibition. (The very thought must send shivers up and down Chris Streveler’s spine.)

Many accusing fingers, not surprisingly, have been pointed in the direction of Commish Randy, for proper reason.

Aside from apparently finding his business plan at the bottom of a box of Flutie Flakes, he had the bad manners to do his Parliamentary panhandling sans the input and allyship of the very people who, in non-COVID times, attract customers to all those fancy-shmancy, government-subsidized facilities that dot the landscape—the players.

That was dumb, and we’ve already established that panhandlers cannot afford to be dumb.

Worth noting: Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez just forked out $40 million for new digs. Maybe Commish Randy should have hit up JLo and ARod instead of Trudeau the Younger for the $30 million.

Hey, we aren’t here to flog Commish Randy this morning. We’ll leave it to the three-downs overlords to determine if his work warrants a few whacks of the lash, or if they’d be wise to look for someone else to do their bidding as they proceed toward a 2021 season that surely must include patrons in the pews. Whichever route they take, the best starting point in the reworking of the CFL would be for the overlords to cozy up to the players association.

As much as I miss our quirky three-downs game, I remind you of an Angus Reid poll conducted in May, whereby the citizenry was asked if they would be “disappointed” should the CFL season be scuttled. Only in Manitoba (63 per cent) and Saskatchewan (61 per cent) did the majority respond with a “hell ya!” The rest of the land? Just a shrug of the shoulders. Here are the numbers: Alberta 45 per cent, B.C. 34 per cent, Quebec 31 per cent, Ontario 28 per cent, Atlantic Canada 17 per cent.

Interesting how sports sheets across the land played the big CFL story. It was front page news in every rag on the Prairies. It was inside filler in the Toronto Sun (pages 8-9), the Montreal Gazette (page 2) and the Vancouver Sun (pages 6-7). The National Post, meanwhile, ran Scott Stinson’s column on a news page, beside a piece on Peter Nygard and rape. Little wonder that those are Rouge Football’s three worst markets.

Let’s see, what else went down during my time away from the keyboard? Well, Dale Hawerchuk left us, so we lost one of the good guys. I never got to know Ducky well. Unlike other news snoops, I kept my relationships with jocks strictly professional, and I always found Ducky to be obliging and authentic. He was seldom shy about sharing his feelings re my scribblings (he thought them to be complete “crap”), but that didn’t prevent me from defending him in print when the Drab Slab stirred the pot with a story on a deep rift between Ducky and Dan Maloney, then head coach of the Winnipeg Jets. It was pure fiction, and both Friar Nicolson and I reported it that way.

Ducky was sports royalty in Good Ol’ Hometown, and I can’t imagine many, if any, among the rabble objecting to Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman’s plan to plop a statue of No. 10 outside the Little Hockey House On The Prairie.

I still say there should be a likeness of Ben Hatskin somewhere in the vicinity of the Little Hockey House, because there’d be no Jets today if not for the original bankroll. But I doubt I’ll ever see that happen.

Read a couple of truly wonderful essays on Ducky after his death, one by Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun and the other by the Drab Slab’s Mad Mike McIntyre. Both are worth the read if you missed them.

The Winnipeg Jets’ frolic at the Jason Kenney Mountain Resort in downtown Edmonton came to a rather inglorious conclusion earlier this month, and the farewell natter between news snoops and head coach Paul Maurice delivered one terrific sound bite.

Jason Bell of the Drab Slab: “Why are you still the right man for the job in this organization?”

Maurice: “We would say off the start that the first playoff round that we won two years ago was the first playoff round this franchise won, so it’s the right guy then. You know, I’ve been to the conference final three times, Stanley Cup final. This year I’m gonna rate as top three years that I’ve had in this league, and I’ll include my staff on that. We did a fantastic job surviving what we went through.”

Coach Potty Mouth added some other mindless blah, blah, blah about going forward, but he chose to ignore the facts. The Jets were not in a playoff position when the NHL shut down in March. They failed to qualify for the playoffs for the second time in four years, ousted by the Calgary Flames in four games. Maurice has missed the playoffs four times in his seven seasons as the Jets bench jockey. He has won the grand sum of two playoff series and is 12-19 post-season, including this month’s failed qualifier. They have regressed. But, sure, he’s the right man for the job.

Some interesting, also poor, analysis on the Jets season from news snoops. Mad Mike McIntyre glorified the local lads because they tried really, really hard, don’t you know. We should think of them with “pride” he tells us, because “they busted their tails right to the bitter end.” Oh joy. Let’s give them a participation badge. Over at the tabloid, Scott Billeck mentioned something about “what the Jets did achieve.” Good grief. They achieved squat. Bupkis.

The only honest breakdown on the Jets was provided by Ted Wyman who, following their ouster from the Stanley Cup qualifying tournament, wrote this in the Sun: “The Flames had better scoring, better defence, better goaltending, better special teams, better physicality and better production from their very best players. If you were picking the five best performers in the series, they’d all be Calgary players—including goaltender Cam Talbot, who outplayed Jets Vezina Trophy favourite Connor Hellebuyck by a wide margin.” That’s telling it like it is, Teddy boy.

Nice to see Rick Bowness has his Dallas Stars running hot in the Stanley Cup tournament. Bench boss Bones is a former Jets player/coach and one of the truly good guys in the game.

I must confess that I had my doubts about the NHL successfully pulling off their playoffs in the two bubbles, one in E-Town and the other in the Republic of Tranna, but it’s working. And what is it proving? Just this: The NHL doesn’t need in-rink fans and it doesn’t need independent media to send out the message. Makes you wonder what it’s all going to look like on the other side of COVID-19, doesn’t it? Daily newspapers should fear the worst.

So, Elliotte Friedman has hacked off his mangled chin whiskers. That’s a good thing. The Hockey Night in Canada gabber looked like a guy who’d spent too much time stranded on an island, talking to a volleyball with Tom Hanks. And there’s not a chance that a female broadcaster would be allowed to appear on camera looking that unkempt, which is what we call a double standard.

Steve Simmons is in a stew because the Vancouver Canucks are the last hoser team standing in the Stanley Cup tournament, and the NHL/Sportsnet are disturbing his bedtime sked. “One team left in Canada and the NHL can’t figure out how to schedule them at a time when the country can be awake to watch? Dumb of Sportsnet, dumb of the NHL. That’s an 11:30 pm start in Nova Scotia, midnight in NFLD,” the Postmedia Tranna scribe whinges. Yes, by all means, let’s televise the Canucks games when all their faithful followers on the West Coast are still at work, just so easterners who don’t give a damn can ignore them in prime time. Just put on your jammies, Steve, and watch the game.

And, finally, the greybeard boxing match between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. has been pushed back from mid-September to the end of November. Apparently scientists require the extra time to complete carbon testing on the ancient pugs.

Let’s talk about Canadian jock journalism and its diversity deficiency

The soft, societal underbelly of Canadian jock journalism is being exposed.

Again.

It is ever thus when real-life concerns (racism, gender equality, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, domestic violence, etc.) invade the playground and relegate final scores, statistics and Tiger Woods’ pursuit of Grand Slam golf titles to a seat of secondary thought.

That, of course, is what’s unfolding now as we observe the horror that is Battleground America.

Unrest has given way to rioting and rubble, the bitter backwash from the death of George Floyd, a Black man whose name held no position in the public conscience until video evidence confirmed that a Minneapolis-St. Paul police officer had used a knee to squeeze the final breath out of him.

In itself, the death of Floyd is not a sports story. Rogue cop kills a Black man. They’ve seen this movie, too many times.

Except Michael Jordan is talking about this one. Masai Ujiri is talking about it. LeBron James is talking about it. Evander Kane is talking about it. Blake Wheeler, Jonathan Toews and Logan Couture are talking about it. Kareem has weighed in. Numerous pro sports organizations have issued communiqués condemning racism and social injustice, and that includes the National Football League, which has managed to place itself in the awkward position of being full-score against Colin Kaepernick’s knee of peaceful protest and, at the same time, against a cop’s knee of death.

But here’s someone who can’t talk about it from a platform of lived experience—99 per cent of Canadian sports scribes.

Unless your name is Morgan Campbell or Donnovan Bennett, the best our flowers of jock journalism can do is provide sound bites from Ujiri, Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Kane et al.

And, yes, it’s terrific when they spread the word. It’s important.

Yet they themselves cannot provide explanation, analysis or offer first-person anecdotal evidence in the arena of marginalization. They fall short, like a warning-track fly ball. They are incapable of commenting and opinionating from a foundation of been there, had that done to me. They don’t know Black. Just like they don’t know female. They don’t know fists of fury. I doubt many of them know or care that this is Pride Month.

Consider this passage from a Michael Grange essay for Sportsnet the other day:

“It was also a reminder that I’ve never had a moment to be nervous about the police. That I’ve never sent my teenaged son into the world and worried that he could be a victim of a tragic misunderstanding, or worse. I’ve never had to wonder if my skin colour or ethnicity or gender was an obstacle to me reaching my potential. No one should have those fears and concerns. Not today, not ever. I believe we should all act, think, and vote in ways that reflect those fundamental values. I’ve never felt the need to write that before because it’s always seemed so self-evident. So clear. It’s not.”

After viewing the George Floyd death video, a white scribe like Grange might have cringed and muttered something like “That’s just horrible” and maybe even wept, but a Black writer would be more apt to gasp, “Good lord, that could be me or my child,” then lock his doors and keep his family behind cover.

When racism in hockey became the topic du jour late last year, Ron MacLean had a natter with his Hometown Hockey co-host Tara Slone and Black filmmaker Kwame Mason, and he delivered this confession: “It’s a real eye-opener that I don’t recognize the structural racism or sexism that’s going on.”

It was an astonishing admission, but MacLean found no requirement to give ponder to racism and sexism because it wasn’t, and isn’t, his ox being gored. He has the privilege of being white and male, which is totally in keeping with the makeup of jock journalism.

I presented these numbers from the most recent Associated Press Sports Editors Racial and Gender Report Card (2018, a study of 75 newspapers/websites in Canada and the U.S.) on Sunday, but they bear repeating:
90 per cent of sports editors were male;
85 per cent of sports editors were white;
88.5 per cent of reporters were male;
83.4 per cent of columnists were male;
82.1 per cent of reporters were white;
80.3 per cent of columnists were white;
44 women were columnists at ‘A’ level newspapers/websites, and 38 worked for ESPN. If the ESPN female columnist were removed, the percentage of female columnists would drop to 2.9 per cent.

Is that a recipe for racist, sexist coverage? Not necessarily. But it does explain why there are so few voices that speak to the very heart of those issues. Also why the message often gets misshapen.

For example, when Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs dropped his trousers to his ankles and mooned a female security guard at 2 o’clock in the morning last summer in Scottsdale, Ariz., male sports scribes turned the incident into a forum on his suitability to serve as team captain. They wrote it off as frat-boy frolic and gave scant consideration to his victim, Fayola Dozithee, and the every-day fears of females.

“We all do stupid things,” Cathal Kelly scribbled in the Globe and Mail. “We are all especially likely to do stupid things when it is late, when we are drunk and when we are 22.”

I submit that’s the language of a man who’s done a fair bit of stupid-thing, frat-boy frolicking himself, some of which might have victimized women.

On the domestic violence file, male scribes crucified NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for his botched handling of the Ray Rice case after viewing video evidence of the former running back dragging his unconscious girlfriend off an elevator, but then the boys celebrated the arrival of woman-beating Johnny Manziel to the Canadian Football League.

“Looking forward to seeing Johnny Manziel play in the CFL. Win-Win for the CFL,” rejoiced Chris Cuthbert of TSN.

“It will be fun for everyone to watch,” agreed Dan Barnes of Postmedia.

“Welcome to Canada, Johnny Manziel. And where do I sign up,” chimed in Steve Simmons of Postmedia.

Again, no thought given to the big picture because they aren’t female and vulnerable.

Meantime, there are no figures for the percentage of gay editors/columnists/reporters at major newspapers/websites, but I doubt I’m far off the mark if I suggest it’s less than 1 per cent. Consequently, there’s no one with lived experience to speak to the issue when someone like Michael Sam, Jason Collins or Robbie Rogers are targeted with anti-gay language and deeds.

When Sam became the first openly gay man to participate in a professional football game, many in the LGBT(etc.) collective were delighted and proud. But one prominent jock journo, the aforementioned Simmons, denied that Sam had actually participated in a Canadian Football League game.

“In reality, pro football still awaits its first openly gay player,” he wrote.

After Sam bugged out on the Montreal Alouettes due to mental health issues, an unidentified sports scribe accused him of “faking it.”

So we had one heterosexual man insisting that a gay man never existed, and another heterosexual man presuming to have first-hand knowledge of the demons that torture and haunt a gay man’s mind.

Jock journalism in our country has a serious diversity deficiency.

It could serve as a vehicle for societal change, but it isn’t constructed that way. Hiring practices make the business too white, too male and too hetero.

The women who appear on TSN, for example, are allowed to be pretty and read a teleprompter, but they aren’t allowed an opinion, the exception being women’s soccer. When skin hue is the topic du jour, Tim Micallef and Sid Seixeiro of Sportsnet can natter about it, but they are unable to reach the core of the issue until Donnovan Bennett is invited into the discussion. He might crack wise about “dial-a-Negro,” which he did, but there’s truth hidden in that joke.

Bennett authored a thought-provoking essay on the current racist unrest in the U.S., and he closed with this:

“I’m going to challenge my own industry. If you work in sports media and make a living off the talent and ingenuity of black athletes, the least you can do is use your journalistic skills and privilege to show that black lives have equal value to your own. The least you can do is allot more than 28 or 29 days in February to humanizing black people.”

My guess is they’ll have found a new chew toy by this time next week.

FOOTNOTE: Both Bennett’s essay and an article on former National Basketball Association player John Amaechi, who came out as gay after his playing career, are live on the Sportsnet website today. Yet the overlords at Sportsnet refuse to allow discussion on these race and LGBT(etc.) issues by disabling comments on both pieces. Go figure.

Let’s talk about the Winnipeg Jets and Blue Bombers standing by their men…Bruce Boudreau’s pink slip and Coach PoMo’s $9 million reward…silly Seattle rumors…scofflaws in the Jets Hall of Fame…WHA vs. NHL…good reads in the Drab Slab…silly sound bites…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and a restful Louis Riel Long Weekend to you all…

So, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers re-up Mike O’Shea because he brought home the Grey Cup, and the Winnipeg Jets re-up Paul Maurice because…well, some of us are still trying to work our way through that.

I mean, Coach Potty Mouth hasn’t brought anything home, except the bacon, and at a reported $3 million per year that’s a whole lot of pork rinds and BLTs. I’m sure his bride and kids appreciate it, even if many among the rabble don’t like what he brings to the table, and O’Shea can only wish his championship-calibre coaching paid as handsomely as Coach PoMo’s six years of mostly mediocrity.

But, hey, this isn’t meant to be a hit piece on Maurice.

Everybody loves Coach PoMo. Well, okay, not everybody. But the people who matter the most do—Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff, the lads in the changing room. Why, listening to them gush about their bench puppeteer after locking him down for the next three winters, I was convinced he’d discovered a cure for the Coronavirus while helping little old ladies cross busy streets. Who knew winning just two playoff rounds in half a dozen crusades was such a laudable achievement?

But, again, this isn’t meant to be a hit piece on Coach PoMo.

The moral of today’s story, kids, is this: Stand By Your Man (and I make no apologies for riffing on the title of a country classic by the legendary Tammy Wynette).

The Jets and Bombers, you see, stand by their men like no other National Hockey League/Canadian Football League combo in Canada, although it hasn’t always been that way for our gridiron Goliaths.

Once upon a time not so long ago, Winnipeg FC went through head coaches like Kleenex during a chick flick, but the revolving-door strategy ended on Dec. 4, 2013, when CEO Wade Miller brought in O’Shea as sideline steward. It took Coach Grunge six seasons to get the job done, but nobody’s complaining today, except perhaps city workers still burdened with the task of cleaning up the mess Chris Streveler left behind at the Grey Cup parade.

The point is, the Grey Grail is back in Good Ol’ Hometown due to the stick-to-itness of the Canadian Mafia, which includes GM Kyle Walters, and O’Shea has been rewarded with a fresh set of downs (three-year contract).

There’s been no such success for the Jets, of course, just some warm-and-fuzzies from a series of downtown whiteout parties during a deep Beard Season run two springs back. Still, the Puck Pontiff has chosen to stay the course with the man he recruited a month after O’Shea arrived in town, extending Maurice’s gig for another three winters, whether we think he’s earned it or not.

So, since December 2013, the Bombers have known one head coach. Ditto the Jets since January 2014.

Now gaze upon the Canadian pro sports landscape (read: CFL, NHL). What do you see? That’s right, coaching chaos. There’ve been eight head knocks in the Republic of Tranna. Same in Montreal, E-Town and Lotus Land. Bytown has had seven. Calgary six. All since both Coach Grunge and Coach PoMo took root in River City.

What does it all mean?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a steady hand over a knee-jerking gong show anytime, so long as it delivers favorable results in a results-driven business, and stability got the Bombers a CFL title, to be sure. It’s done squat for the Jets, though. Other than stir up the anti-PoMo mob, that is.

It really doesn’t matter that I think Maurice is something of a snake charmer the way he hypnotizes news snoops and fans with his smooth sound bites. As mentioned, it’s about results, and his numbers just don’t add up to the unflinching faith the Puck Pontiff has in PoMo’s coaching ability. Let’s, for example, stack his numbers against those of Bruce Boudreau, the recently defrocked head coach of the Minnesota Wild.

Since the 2014-15 season:
Maurice: 246-175-48 (11-16 in playoffs), one conference final, missed playoffs twice.
Boudreau: 255-159-53 (16-17 in playoffs), one conference final, missed playoffs once.

For that, Boudreau received a pink slip. Twice (in Anaheim and Minny). Yet, for doing less with more, Maurice received a three-year reward and a $9 million windfall. Go figure.

More than once, Jets capitano Blake Wheeler has said he’d “go through a brick wall” for Maurice. At least now Coach PoMo can afford to fix the wall.

Remember those Maurice-to-Seattle whispers? Well, actually they weren’t just whispers. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet first mentioned it on his 31 Thoughts podcast with Jeff Marek in early December. When asked who might be the first head coach of Seattle’s NHL Team To Be Named Later, Friedge said, “I’ll tell you this, I’ve got some guys who think it’s going to be Paul Maurice.” Well, don’t you just know that Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab, although “loathe to play the role of gossip monger,” took that sound bite the very next day and gossip-mongered it into a froth. “Could the delay in getting Maurice extended be less about Winnipeg’s desire to take a wait-and-see approach—which, at this point, wouldn’t make much sense—and more about the 52-year-old wanting to hold off and perhaps eventually test the waters?” he asked in a bout of reckless speculation that was cloak-and-dagger in tone and offered zero substance. He also informed readers that Maurice and Seattle GM Ron Francis have a bit of a bromance, as if to thicken the plot. I don’t know if Friedman and Mad Mike feel like damn fools today, but I doubt it.

Some of us, of course, knew from the get-go that Coach PoMo was in Good Ol’ Hometown to stay, and modesty doesn’t prevent me from reminding you of that fact. Here’s what I wrote on Sept. 16: “Maurice ain’t going anywhere. You don’t fire the coach when the two main puppeteers, Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, hurl half of his blueline into the dumpster.” And this is what my Two Hens In The Hockey House added on Oct. 3: “Mark Chipman and Chevy will part ways with Maurice when the Dalai Lama punches out the Pope.” But, hey, what do we know? We don’t have our feet on the ground like the all-knowing (not!) boys on the beat.

Yes, now that Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun has mentioned it, I thought it was rather cringeworthy that the Jets would salute Bobby Hull the same night they celebrated Thomas Steen as one of the two latest inductees to the club’s Hall of Fame. Hull has a well-documented history of domestic abuse/violence. Ditto Steen.

If nothing else, the Jets lead the league in Hall of Fame scofflaws, and this was part of Friesen’s take:

“Given how far we’ve come as a society in recognizing the horrors of abuse of women, the shadow victims are forced to live in because they’re afraid to come forward, the price the victim often pays, particularly with a popular or powerful public figure—given all that, how can organizations still celebrate a man with such a history? Hockey’s culture is supposed to be changing. Physical abuse and racially or gender-motivated verbal abuse is no longer tolerated, but rather vigorously investigated, with perpetrators held accountable. It’s supposed to be an inclusive, respectful environment, for all races, genders and sexual orientations. So what message does it send when a team trots out Hull for a special occasion, asking its fans to applaud him?”

Seriously. What part of domestic violence do the Jets not understand?

No surprise there was a bit of pushback to my recent post about the 1977-78 Jets holding the record for most consecutive wins by a Canadian pro sports franchise. Some have pooh-poohed the Jets’ 15 straight Ws as the product of a watered-down, tier-II World Hockey Association. Well, let me just say this about that: WHA outfits faced off against NHL sides 63 times and the final tally was 34-22-7 in favor of the WHA. The Jets were 7-5-2. Meantime, two of the top five scorers (Wayne Gretzky, Mike Rogers) and four of the top 10 (Blaine Stoughton, Blair MacDonald) in the first season after the merger were WHA grads. And Mark Howe, also a WHA product, was the top scoring defenceman. So there.

Some truly terrific scribbling in the Drab Slab last week, first from Mike Sawatzky and then Melissa Martin. Mike filled us in on the back-from-the-dead experience of Rick St. Croix, goaltending guru of the Manitoba Moose. Rick, one of the nicest, most-decent men you’ll ever meet, almost left us when his ticker kicked up a fuss at the airport in December, but he’s now in full recovery and back at work. Melissa, meanwhile, took a road trip to Drumheller, Alta., where she had a natter with Steve Vogelsang, the sportscaster-turned teacher-turned back robber-turned jail bird. It’s gripping stuff for those of us who remember Steve as the glib guy on the CKY sports desk.

I stayed up past my normal bedtime to watch the Oscars last Sunday. Just wondering: Have Renée Zellweger and Joaquin Phoenix finished their speeches yet?

I find myself wondering this, too: Between Skip The Dishes, UberEats and DoorDash, does anyone still actually cook dinner at home?

Major League Baseball is talking about expanding its playoffs and, the way I hear it, the post-season soon shall include everyone but the Little League World Series champions. Oh for the days when only two teams qualified for the rounders championship and they settled the debate when the sun was high and kids could listen to the weekday games in school. And, no, that doesn’t mean I’m living in the past. It means the MLB post-season shouldn’t be like a day at the beach. You know, “Everybody in!”

Some very strange blah, blah, blah in the playground last week. Start with Jim Crane, dismissive owner of the Houston Astros, who cheated their way to a MLB title with an elorate sign-stealing scheme. Asked if his club’s chicanery was the difference in its 2017 World Series win, Crane said, “this didn’t impact the game.” When challenged by a news snoop to explain how blatant cheating didn’t influence the outcome, he said, “I didn’t say it didn’t impact the game.”

I believe Crane’s pants are still on fire.

Meanwhile, Mark Spector of Sportsnet delivered a head-scratching analysis of the Zack Kassian kicking incident, whereby the Edmonton Oilers forward put the bladed boots to Erik Cernak of the Tampa Bay Lightning while they were tangled in an on-ice heap. Spector said Cernak took “what appeared to be a skate sort of across the chest, got up, skated away like it was nothing. Didn’t even give a second look to Kassian. So, yes, it looked like it happened.”

There are no words to describe how dumb that sounds.

The Boston Red Sox might have cheated their way to the 2018 World Series title, and the New England Patriots apparently cheated their way to a couple of Super Bowl championships. Thus I asked Beantown booster Jack the Bartender how the Boston Bruins are cheating in their latest quest for a Stanley Cup. “Zdeno Chara is a robot,” he answered. “He actually died four years ago.”

And, finally, I wouldn’t still be scribbling these musings if not for my doctor and Brian Adam, a former radio guy who insists I keep cranking it out. Brian is a Montreal Canadiens booster, although I don’t hold that against him, and he has a radio voice that makes him sound like one of the Bee Gees, and I definitely take issue with that. At any rate, if you don’t like what you’re reading, direct all complaints to Bee Gee Brian, not moi. You’ll find him in Bart’s Pub.

Let’s talk about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and their QBs…no love for Matt Nichols but hosannas for Zach Collaros…the Davis Sanchez blah, blah, blah…outdoor shinny…ruffled feathers around the NHL…Wheels spinning his wheels…domestic violence…Billie Jean and the boycotters…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and I’m feeling kind of cranky this morning…

As news snoops and the rabble crank up the QB controversy machine louder than a 1960s Who concert, it’s worth noting something Mike O’Shea muttered not so long ago.

“Dance with the one you brung,” he said.

Based on those half dozen words, we should expect to see Chris Streveler behind centre when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers assemble for the next step in their crusade to exorcise 29 years worth of evil spirits, except we long ago learned that Coach Grunge is all over the map when it comes to the most important position on any football field.

I mean, first he said there was no need for a QB who’d been there, done that.

“That’s not gonna happen,” the Bombers sideline steward told Knuckles Irving on the CJOB Coach’s Show just as the first frost began to settle on the pumpkin. “I like our guys. Very confident in our guys. Dance with the one you brung.”

Those guys that he “brung” were Streveler, still operating with training wheels, and Sean McGuire, who’s greener than Kermit the Frog.

Why was there no urgency to recruit a quarterback with age in his eyes and a track record in the Canadian Football League?

“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,” O’Shea reasoned. “I really just don’t think those scenarios work or can be applied to football this late in the season. Especially (a quarterback).”

But wait. Along comes Zach Collaros and O’Shea gives the other side of his mouth a workout.

“We said right from the get-go about bringing in a veteran guy,” he maintains, even though he’d actually said the exact opposite. “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.”

Collaros, indeed, proved to be a quick study.

The oft-wounded QB delivered the Bombers’ 11th win of this crusade on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, and he had few missteps in an optimism-inducing 29-28 decision over the Calgary Stampeders. More to the point, he looked like a guy who’s been there all along, not an 11th-hour Hail Mary recruit, and Collaros was positively Flutie-esque on one dazzler that came right out of the Barnum & Bailey playbook.

Naturally, that begged this question: Who’s O’Shea’s man on Nov. 10, when Winnipeg FC enters the annual Grey Cup playoff frolic—the veteran he said he didn’t want but then said he really did want, or the neophyte who “brung” him?

“Those questions will be answered,” Coach Grunge said. “We’ll see how everybody is after this one. We got lots of time.”

Well, what did you expect? A definitive answer? As if.

The thing is, I don’t believe O’Shea was being wishy-washy. He probably doesn’t know.

Collaros certainly has given him pause for ponder. Consider a fourth-quarter touchdown toss to Darvin Adams, for example. The ball was scrimmaged at the Calgary eight-yard stripe, but a fierce pass rush forced Collaros to flee like a man escaping a burning building. He eventually launched the ball from the 24 and it landed in Adams’ arms 17 yards deep in the end zone. So the play traveled 16 yards south, about 10 yards east/west, then 41 yards north. That’s 67 yards for, officially, an eight-yard TD toss.

It’s a play that Streveler can’t make. Except perhaps with a video game console in his hands.

So O’Shea must weigh that against what Streveler has brought, and can bring, to the table.

My guess? Well, it seems to me that O’Shea values loyalty to his players above all, sometimes to the point of being mule stubborn, and that tells me Streveler will be behind centre when sudden-death football commences next month, even though he was hobbling like a peg-legged pirate with a sawed-off peg when last seen in combat gear.

Would that be the right call? Ask me on Nov. 10.

In the meantime, amp up the dialogue and let the debate rage.

Streveler or Collaros, I stand by what I wrote in early October: The West Division of the CFL remains a crap shoot, and I don’t care how it plays out on the final weekend of scheduled skirmishing. The Bombers won the season series v. Calgary, with two different QBs (Collaros and Matt Nichols), and they gave the Saskatchewan Flatlanders a thorough paddywhacking with Streveler at the wheel. So playing on the final Sunday in November is doable.

I find it interesting that the rabble often rails against QB incumbent Matt Nichols for his pedestrian passing numbers (always less than 300 yards/game) even in victory, but the hosannas are raining down on Collaros, who was 22/28, 221 yards. Those are Nichols numbers, yet Collaros is the toast of the town. Peculiar thing that.

Apparently it isn’t just moi who thinks Davis Sanchez is nothing but a well-dressed gasbag hemorrhaging from the mouth on TSN. In his always-interesting spin on Rouge Football for The Athletic, Kirk Penton delivered this quote from a CFL exec/coach: “We were talking about Davis Sanchez at halftime. TSN has blown his ego up to Sean Avery-sized. Remember that shit? On Saturday night (Sanchez) second guesses NFL coaches. During CFL games, he thinks he’s smarter and better than anyone on the field or on our sidelines—one of those cool know-it-alls that I would love to coach against. When I came home from the office last night, my wife had the election shit on. I’m surprised Sanchez wasn’t on that panel telling the Tories what they did wrong, too.”

On the subject of TSN gab guys, if someone lopped off Matthew Scianitti’s right hand, would he be able to talk? Seriously. Scianitti’s right paw is the most distracting thing on TV since Emma Peel put on her black leather catsuit. And if you’re too young to remember Emma Peel, let’s just say the catching and slaying of bad guys never looked so good.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like these National Hockey League outdoor gimmicks a whole lot more if they were moved inside. The Winnipeg Jets and Calgary Flames joust Saturday night at Mosaic Stadium on the Flattest of Lands did nothing for me, except make me squint at my flatscreen more than normal. Go ahead and call me old school if you like, but I just don’t think 43 km/h winds, -10C temps and snow should be a factor in an NHL game. But, hey, the Jets won, 2-1 in OT, and everyone had a good time. So I guess it’s all good.

What do I think of the Jets’ latest recruit, Luca Sbisa? I think he needs one more vowel.

Apparently, Ruffled Feathers Syndrome is contagious and it’s been flowing through the NHL during the first month of the season like barley at a beerfest. Consider: Jason Zucker called out his Minnesota teammates and head coach Bruce Boudreau, and the Wild held a players-only meeting. In the Republic of Tranna, the Maple Leafs had a “family discussion,” followed by head coach Mike Babcock calling out his players following a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Then Auston Matthews called out everyone, including himself, after a beating in Boston. Not to be outdone, Logan Couture called out two of his “selfish” San Jose Sharks teammates after a loss to the Buffalo Sabres. And Brendan Perlini wants out of Chicago. Like we’ve been saying since last spring, this stuff happens with every team at some point during the course of a marathon season, although not necessarily for public consumption. And it doesn’t mean those changing rooms are “rotten to the core” or “fractured.” I trust the boys on the beat at the Drab Slab are paying attention.

I note that Mad Mike McIntyre has joined the Drab Slab chorus in demanding an end to the Dustin Byfuglien will-he-or-won’t-he saga. He tells us that Big Buff is holding the Winnipeg Jets “hostage” while contemplating a life-altering decision to retire or return to the blueline, and “that can’t continue.” Winnipeg HC, he insists, must force Buff’s hand because “enough is enough.” That, of course, is pure rubbish. Unless Mad Mike plans on consulting with Big Buff and/or the Jets the next time there’s a major decision to be made at the McIntyre household, he should keep his life advice to himself.

Mad Mike also believes Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff was spot on when he rewarded captain Blake Wheeler with a five-year contract extension. “Both the term and annual average value made sense,” he writes. Au contraire. The term is stupid. I mean, five years? For a 33-year-old with heavy, heavy mileage on him? Does Mad Mike actually believe Wheeler will be putting up 91 points two years from now when he’s collecting $10 million? Or four years from now when his sticker price is $8.25 million? Wheeler will barely be mobile at the back end of that deal. As it is, Wheeler has been spinning his wheels this crusade, with just half a dozen points in a dozen assignments, so he’ll need 85 points in 70 games to match his total from last year. Not going to happen. And it’ll only get worse as both he and his contract age.

Here’s how screwed up the Houston Astros are: Brandon Taubman, the guy who said something incredibly improper in reference to a pitcher suspended for roughing up a woman, gets fired, but Roberto Osuna, the guy who actually roughed up the woman, still has a job in the Astros bullpen and will be a hero in Houston if he helps them win the World Series. Go figure.

Okay, you’ll have to help me out here. Houston assistant GM Taubman chose to taunt three female news snoops re domestic abuse, even as one of the women wore a purple bracelet to draw attention to the scourge that is domestic violence. It was an unprovoked, disgusting and insensitive shoutout (“Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so fucking glad we got Osuna!”) he repeated six times and, although the Astros dawdled with a series of half-truths, denials and flat-out lies, Taubman has been defrocked. But you tell me which was worse, Taubman’s rant or Auston Matthews and his boozed-up buddies taunting, harassing, intimidating and mooning a lone woman on a Scottsdale, Ariz., street at 2 o’clock in the morning?

Interesting how mainstream media reacted to the Taubman incident compared to Matthews and pals. Basically, they’ve made Taubman out to be responsible for the assassination of JFK and 9/11, while Matthews is nothing worse than a college-age scamp getting in some late-night yuks. And, whereas jock journos hither and yon were fast and furious in rallying around the targets of Taubman’s bile (notably Sports Illustrated scribe Stephanie Apstein), not a thought was given to Fayola Dozithee, the victim of the Matthews so-called prank. That’s as tone deaf as the Astros.

While we’re on the domestic violence file, you know the induction of Thomas Steen into the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame will raise eyebrows and draw criticism because he was charged with abuse and uttering threats against a woman in a 2014 dispute. But, remember, the hockey club long ago established its position on these matters when it held its nose and looked the other way to include Bobby Hull among the original inductees. Although never charged with domestic violence, the Golden Jet’s ex-wife, Joanne, was granted a divorce on grounds of physical and mental cruelty, and the horror stories are well documented. Charges against Steen, meanwhile, were stayed, although he did spend a night in jail for breaching a no-contact order. Go ahead and kick up a fuss if you like, but it won’t change anything. The squeaky-clean Jets don’t consider it a stain.

As for the induction of Randy Carlyle to the Jets Hall, 100 per cent approved. The sole blot on Kitty’s file was a pee test that proved faulty at the world hockey championships. Kitty could have failed a drug test only if the squints were looking for residue from a glazed donut.

Add the name David Singh of Sportsnet to the list of scribes who perform a soft-shoe routine around boycotting female hockey players. Singh did the Q&A thing with Jayna Hefford of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association recently, but did he ask her why the boycotters refuse to engage in meaningful dialogue with commish Dani Rylan of the National Women’s Hockey League? No. Instead, he lobbed these probing questions: “You met Billie Jean King at the recent Dream Gap Tour event in Chicago. What was that like for you?” And: “What did the two of you talk about?” Atta boy, David. That’s getting to the heart of the matter. It’s evident that the women’s boycott has become more about photo-ops with Billie Jean King than it is improving their lot in life, and guys like Singh are swilling the Kool-Aid instead of calling them out.

And, finally, having been born and raised in Winnipeg, I’d like to go on record as saying I’m proud of Brian Pallister for being the only Prairie premier who didn’t have a hissy fit because of federal election results.

About Bo’s next move…why not the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?…MVP by default…Milt Stegall’s bowel movements…PM Trudeau The 1st getting his kicks…the CFL’s Mexican cruise…empty words from the commish on domestic violence…and other Grey Cup things on my mind

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and, no, I didn’t do the couch potato thing all day Sunday because TSN’s pre-joust blah, blah, blah is too much for moi…

It’s all about Bo.

If Bo Levi Mitchell chooses to exit the Canadian Football League stage south, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers become a better team. Perhaps even a championship outfit.

If, however, Mitchell keeps his horse hitched in Calgary, we can expect same old, same old.

Yes, I realize the Stampeders are Grey Cup champions this morning largely due to the stingiest defensive dozen in the land, but this is a quarterback league. Mitchell is either QB No. 1 or 1A, give or take a Mike Reilly. He’s to the Stampeders what Sam Malone was to Cheers. What Simon was to Garfunkel. Remove him and you’re left with meh.

And meh would work for the Bombers, not to mention every other outfit in the western precinct of the CFL.

Naturally, Winnipeg FC general manager Kyle Walters will do some tinkering of his own between now and the opening kickoff next summer, but the most significant impact on the Bombers’ future fortunes hinges on what Mitchell does if a National Football League outfit comes pitching woo.

Consider the landscape should he try his luck in Trumpville: An elite QB in Edmonton, a Tier 2 QB in Winnipeg, no QB in Calgary, no QB in B.C., no QB in Saskatchewan.

I can feel the earth shifting under my feet, and it isn’t because I live in a high-risk earthquake zone.

Mitchell’s iffy status is the main storyline now that we’ve tucked another CFL season into the archives. The rabble in Calgary will be understandably antsy, but there are folks in four other western outposts who would be delighted to see him pack his bags.

The Canadian Mafia: Mike O’Shea, Kyle Walters, Wade Miller.

So, if you’re a Blue Bombers loyalist, go ahead and ask “Why not us?” I mean, the Bytown RedBlacks came into existence five years ago, same as The Canadian Mafia that oversees all things Blue and Gold. Yet the RedBlacks have been to the Grey Cup game three times, winning once. The Bombers have done diddly. Meanwhile, in those same five years, the Stampeders have been to the large game four times, winning twice. The Bombers still have squat. The main difference? Behind centre. The RedBlacks had an elite QB in 2016, when Smilin’ Hank Burris led them to their CFL title, and Trevor Harris emerged as a top-drawer QB this season. And, of course, the Stampeders have Bo Levi. So talk all you like about coaching and management, but it still comes down to the quarterback.

I think Mitchell was anointed most valuable player in the Grey Cup game by default. He did nothing extraordinary in the Stampeders’ 27-16 victory over the RedBlacks on Sunday at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, but that was in keeping with the 106th edition of our national football championship. It was an unremarkable, drama-free skirmish that featured just one pulse-racing moment—a 97-yard TD sprint by Terry Williams of the Stampeders. It didn’t help, of course, that the large lads were playing on an ice-skating rink.

Snippets from the 106th GC game: Well, Team Blah Blah Blah on TSN got off to a crappy start, thanks to Milt Stegall. After Matt Dunigan mentioned how much he enjoyed sampling the liquid refreshments available during the week in E-Town, Stegall thought it would be a swell idea to share his experiences with pre-game bowel movements (defecate is the word he used) back in the day…Shortly thereafter, Hank Burris made a bizarre analogy about getting a kiss from a girl on a first date, and Dunigan insisted that he got a lot more than that. I think Stegall had another bowel movement on the spot…I assume TSN will bring back Davis Sanchez as one of the gab guys next season. Hopefully someone will have removed the bag of marbles from his mouth by then…My goodness. Micah Johnson of the Stampeders is a scary physical specimen. Sara Orlesky looks like tiny figurine beside him…Nice to see Brian Williams join the gab-a-thon. He’s a very good broadcaster and a very nice man…When the politicos came onto the field for the coin toss, I couldn’t help but wonder whatever became of the ceremonial kickoff. As I recall, Prime Minister Trudeau The 1st was quite adept at kicking a football…It figures. The first dude to make an impact play is Jonathan Rose, the one guy who ought not be on the field. The RedBlacks defender gooned a game official in the East Division final and his appeal of a one-game suspension should have been heard long before kickoff time on Sunday. It’s an obscenity that he was available to pick off a Bo Levi Mitchell pass…Okay, who stole Trevor Harris and what did you do with him? Did he get stuck in an elevator back at the hotel?…I kept waiting for John Hufnagal’s yappy, little lap dog, Dave Dickenson, to start squawking, but Coach Chihuahua was on his best behaviour all day. Bummer. I was hoping for some comic relief…I know Bo Levi comes across as cocky, arrogant and uppity, but I like the Calgary QB…Milt Stegall started the day by talking about bowel movements. Maybe it’s fitting that this game was kind of crappy, too…That was quite the celebration in the Stampeders’ changing room. I swear, they were acting like a bunch of drunken curlers.

I’d wager that every male news snoop who lent an ear to Randy Ambrosie during Grey Cup week in E-Town knows a woman who has been abused—physically, emotionally, sexually.

Yet they ignored the hot air the CFL commish spewed about domestic violence.

“In every case when we’re in possession of information that makes it absolutely clear that something terrible has happened, that is absolutely in contravention of our philosophy and policy on violence against women, we’re compelled to act,” he said.

Such hypocritical tripe. Those words are as empty as a hobo’s bank account.

What, Johnny Manziel smacking his former girlfriend in the head wasn’t terrible enough? Tossing her about like a rag doll wasn’t terrible enough? Dragging her by the hair wasn’t terrible enough? Threatening to kill her wasn’t terrible enough?

Apparently not.

The man who had Colleen Crowley “scared for my life” was welcomed by Ambrosie’s CFL. Open arms. TSN’s blah-blah-blah boys created a Cult of Johnny that glorified him to the point of constant nausea.

Well, let’s for a moment forget that Manziel is a lousy quarterback on a lousy Montreal Alouettes outfit. Instead consider this possibility: This woman-beater could one day be the starting QB in the Grey Cup game. Is that the optic Ambrosie is looking for in his phony quest to “end violence against women?”

Better question: Would news snoops actually challenge him on his BS in that scenario? Probably not, because they’re 99 per cent men.

Crisis lines in Calgary and E-Town will be on overload in the wake of the Grey Cup game. We know this because a University of Calgary study advises us that reports of domestic violence in Cowtown hike 40 per cent when the Stampeders are in the large match. In the host city, meanwhile, Mary Jane James of the Sexual Assault Centre says there’s always an increase in sexual violence after a major sports event, “most particularly against women.” Maybe they can get Ambrosie to help out on the switchboard.

Hard for me to accept that the Winnipeg Sun didn’t have feet on the ground in E-Town. Time was when the tabloid would dispatch two scribes to Grey Cup city. This time around, the puppeteers at Postmedia told Paul Friesen and Ted Wyman to stay home, so it was left for Edmonton scribes to handle big individual award wins for Beastmo Bighill and Stanley Bryant of the Blue Bombers. That simply won’t do. If you have a team in the league, you must be at the most significant event. But, hey, this is just another example of Postmedia treating the Sun like the red-headed, freckle-face stepchild. They aren’t allowed to work the Brier, Scotties or world curling championships anymore, so why would Postmedia send them to the Grey Cup?

The Winnipeg Free Press, of course, did the right thing and dispatched young Jeff Hamilton to the Saudi Alberta capital, and he delivered with a boffo piece on Bighill, the Bombers linebacker named top defensive player in the land.

Would have been nice if the Freep also had a columnist on site, but it doesn’t appear that the Drab Slab is in any hurry to replace the now-retired Paul Wiecek. Must be a cost-cutting thing. But, hey, now that newspapers soon will be feeding at the public trough (expect Freep publisher Bob Cox to be at the front of the welfare queue), perhaps a fresh voice is on the way.

Really good piece from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna about Grey Cup week. He delivers some wonderful anecdotes that speak to the CFL’s appeal and its every-man vibe. The yarn about Ricky Ray wearing a tux and riding a bus to the awards banquet is boffo.

Alas, Simmons had to go and spoil it by shouting and waving his fist at clouds the very next day. He wants hotel lobbies to be declared horse-free zones, and let’s have no more talk of sex.

“The horse in the lobby thing was terrific theatre and excitement when it began in 1948,” writes the Debbie Downer of the Postmedia chain. “It was kind of fun, occasionally, over the years. It represented the crazy, wild spirit of those who attended the event. Now it’s staged and boring and unnecessary. I watched on Friday as the horse was paraded by bagpipers and surrounded by cellphone photographers in the lobby of the Chateau Lacombe hotel in Edmonton. If a horse can look either confused or frightened, this one did. There was no joy in any of this. It was just theatre of the absurd. And we should stop doing this. It has no meaning or spontaneity anymore.

“The same thing has happened to the annual Jim Hunt Grey Cup question. It used to be funny when the late great Shaky Hunt would ask at the coach’s news conference about their policy regarding players having sex on the week of the game. It isn’t funny or unique anymore, especially to the coaches who know it’s coming and have a staged answer of sorts. Jim Hunt passed away 12 years ago. His question has lived on until now. It’s time to put the question to rest.”

If you’re interested in contacting Simmons, you can find him at grumpyoldcoot.com.

And, finally, I think it’s great that the CFL has established a foothold in the United Mexican States. Now if they can only do that in the Republic of Tranna.

About the big, bad Blue Bombers defence…turkeys on Turkey Day…Chris Streveler vs. Johnny Rotten…a Bolt in soccer…Brees doesn’t make the top 10…domestic violence and the NHL…and Connor McJesus

Another Sunday smorg full of cheap shots, short shots and shots of sarcasm…

Zero points. Richie Hall’s defensive dozen surrendered zero points. In a Canadian Football League skirmish.

Do you realize how rare that is? There’s a better chance of Brad Pitt leaving a singles bar alone at closing time. I think Jack Delveaux, Herb Gray and Gordie Rowland were part of the D-Dozen the last time the Winnipeg Blue Bombers hung a donut on a foe at home.

Actually, it doesn’t date back to the Bud Grant era. It was in ’86, when Winnipeg FC paddywhacked the Saskatchewan Roughriders 56-nada at their gradually decaying stadium on Maroons Road. Bill Norrie was mayor in River City. Howard Pawley was Manitoba premier. Brian Mulroney was leader of all the land. And a star really was born that year—Lady Gaga.

So it was a touch of deja vu all over again on Saturday afternoon at Football Follies in Fort Garry. The scoreboard carnage wasn’t as extreme. Just 31-zip this time. But the Bombers’ ragdolling of the Riders was every bit as severe.

As ass kickings go, this was right up there with the Six Day War and Tiger Woods’ divorce settlement.

It helped, of course, that the Riders offence is only a rumor. The Gang Green 12 are so inept that Johnny Manziel might be an upgrade at quarterback. Yup, that woeful. Also a rumor is their place kicker, some dude named Brett Lauther. If he exists he must have entered a witness protection program, because not once was he required to swing his right leg at the football. Never attempted a field goal. Never kicked off.

The Sask. QB, Zach Collaros, likely wishes he’d been given the day off, too. If he wasn’t seeing Adam Bighill in his nightmares last night, it was Taylor Loffler.

Bighill, the beastly linebacker who signed on with Winnipeg FC at the 11th hour, is a force of nature. A tornado does less damage. He and Collaros spent more time together Saturday than newlyweds. Three of his eight tackles were sacks. He forced Kyran Moore to spill a football that was eagerly gobbled up by Anthony Gaitor, who promptly skedaddled 45 yards to the house. Game, set and match, as it turned out.

On the other side of the ledger, QB Joe Ordinary put up another set of modest numbers (10 for 18, 155 yards), but Matt Nichols is no longer in self-destruct mode. He even completed a deep ball that Darvin Adams accepted and carried to the house for a 72-yard score, prompting a comical Conor McGregor-like swagger from the QB.

Nothing but fun and games when you’re on the favorable end of a 31-nada score.

Here’s the bottom line for Winnipeg FC, though: Nothing has changed. The Bombers entered the fray holding down third place in the mosh pit that is the West Division, with an outside shot at a home playoff date. And that’s where they sit this morning because the Edmonton Eskimos and the surprising B.C. Lions refuse to co-operate. One of those two outfits will have pulled even with the Bombers by the time they come back to work on Oct. 26 (it’s Winnipeg FC’s bye week), and this mess might not be sorted out until the final weekend of the crusade. The good news for the Bombers is this: They don’t need any favors. There are two spots remaining on the local lads’ dance card (at home vs. the suddenly vulnerable Calgary Stampeders and vs. the Eskimos in E-Town). Win them both and they’re in. A split probably gets them in, too, but it might mean heading east in the Grey Cup tournament.

Final scores from the two Thanksgiving Day skirmishes in the CFL: 12-6, 19-12. Three of the four teams failed to produce an offensive touchdown. We have a name for games like that—National Football League.

Why is Edmonton Eskimos oft-unhinged head coach Jason Maas allowed to walked 20 yards onto the football field to bitch at game officials? Isn’t that the very definition of unsportsmanlike conduct? Somebody toss a flag at that man.

Just once I’d like to hear one of the geniuses on TSN tell the truth about their favorite lousy quarterback, Johnny Manziel, rather than make feeble excuses and apologies about feeble-fingered receivers and a leaky offensive line. Here’s the truth: Antonio Pipkin started four games for the Montreal Alouettes and went 2-2. Johnny 0-Fer has started five games and he’s 0-5. Both QBs have operated behind the same O-line and with the same pass-catchers.

Here are some numbers to digest for two first-year CFL QBs:
Chris Streveler (three starts and a bit of spot duty):
77/125, 944 yards, 10 TDs, 5 Int., 343 rush yards, 8 rush TDs
Johnny Manziel (five starts):
72/116, 872 yards, 2 TDs, 6 Int., 139 rush yards, 0 rush TDs.

Streveler has outpassed and outrun Johnny Rotten in considerably less time on the field. And keep in mind that he is a true freshman. He never played a down of professional football until this season with the Bombers. Manziel, on the other hand, spent two non-noteworthy years with the Cleveland Browns of the NFL.

Is it possible that the Johnny Rotten novelty act has worn thin everywhere but in the TSN broadcast booth and studio? I mean, the head count at Percival Molson Stadium for the Larks’ skirmish with the Calgary Stampeders on Turkey Day was 16,764. That’s down 1,606 from their preceding home assignment, vs. the Roughriders. Even the locals have figured it out.

World’s fastest man and retired Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt scored two goals in his professional soccer debut with the Central Coast Mariners of the Australian A-League. Brazilian star Neymar was so impressed that he apparently said Bolt’s performance “knocked me off my feet.” Like, who doesn’t?

Drew Brees has flung a football farther than any quarterback in the history of the four-down game, but who among us would choose him as the starting QB in a must-win match ahead of NFL greats Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, John Elway, Steve Young, Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, Johnny Unitas, or even Terry Bradshaw? No one. I doubt Brees would make many top-10 QB lists.

I don’t like to hear women blame themselves after a man roughs them up, which, unfortunately, is what Jenn Guardino is doing. It isn’t her fault that Austin Watson of the Nashville Predators hit her last summer and consequently received a 27-game suspension from National Hockey League commish Gary Bettman (reduced to 18 by a lame arbitrator). A witness told police that he observed Watson “swat” Guardino. That’s assault. The official police report noted that Guardino said Watson caused the scratches on her chest. Her left shin was bruised and bloody. She also told police that Watson sometimes gets “handsy.” Now she’s taking the rap for Watson’s abuse, insisting he would “never hit or abuse” her, even though he’s admitted doing that very thing. I don’t care how drunk she was or what she said. It isn’t her fault that a 6-feet-4, 204-pound man swatted her, shoved her or laid hands on her in any harmful manner. She’s the victim.

Shame on the Predators for trotting Watson out for the pre-game ceremonies at their home opener last week. The guy is on probation after a no-contest plea on a charge of domestic violence.

How positively hypocritical of Postmedia columnist Steve Simmons to call for the NHL to create a domestic violence policy in the wake of the Watson suspension fooferaw. “A strong policy needs to be in place and soon,” he sermonizes. This is the same guy who, in September 2017, wrote: “Personally, I think the CFL is stronger, maybe more fun, possibly more fan-appealing, with Manziel playing or trying to play the Canadian game.” In May of this year, under the headline “Welcome to Canada, Johnny Football,” he wrote: “Johnny Football is coming to Hamilton. And where do I sign up?” Manziel beat up his former girlfriend and threatened to kill her. Yet it’s “Welcome Johnny!” and get rid of louts like Austin Watson. Too dumb.

Just wondering: How’s that stand-pat thing working out for the Edmonton McDavids?

The Edmonton Oilers have scored five goals. Connor McDavid has five points. If management doesn’t do something to provide McDavid with a better supporting cast, it’ll go down as the greatest waste of talent since Jesus stopped walking on water.

And, finally, I would call these little notes that I patch together each week “musings,” except that would imply that I actually think before I type. And we certainly wouldn’t want that.

About TSN’s Cult of Johnny and the glorification of an NFL washout…did someone’s dog die?…teeny-boppers in the broadcast booth…scary numbers and ignoring domestic violence…good stuff from the Freep’s Jeff Hamilton and Andrew Harris…jocks and journos telling fibs…swimming with the fishes…paying Bogo but not Trouba…getting paid to eat popcorn…and Oscar Madison

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

TSN no longer has football broadcast teams. It has a cult. The Cult of Johnny.

Or perhaps it’s a church. The Church of Latter Day Frat Boys. Johnny Manziel being the Saint in Residence.

Whatever the case, all the natterbugs on TSN football want to talk about is Johnny Manziel. So let’s talk about Johnny Manziel.

He beat up a woman and threatened to kill her. Full stop.

At least it should be a full stop, because once you’ve said a man has beaten up a woman and threatened to kill her, you’ve told me everything I need to know about that man. I don’t need to hear about Manziel’s frat-boy partying, the drugs, the booze and the skirt chasing. He beat up a woman and threatened to snuff out her life. And his life. ‘Nuff said.

The shame is, the Canadian Football League ignores it. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats ignored it. The Montreal Alouettes are ignoring it. Ditto TSN and most mainstream sports media. The folks who repeatedly chanted “We want Johnny! We want Johnny!” at Percival Molson Stadium in Montreal on Thursday night ignore it.

It’s as if Colleen Crawley doesn’t exist. Like she’s a fictional character in an Agatha Christie or John Grisham crime novel.

But Crawley is very real. She’s the woman Manziel beat up and threatened to kill. No one in the CFL ivory tower has ever spoken to her about her night of terror, as Manziel raged and roughed her up. Nor has anyone at TSN. They don’t care about Colleen Crawley.

All they care about is whether or not the Montreal Alouettes quarterback can throw a tight spiral.

Johnny Frat Boy has yet to fling a football in a three-down game that matters, but that hasn’t prevented TSN and others from unabashedly glorifying him. If anything, it’s encouraged them to chatter more about the National Football League washout.

In the leadup to the Als-Edmonton Eskimos match on Thursday, the main TSN web page featured six Johnny Manziel videos on Tuesday morning. There were another four on Wednesday. Five more on game day. In the TSN pre-match nattering, ever-beaming host Kate Beirness and the panel—Henry Burris, newby Jim Barker and Milt Stegall—spent the better part of 25 minutes gasbagging about Manziel before even mentioning the Eskimos, who, oh by the way, rag-dolled les Alouettes, 44-23.

By the end of the night, after Larks head coach Mike Sherman had displayed the good sense to keep Manziel confined to the sidelines, Beirness had wiped away her smile like faulty makeup. She was in distress, if not PO’d.

“Even though Mike Sherman told us we would see Johnny Manziel on Thursday night, we did not,” she pouted, her face as long as Johnny Frat Boy’s litany of trespasses. “He did not take a single snap. We have not seen Johnny Football in a regular-season pro football game since December 2015, and we will have to wait just a little bit longer.”

It was as if her dog had died. I swear, I could hear a Merle Haggard hurtin’ song playing in the background.

Good grief.

Rod Smith, Jim Barker, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall

If TSN’s shameful fawning and obsessing with Manziel on Thursday didn’t turn enough stomachs, the boys were at it again the following night. Rod Smith and the three chatterboxes sitting to his left—Davis Sanchez, Matt Dunigan and Stegall—mentioned Johnny Rotten four times in the first two minutes (and five times total) during their chin-wag prior to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Tranna Argonauts joust. Color commentator Glen Suitor, meanwhile, felt obliged to talk about him toward the end of the match. Well, let’s file that under WTF. I mean, Manziel was 1,800 kilometres and two provinces to the east of Pegtown, most likely cruising Crescent Street in Montreal. So why was he part of the conversation? The TSN boys are acting like 1970s teeny-boppers waiting for a David Cassidy concert. Get a grip, for gawd’s sake.

Manziel enablers and apologists might be interested in some disturbing, scary facts from the Canadian Women’s Foundation: Approximately every six days, a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner; in 2014, 80 per cent of the victims of police-reported intimate partner homicides were women; 80 per cent of dating victims are women. And one study, conducted between 2011 and 2014, found that domestic violence calls in Calgary were 15 per cent higher when the Stampeders played the Eskimos and increased to 40 per cent when the Stamps were in the Grey Cup game. But, hey, let’s ignore the facts and root, root, root for a guy who beat up a woman.

Johnny Manziel and his guard dog June Jones.

Most asinine comment I heard or read about Manziel last week was delivered by Marc Dumont of The Athletic Montreal. He wrote: “Canadians can indeed be a forgiving people, finding empathy for those dealing with issues like substance abuse, but we rarely ignore incredibly serious issues like domestic violence.” Rarely ignore? I call total BS on that. TSN has been unrelenting and unapologetic in its campaign to get Johnny Rotten on the football field, completely disregarding the reality that he terrorized and beat up a woman. At Manziel’s intro presser after he signed with the Tiger-Cats, head coach June Jones shut down any conversation about domestic violence. And the Canadian sports media gave convicted woman-beater Floyd Mayweather a complete pass when he surfaced in the Republic of Tranna to tub-thump his farce of a fist-fight with Conor McGregor last year.

It’s not often that I lend an ear to podcasts, but Jeff Hamilton’s recent chit-chat with Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Andrew Harris was definitely worth a listen.

Hamilton, one of the CFL beat boys at the Winnipeg Free Press, asked Harris to weigh in on the Jacob Trouba saga, which resulted in the young Winnipeg Jets defenceman receiving a $5.5 million salary award from a National Hockey League arbitrator after contract negotiations ground to a halt.

“Most players have an inflated vision of what they’re worth, and, in a sense, you should,” said Harris, who defected from the B.C. Lions to join Winnipeg FC in 2016. “You realize how much you put out there, how much work you put in, and all the things you go throughout a season and through a career. Ultimately, you want to get compensated for that.

“You’re gonna get paid this amount of money for a short period of time, maybe 10 per cent, or 15 per cent, or 20 per cent of your whole life will be playing professional sports, so you’ve gotta maximize that to the full potential. But I think a lot of guys ruin a good thing after asking for too much money or going for places because they’re getting paid a certain amount when it’s not a good fit for them. A good fit within their system, within the community, within the lockerroom…it definitely can ruin a lot of careers just wanting more money or going where the grass is greener.

“Honestly, deep down inside I wanted a change. And I wanted to go to free agency. It really didn’t matter what (B.C.) offered me initially, I knew it was going to be a low-ball offer. It wasn’t horrible, but I made it seem like it was because I wanted to ultimately try to press as much and try to squeeze it for all the juice, but it ended causing more friction and made the last half of the season more negative than it probably should have been.”

Honest stuff.

Hamilton’s boss at the Drab Slab, sports editor Steve Lyons, and columnist Paul Wiecek went off on Trouba and liars in sports in their Say What?! feature last week, with Wiecek delivering this snicker-inducing remark: “I don’t tolerate (lies) in my personal life and I won’t tolerate it in my professional life.” Ya, right. What’s Wiecek going to do to stop athletes/coaches/managers/owners from lying to him. Tell them to go stand in a corner? Send them to bed with no dessert? Ground them like a teenager who broke curfew? As if. Lyons served as a voice of reason, writing: “If you are expecting the absolute truth to come out of the mouths of folks in pro sports, you are setting yourself to feel betrayed down the road. Don’t take it personally.”

Wiecek, who simply cannot get out of his own way when it comes to Trouba, says he’d “respect” Trouba if he went public and admitted he wants out of Winnipeg. Ya, like earning a news snoop’s “respect” is high on any pro athlete’s to-do list. There’s a basic reason why the jock-journo relationship is often adversarial—they don’t trust each other. And they don’t trust each other because they lie to each other. All…the…time. Yes, sports scribes also live on Planet Pinocchio. They don’t fib as often as jocks, but they bend, stretch and twist the truth like a blob of silly putty in a White House press secretary’s hands.

The athlete-media dynamic was another of the topics Hamilton and Harris discussed during their The Handoff podcast. “I’ve definitely been misquoted,” said Harris. “I’ve been misquoted for sure. There’s a guy in Vancouver—he doesn’t work in the business anymore…he’s swimming with the fishes now.” He was joking. I think.

Would anyone out there in Jets Nation welcome a Jacob Trouba-for-Zach Bogosian swap even-up? Didn’t think so. I doubt Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff would either. Yet they agreed to give an underperforming Bogosian a seven-year contract with a $5.1-million cap hit in 2013, then placed a value of $4 million on Trouba nine days ago. That simply doesn’t add up. I mean, if they believed Bogosian was worth $5.1 million to them five years ago, they have to believe Trouba is worth a whole lot more in 2018. Naturally, we don’t know what numbers les Jets presented the Trouba camp prior to their recent arbitration hearing, but anything less than $5.1 million would have been highly objectionable and insulting. And people think Trouba’s the bad guy?

Marko Dano has signed with the Jets for $800,000. Nice gig. Sit in the press box, watch 82 hockey games, eat popcorn, collect 800 large. That’s almost as much as a beat writer at the Free Press makes. The least Dano could do for that kind of coin is file a game story and sidebar. On deadline. Also gain about 40 pounds and wear wrinkled clothes that don’t fit. Then he’d feel right at home with the rest of the boys on press row.

Hey, I’m not saying news snoops are slobs and shlubs. Some of them actually own neckties. They just don’t know how to tie them. If you ever watched Jack Klugman or Walter Mathau as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple you’ll catch my drift. (Am I showing my age when I use the term catch my drift?) The only news snoop I ever knew who belonged on the cover of GQ was George (Shakey) Johnson.

And, finally, nice exchange between Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea and news snoops following Winnipeg FC’s 40-14 romp over the Argonauts on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry…

Reporter: “Do you have any plans for your bye week coming up?”

O’Shea: “I do…you’re not included in them.”

About open season on NHL goaltenders…no news is still news for Johnny Manziel…the write stuff from Jeff Hamilton…Box Car Bill Belichick’s biceps…the return of Mr. Carrie Underwood…routs at the Scotties…the PC Police…Grandpa Simmons shaking his fist at clouds again…fresh Stanley Cup odds…and a whine and cheese party in South Korea

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

It was Groundhog Day on Friday. I woke up, stared at my TV screen and saw 4 1/2 more months of bad goaltender interference calls ahead.

Seriously. There are three things in life that I do not understand: 1) goaltender interference in hockey; 2) goaltender interference in hockey; 3) goaltender interference in hockey.

Well, okay, there are more than three things I don’t understand. Pass interference in football is another. And exactly where do socks disappear to when you’re doing laundry? (The socks thing I’ve remedied. I no longer wear them. I don’t even own a pair. For the record, I wear tights in winter and go barefoot in summer.) But this goaltender interference thing is more baffling than the National Hockey League hiring Kid Rock to sing.

I mean, I swear I saw James Neal of the Vegas Golden Knights go all lumberjack the other night at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie in Winnipeg, breaking his twig in two with a Paul Bunyanesque wallop to the masked face of Jets ‘tender Connor Hellebuyck. It wasn’t ruled goaltender interference. Not even after a coach’s challenge and video review that, in the opinions of the two men wearing orange arm bands, validated a Vegas score.

Huh?

You whack a goaltender across the face with a two-hander and that isn’t interference? If not, it surely is a slashing penalty (like, five minutes and a game). Whistle blows. No goal. But not in today’s NHL, where reason has fled the building and logic is only a step behind.

The good news is, NHL deep-thinkers have time to put this part of their house in order before it corrupts the Stanley Cup tournament. The bad news is, they’re the same deep-thinkers who hired Kid Rock to sing.

Aside from Michael Sam, who became famous for being gay, has any football player generated more headlines by not playing football on this side of the north-south divide than Johnny Manziel?

The Canadian Football League remains a Manziel-free zone (for now), yet this frat boy who would play quarterback for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats very much remains a hot-button topic. According to TSN, Manziel and the Tabbies are further apart on money than Bill Gates and a panhandler. His reported sticker price is half a million bucks. The Tabbies are offering in the neighborhood of $150,000.

“Nahhh,” tweets Manziel. “We asked for a fair deal, that’s it.” But then he added: “Has there ever been a rookie that will sell more money in jersey sales and season tickets than his entire two-year contract would be worth? OK good talk…Humble as can be. Just stating FACTS sorry you don’t agree.”

Yo! Johnny! The Ticats played to 97 per cent capacity at Timbits Field in The Hammer last season. They need a woman-beater like you to sell tickets and garments like Charlize Theron needs a makeover.

Lengthy but excellent read from Jeff Hamilton of the Winnipeg Free Press on domestic violence as it relates to Manziel and the CFL. The most startling revelation in the article: In performing their “due diligence” on Manziel, no one from the CFL or the Tiger-Cats contacted Colleen Crowley. She’s the young woman the former Cleveland Browns QB beat up a couple of years ago, leading her to file for, and be granted, a restraining order against him. You’d think seeking a victim impact statement would be a no-brainer.

Some quality journalism last week about mental illness, and I never saw or read anything better than Darren Dreger’s TSN feature on Paul Ranger, whose battle with inner demons cost him his NHL career. It was a gripping, touching piece. Boffo work.

All power to Ricky Ray, who, at age 38, will give it another whirl as starting QB with the Tranna Argonauts. The worry, of course, is that he’ll end his Canadian Football Hall of Fame career on the back of a Gator cart, because he has all the mobility of an ATM and he’s as brittle as a piece of burnt toast. Fingers (and toes) crossed for him.

You wonder why so many people believe journalists are lower than the bowels of hell? Alex Reimer is a reason. Howard Stern is a reason.

Reimer, a gab guy with WEEI in Boston, established new standards for tacky when, commenting on the Tom Brady Facebook feature Tom vs Time, he described the quarterback’s five-year-old daughter Vivian as “an annoying little pissant.” Hey, take shots and Brady and his New England Patriots if you like. That seems to be a national pastime on either side of the U.S.-Canada border. Just leave his kids alone, right?

But wait. Let’s let another juror weigh in.

“I’ve got to stick up for radio guys, because number one, you’re on the air and it’s not like there’s a script,” Serius XM radio gasbag Howard Stern huffs and puffs. “But for godsakes—Tom Brady should know better. If you’re going to put your young child on a TV show, on the Internet, you’re putting her out there for comment.

“It’s really Tom’s fault. And I don’t know Tom—I’m a great admirer of his physical prowess and his football ability—but don’t put your kid up on an Internet show and then get pissed when people comment on her behavior. You’re putting it out there for people to comment on. That’s what a TV show is.”

Instant analysis: Who knew Howard Stern was still a thing?

This week’s notable quotable is from Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail, on New England Patriots head coach Box Car Willie Belichick: “(He) has a thing for wearing sleeveless shirts, which is a serious problem that does not get enough attention.” Either Kelly’s tongue was in his cheek, or he’s totally lost the plot. I mean, I can think of a number of “serious problems” with the National Football League (like, when is a catch a catch; when is a concussion a concussion?), but Box Car Belichick’s bare arms are not among them. Would Kelly have him drag a brush through his hair as well? Maybe ask him to spray on some cologne? C’mon man.

Mr. Carrie Underwood and his bride, Carrie Underwood.

Interesting that Mike Fisher is ending his retirement to rejoin the Nashville Predators for their Stanley Cup push. Guess being Mr. Carrie Underwood and a stay-at-home papa isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Whatever, the well-seasoned centre’s return makes a hard-to-play-against Predators outfit harder to play against.

I agree with Michelle Englot, the Team Canada skip at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Penticton: People should “chill out” about the new format. True, no one wants to see the Canadian women’s curling championship reduced to an ant-squishing competition, but lopsided scores are commonplace at the Scotties. Consider these results:

2018: 12-2, 11-1, 12-5, 10-4, 14-1, 10-3, 11-5, 13-4, 10-4, 12-4.
2017: 11-6, 10-5, 10-5, 12-6, 11-5, 10-2, 11-5, 10-4, 10-4, 11-5.
2016: 12-5, 10-2, 10-4, 11-5, 10-3, 10-3, 11-4, 9-3, 9-4, 8-2.
2015: 10-5, 10-2, 10-5, 11-5, 10-4, 11-2, 9-1, 9-4, 9-3, 9-3, 8-1.
2014: 15-3, 12-2, 10-3, 10-3, 12-2, 10-5, 10-3, 10-4, 10-5.
2013: 11-5, 12-5, 10-5, 10-4, 12-2, 11-4, 10-3, 10-2, 9-1, 9-2.

In other words, it’s been same old, same old at this year’s Scotties and the new format isn’t the reason for blowouts in Penticton—it’s the have and have-not dynamic. You have Grand Slam curlers sharing the same pebble as club curlers. That usually won’t end well.

And don’t run off with the notion that routs are an element particular to curling. It happens in both women’s and men’s hockey as well.

2016/17 women’s world hockey championship: 7-0, 8-0, 11-0, 8-0, 8-1, 8-0, 9-0.
2016/17 men’s world hockey championship: 7-2, 10-1, 8-1, 7-2, 7-2, 6-0, 7-0, 10-1, 7-1, 8-0, 7-2, 6-0.

So there.

This week’s nasty Stevie-ism from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna is directed at Pedro Martinez, one of this year’s inductees to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. According to Grandpa Simmons, the Martinez appointment is “ridiculous” because he only spent four seasons with the Expos in Montreal. “Pedro Martinez does not belong here. Makes the Hall look cheap,” Simmons tweets angrily. “Do you honestly believe a player with four years service belongs in the Hall of Fame? Any Hall of Fame?” Well, let’s see: Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson spent only four winters in Winnipeg, yet they’re in both the Jets and Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. Do they belong? Absolutely. Doug Flutie spent only two seasons quarterbacking the Toronto Argonauts, yet he’s in the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame. Does he belong? Two Grey Cup titles says yes. Gale Sayers played the equivalent of 4.25 seasons (just 68 games) for the Chicago Bears, yet he’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Does he belong? Ya think? I wish people would stop dropping Grandpa Simmons on his head.

Sifting through The River City Renegade archives, I note that on Sept. 14, 2017, I provided odds on each Canadian team ending the Great White North Stanley Cup drought. Here was my morning line:

Edmonton McDavids: 3/1
Winnipeg Jets: 5/1
Calgary Flames: 5/1
Tranna Maple Leafs: 10/1
Montreal Canadiens: 20/1
Ottawa Senators: Fuhgeddaboudit.
Vancouver Canucks: You’re kidding, right?

February update! February update! February update!

Winnipeg Jets: 1/1
Calgary Flames: 5/1
Tranna Maple Leafs: 10/1
Edmonton McDavids: 25/1
Montreal Canadiens: Not in my lifetime.
Ottawa Senators: Not in my grandchildren’s lifetime.
Vancouver Canucks: Not even when the Sedin twins are playing on a forward line with one of their grandchildren.

No more Walk-On Girls at darts events in the U.K.

Does anyone remember what sports was like before the Politically Correct Police mobilized? I mean, Chief Wahoo soon will be gone from the Cleveland Indians unis. Formula 1’s Grid Girls are gone. The U.K.’s professional darts Walk-On Girls are gone. Next thing you know, Postmedia’s tabloid newspapers across the land will be ordering their Sunshine Girls to cover up the cleavage.

Get ready, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the bitch-a-thon is about to commence. That is to say, the flowers of Canadian sports journalism are on their way to South Korea for the Winter Olympic Games, and the moment they touch down in PyeongChang they shall commence to feeding us a steady diet of whine with their cheesey commentary about poor facilities, poor food, poor shuttle service, poor accommodations, poor travel connections, and poor port-o-potties. Trust me, they’ll deliver more complaints than a Republican watching CNN.

About the first-place (for a few hours) Winnipeg Blue Bombers…near-perfection…laughing it up about naked women…new wrinkles in curling…best of the Blue Jays…good writing…a strange tweet…and other things on my mind

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

I looked at the Canadian Football League standings on Saturday morning and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were atop the tables. I know, totally weird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Floyd Mayweather and Jimmy Kimmel sharing giggles about naked women.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

	pattidawnswansson on Let’s talk about Chelsea…
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	pattidawnswansson on Let’s talk about hosanna…
	Debora Peters on Let’s talk about hosanna…