Let’s talk about in-your-face female athletes…Kim blah-blah-blah Mulkey…the Cult of Dumb on Hockey Night in Canada…Jack and jackasses…and other things on my mind

Caitlin Clark

This just in: Female athletes cuss.

Who knew?

Moreover, female athletes also get royally PO’d and act out, waving their arms like those tall, inflatable thingies that you see on used car lots. The women holler at game officials, they screech at foes, fans and sometimes their own coaches/teammates, and some spit.

You know, just like the guys do.

Yet many among the rabble were shocked—shocked, I say!—when Iowa hoops star Caitlin Clark was observed on ESPN cameras telling unknown somebodies to either “Shut the f–k up!” or “Get the f–k up!” during a rather tense tussle with West Virginia in the madness that is NCAA March basketball stateside.

Either way, it was an F-bomb and, no surprise, social media was abuzz with chatter about improper, boorish behavior, even though it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen or heard before.

Just last summer, for example, there was a nasty collision during a Canada-Australia women’s World Cup footy skirmish, whereby Allysha Chapman and Hayley Raso made like bumper cars while challenging for a free ball. Raso took the worst of it, prompting Matildas’ coach Tony Gustavsson to chirp Chapman from his perch on the sideline.

Sensitive off-pitch microphones failed to pick up Gustavsson’s trash talk, but there was no mistaking Chapman’s verbal volley.

“She f–king jumped into me, you tw-t!” the Canadian defender snapped back at him.

The decorous sport of curling offered another e.g. during the recent Scotties Tournament of Hearts, whereby a mic’d-up Val Sweeting of Team Einarson was overhead dropping back-to-back F-bombs about how she was having so much “f–king fun.”

So here’s what I find myself wondering: Are female athletes still held to a different standard than their male counterparts when it comes to bedside manner? Are they still expected to be prissy missies, like so many June Cleavers in sneakers or skates? Has Caitlin Clark been battered fore and aft in large part because she’s a she?

I’d like to think not, but I suspect otherwise.

As much as female sports is experiencing a considerable, long-awaited growth spurt (see: Professional Women’s Hockey League, international futbol, women’s college hoops), it comes with greater scrutiny and I’m not convinced everyone is peering into the same lens. That is, when we see Caitlin Clark acting out, do we see an athlete whining to a referee and flailing with her arms, or do we see a female athlete whining to a ref and flailing with her arms?

There should be no such distinction.

Females athletes at the elite level have the same yearnings as men. They want to win. Did anyone want to succeed more than Hayley Wickenheiser or Christine Sinclair?

Call it passion.

Watch the upcoming women’s world hockey tournament and you’ll see passion on public display, most notably when Canada and the Yankee Doodle Damsels are on the same frozen pond. No male hockey player is more “into it” than Marie-Philip Poulin or Hilary Knight.

And because female athletes are as passionate about their work as men, they’re prone to emotional outbursts. That can mean a moment of madness, or a potty mouth.

And, by god, female athletes need not make apologies for any of it.

This is their time and they’ve earned it. They’re confident, they’re proud, they’re loud (hello, Megan Rapinoe), they’re ruthless, they’ve got attitude, some of them are angry, they’re in your face, and they aren’t interested in being ladylike once inside the lines just to satisfy a dog-eared stereotype.

And, hey, keep this in mind: Between the National Hockey League and the PWHL, only one of the two has the word “Lady” in the name of an individual award, and it isn’t the women’s league.

Having said all that, few people in sports get up my nose quite like Kim Mulkey, head coach with the LSU women’s hoops team. I swear, she’s up both my nostrils. She’s a first-class boor who seems to hold to the misguided notion that it’s her world and the rest of us are allowed to participate in life only at her beckoning. She’s Bobby Knight in pumps and a clown suit. Her threat to sue Washington Post award-winning reporter Kent Babb last weekend (for a so-called “hit piece” that turned out to be a Nothing Burger) is a case in point: “Not many people are in a position to hold these kind of journalists accountable, but I am, and I’ll do it,” she said. Well, la-di-da, your Royal Haughtiness. Let us all bow and grovel.

Mulkey was at it again on Saturday, delivering another sermon and claiming that the “hall-of-famers, legendary coaches” who taught her “probably couldn’t coach in this generation.” Right. She’s better. Other talking points were sexism, requiring her players to pray on Sundays, and a Los Angeles Times article that she decided was “awful.” It was all spoken in a pontifical tone, with Mulkey trying to look and talk as tough and menacing as a school-teacher nun with a wooden ruler in her hand, but it was a pathetic piece of theatre.

Happy Easter to all. My favorite Easter-themed athlete names:
Bunny Shaw
Rabbit Maranville
Bugsy Watson
Hopalong Cassady
Bunny Larocque

True confession time: Way back when, I figured there would be palm trees, coconuts and a nightly luau at Portage and Main before Connor Hellebuyck became a top-drawer NHL goaltender. D’oh! The guy just played his 500th game for the Winnipeg Jets, and there hasn’t been a whole lot of clunkers in the bunch. A tip of the bonnet.

Ted Wyman is miffed that Rink Rat Scheifele was excused from the Jets skirmish Thursday night, a 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. “The penalty to Scheifele was excessive,” Wyman wrote in the Winnipeg Sun. “They could have simply called him for roughing instead of giving him an instigator penalty and fighting major. His actions didn’t warrant being banished for 17 minutes, which would have kept him out through overtime had the game gone on that long.” Well, let’s see. The Rink Rat started a fight with Nicolas Hague. That’s two minutes. He fought Hague. That’s another five minutes. And instigating fisticuffs calls for 10 more minutes in stir. Seems to me the gendarmes got it right.

The Scheifele-Hague punch-up is part of NHL rot. One guy, Hague of the Golden Knights, flattened a foe, Vlad Namestnikov, and a third party, the Rink Rat, was so mortified at the sight of his comrade laid out on the freeze that he bared his knuckles and sought retribution. To fight for no reason is, of course, the NHL “code,” except the NHL “code” is a con job that players like Scheifele swallow whole, even if it means taking dumb penalties when a game hangs in the balance. Really, about the only thing dumber than the “code” are NHL players dumb enough to believe that a bodycheck is a command to open a can of whoop ass on an opponent. So when Kevin Bieksa and Kelly Hrudey go on Hockey Night in Canada to inform us that Scheifele’s brain fart was “admirable” and “honorable,” they’re merely reminding us that they’re also card-carrying members of the Cult of Dumb.

Saw this thread on X the other day:
“I don’t expect xG and G to track as closely at 5v4 as at 5v5.”
“NST showed a modest xGF/60 bump during the hot streak—but their GF/60 went bananas.”
“Depends on the xG model. Some are trained with state taken into account, some are not.”
That’s what passes for hockey talk with the kids these days. Bless ’em.

Dumb headline on the Sportsnet website last week: “Darryl Watts and PWHL Ottawa are heating up at the right time.” Say again? The “right time?” I must have missed a memo, because I thought Ponytail Puck had shut down for three weeks and Ottawa won’t crank it up again until April 20.

Just wondering: Am I supposed to care that golf great Jack Nicklaus pals around with Donald Trump? I mean, sure, the former U.S. president tells fibs (real whoppers), he paws and gropes women, he mocks men for their disabilities, he sends his stooges to storm the Capitol, odds are he’ll spend some time in an orange jump suit, he’s a grifter like we’ve never seen and is now peddling bibles to prove suckers are born every minute. He’s total cringe, a rancid human being. But, last time I checked, none of us, including the Golden Bear, requires permission to put on a red MAGA cap and act every bit the Trump toady. Nicklaus’ political leanings won’t change my life any. But, damn, it’s still kind of sad to see ol’ Jack playing the fool instead of playing golf.

If there’s a Jackass of the Year Award, UFC fighter Julian Eroso is the clubhouse leader, and I suspect he’ll still be at the head of the pack nine months from now. I mean, how else do we explain his wacko rant after beating Ricardo Ramos last Saturday, except to say he’s a jackass? If you missed it, for reasons known only to himself and the voices emanating from inside his tin foil-lined cap, Eroso thought his post-fight natter with news snoops was the proper time and place to challenge Lia Thomas to a fight in the octagon. Yes, that would be law student and former collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender female. The way Eroso has it sorted out in his vacuous brain pan, he would make the transition to a woman while Thomas would skip a few law classes in order to hone her mixed martial arts skills. They would then get it on in the octagon, whereupon Eroso would kick “the dude’s ass.” Good grief. How many nights did Eroso lay awake coming up with that bit of dimwitted blather? But, then, Eroso also confirmed that he’s “not the smartest crayon in the box.” None among his audience disagreed.

But, wait. Closing fast on the inside as Jackass of the Year is Chris DiMarco, who has his fingers and toes crossed in the hope that Saudi-backed LIV Golf purchases Old Fogey Golf, which is to say the PGA Tour Champions. That way, he and the rest of golf’s 50-plus fossils can start making “real money,” rather than settle for the Monopoly money available to them on the geriatric tour. “We don’t really play for much money,” he moaned to the boys on something called the Subpar Podcast. “It’s kind of a joke.” Excuse me, but it’s not like the ol’ boys are playing for beads and trinkets. There’s $67 million available to them this year, including a $2.2 million purse at this weekend’s Galleri Classic. One of the fossils, a dude named Steve Alker, has pocketed $555,707. For three months of work. DiMarco pleading poverty is like Streisand begging for singing lessons.

For the record, DiMarco has cashed cheques totaling $22,656,443 as a PGA golfer, placing him 94th for all-time loot. Unless he has Homer Simpson for an accountant, $22-plus million should have been enough to make him nice and comfy as he greys at the temples. Golf should be a hobby by now. But, no, he’s still out there hacking away, and “hacking” is the operative word—he’s earned $36,591 this year. So it’s quite simple: If DiMarco wants more coin, shut the hell up and play better golf.

On the subject of coin, if you’re bored and want to prove there’s a sucker born every minute, you can make tracks for Arlington, Texas, where Mike Tyson and Jake Paul promise to throw punches at each other in a cash grab disguised as boxing on July 20. The sticker price to watch the con job at AT&T Stadium is anywhere from $359 to $16,097. I’m guessing Chris DiMarco can’t fit that into his budget.

And, finally, interesting post on X from Paul Samyn, editor at the Winnipeg Free Press: “HIRING ALERT: Come join a newspaper that wants to grow rather than gut the newsroom. Opportunities include the chance to work in our legislative bureau.” This is terrific news. Now, if only he’d recruit a female sports scribe and a sports columnist, then they’d be up to speed.

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

Mina Kimes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That also applies to movie or music critics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2023 Nostradumbass Prophesies

By now you’ve likely had it up to your eyeliner or chin whiskers with New Year’s predictions, but Nostradumbass has yet to weigh in on what shall transpire in the next 12 months. Here’s what the Nostradumbass Prophesies say about athletes and teams from Good Ol’ Hometown…

Top photo: Kerri Einarson, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard, Briane Harris. Bottom photo: Matt Dunstone, B.J. Neufeld, Colton Lott, Ryan Harnden.

It’s a double whammy for Manitoba’s elite Pebble People, with the Kerri Einarson and Matt Dunstone rinks winning the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the Brier.

“It’s about bloody time,” says Dunstone. “I know winning’s old hat for Kerri and the gals from Gimli. That’s their fourth Scotties title in a row. Damn well done, ladies. But it’s fresh territory for us Buffalo Boys. Let’s face it, Manitoba men have sucked at curling this entire century, except for 2011 when Jeff Stoughton won the Brier. One Brier win in all that time? Total BS. So I’m happy that we could end the drought. Does it make me want to move back to Manitoba permanently? Naw. My home’s in Kamloops. You can’t beat the B.C interior for beauty, especially in and around The Okanagan. We also get better WiFi there.”

Meanwhile, Dunstone accepts a challenge from Einarson, and the two championship teams meet in a mid-summer one-off. It’s a rout: Gimli Gals 9, Buffalo Boys 3.

“I feel a bit sorry for them,” Einarson admits. “I mean, all four of us girls are preggers, so maybe they were distracted by our baby bumps. It’s not like guys know what to do when a woman’s pregnancy hormones are raging, so between all the bathroom breaks, the food cravings and the totally bonkers mood swings, they didn’t know if they were in a curling game or a Hitchcock thriller.

“I’m sure when Val (Sweeting) ordered that bucket of KFC and got in a scrap with Briane (Harris) over the last drumstick during the fifth-end break, it threw them off their game. I’m guessing you lose something from your draw weight after watching two hormonal-crazed women go all Animal House and throw coleslaw at each other.”

Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and the 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet, disheartened by a fairweather fan base and empty seats in the Little Hockey House On The Prairie, sell the Winnipeg Jets—lock, stock and Ducky Hawerchuk statue—to rock ‘n’ roll fossils Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman.

The first order of business for Cummings and Bachman is to rebrand the National Hockey League club.

“We’re now the Winnipeg Canned Wheat,” Cummings announces at a press conference that includes the 3rd Baron and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. “It’s a salute to the Guess Who’s fifth studio album.

“We always thought Jets was a dumb name. What do airplanes have to do with Winnipeg? There isn’t even an airport here. If Winnipeg’s known for anything other than winter and Slurpees, it’s the rock ‘n’ roll scene in the 1960s and ’70s. We had great bands…the Squires, the Deverons, the Crescendos, the Quid, the Orfans, the Shondels, the Pallbearers, the Syndicate, the Eternals, Chad Allan and the Expressions, The Gentlemen Royal, the Dawgs, the House Grannies, the Feminine Touch, the Fifth, Finders Keepers, the Jury. That’s what I’m talking about. And, of course, there was me, Randy, Jimmy Kale and Garry Peterson in the Guess Who. Some of the Guess Who’s best stuff is on our Canned Wheat album—Laughing, Undun, No Time. Those songs are classics, like me and Randy. I was brilliant on them, and Randy was pretty good, too.”

Asked about fan support, Cummings harrumphs and says: “Not to worry. We’ve still got a long wait list for season tickets, but let’s just say if support goes soft the whole thing will come Undun (see what I did there?). We’ll move the team to Moose Jaw, and Mr. Bettman will support us 100 per cent.”

“They can squeeze 4,700 into the Moose Jaw rink,” the NHL commish says with a nod. “And, hey, if that number works for the Coyotes in an Arizona desert, it can work for the Canned Wheat on the bald prairies. Besides, Moose Jaw has better WiFi than Winnipeg.”

Local legal beagle David Asper, following the lead of Cummings and Bachman, bows to pressure and renames his Canadian Elite Basketball League franchise.

“Ever since I announced we had the team, all I’ve heard is ‘Sea Bears is stupid, Sea Bears is stupid.’ It’s been non-stop,” Asper says to a smattering of news snoops who had nothing better to do that day. “I haven’t had this many people PO’d at me since the 2005 Banjo Bowl, when I stormed into the Blue Bombers locker room after a loss and told the head coach he didn’t know a quarterback from a Q-tip. Now that was stupid. But I didn’t think naming a summertime hoops team after an Arctic predator was stupid. What was I supposed to call it? The Winnipeg Skeeters? The Winnipeg Potholes?

“Anyway, I heard from a lot of people and I listened, which I don’t normally do. I usually just listen to the sound of my own voice. But I eventually came around to the notion that Sea Bears was kind of dopey. So, as of today, we are the Winnipeg Riverboat. I remember riding the Paddlewheel Queen and the Paddlewheel Princess on the Red River when I was a kid. Good times. Just like a night watching my basketball team.”

Knuckles Irving and young Eddie Tait

A numbers crunch hits the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and CEO Wade Miller is forced to break up the Canadian Mafia by parting company with general manager Kyle Walters and replacing him with former news snoops Bob Irving and Ed Tait.

“Toughest decision I’ve had to make,” says Miller. “Kyle, coach Mike O’Shea and I are fast friends and we did great things together, winning two Grey Cups and playing in a third. But there’s an operations cap in the Canadian Football League, and we were banging our head on the ceiling. Kyle is the odd man out, and we wish him well when he replaces Pinball Clemons with the Argonauts.

“Some of you probably think I’m off my rocker, hiring two former media guys as co-GMs. Fine, but let me remind you that you thought I was a bit loopy when I hired Mike O’Shea to coach the team. How’s that worked out?

“Knuckles and Eddie have been part of the CFL for about as long as the rouge, and they’re what you call cheap dates…Knuckles is working pro bono, and Eddie’s already on staff for chump change. Hey, what can I say? It’s Winnipeg. We do things wholesale or on the real, real cheap. I would have hired Sarah Orlesky, too, because a pro sports franchise can never have enough burned-out news snoops on staff. But the Jets beat us to Sarah and she probably wouldn’t have worked for food stamps.”

Both Irving and Tait are unavailable for comment due to a previous commitment: Fixing the WiFi in Miller’s office.

Aaron Cockerill

The pride of Stony Mountain, Aaron Cockerill, takes the money and runs to the LIV Golf Series.

“All I have to do is show up with a bag of golf clubs and a caddy and play three rounds of stress-free golf. I don’t have to worry about making cuts and I’ll have more cashola than any player on the Jets roster,” Cockerill says. “I’m not going to say how much coin Greg Norman and the Saudis are giving me, but I can buy all of Stony Mountain and the rest of Rockwood if I want.”

“We think Aaron is a real up-and-comer, a rising star,” says Norman. “He’s ranked 346th in the world, so he’s no Rory or Scottie Scheffler, but he’s the kind of player we want in LIV Golf. He’s young, talented and eager. And don’t talk to me about blood money. His hands will be clean when he cashes his cheques. We’ve all got clean hands at LIV Golf. If anybody’s got dirty hands, it’s Rory and those dirty, rotten scoundrels who run the corrupt PGA Tour. They wouldn’t have a pot to pee in if it wasn’t for old golfers like me! If I sound bitter, it’s because I am bitter. I just don’t know why I’m so bitter.”

Barry Trotz

The Vancouver Canucks shed themselves of good guy Bruce Boudreau and introduce Barry Trotz as head coach.

“I know I said I wanted to coach an Original Six team,” says Trotz, “but I’m happy to be with an Original 14 team. Especially one in such a beautiful locale. I’m just a prairie boy, but I’ve been around some. I mean, I’ve seen the inside of the White House and the Grand Ole Opry, so you need to take the long way around the barn to impress me. And that’s what Vancouver does…it impresses me. Looking out my window and seeing mountain and ocean views every morning is a long hike from Dauphin, let me tell you.”

Asked to comment on the roster he’s inherited, Trotz says: “As Shania Twain sang, that don’t impress me much.”

Gail Asper

There’s a huge shakeup on the local media landscape, with (a) the suits at Postmedia in the Republic of Tranna shutting down the Winnipeg Sun without notice, (b) the resurrection of the Winnipeg Tribune, and (c) the Winnipeg Free Press converting to a tabloid format.

The unexpected chain of events begins when the geniuses at Postmedia stop the presses at the Sun.

“What the hell, we haven’t shut down a newspaper or laid off hundreds of workers for at least six months, so we were overdue for some blood-letting,” says a company spokesperson. “And, let’s face it, the Winnipeg Sun had become the Toronto Sun, especially in the sports section. Think of it this way: We didn’t kill a newspaper, we saved a few forests.”

Out-of-work Sun employees aren’t out of work for long, thanks to a group of local business leaders fronted by Gail Asper, who’s named publisher of the new, employee-owned Winnipeg Tribune.

“My dad, Izzy, loved the old Trib,” she says. “He loved everything about it. Our plan is to bring it back to its original glory, and that might even include hiring some of the people who were on staff when the paper folded in 1980. I’m just not sure how many of them are still alive. But our new sports editor, Paul Friesen, has been tasked with tracking them down, and he’s been told to offer them their old jobs back.”

Friesen discovers a handful of ex-Tribbers scattered hither and yon in old-folks homes across the Frozen Tundra, but has no luck luring them back to Good Ol’ Hometown.

“Every time I thought I had one of them convinced to come back, my WiFi went on the fritz and I never heard from them again,” he explains. “Damn Winnipeg WiFi. No wonder the Jets can’t sign any decent free agents.”

David Asper

Meantime, freshly minted publisher at the Winnipeg Free Press, David Asper, announces the switch from broadsheet to tabloid format, and it includes a daily Sunshine Girl.

“I know what you’re going to ask me. You’re going to ask why a tabloid after 150 years as a broadsheet,” Asper says at the launch of his newest toy. “Well, I like the size and feel of a tabloid. It isn’t as unwieldy as a broadsheet, especially when you’re reading the paper on a bus or at a snack bar. Nobody needs some stranger’s newspaper flapping in their face when they’re trying to eat a corned beef sandwich at Oscar’s.

“As for the Sunshine Girl, I plead innocence. That wasn’t my call. And don’t think my little sister Gail hasn’t filled me in on what a cad I am. She gave me an earful. In both ears. I realize a Sunshine Girl isn’t in step with the social climes of the 21st century, but it went to a vote of the Board and I don’t have a veto. We’re going to make it up to all the girls and women who read our sports section. I’ve directed sports editor Jason Bell to start covering female sports on a daily basis, and suggested in strong terms that he think about hiring a woman the next time there’s an opening in his toy department. That would be a refreshing change, wouldn’t it?”

Jennifer Botterill

The Freep asks Hockey Night In Canada commentator and Olympic champion Jennifer Botterill to appear as its first Sunshine Girl, and it’s a non-starter.

“Oh, yuck,” she says. “I have enough trouble dealing with the frat boys on Hockey Night without them having something like that to throw in my face every Saturday. Can you imagine what Kevin Bieksa would say? That guy creeps me out at the best of times.”

Happy New Year to all!

Let’s talk about Kevin Cheveldayoff’s do-little day and the ramblings of a couch potato

Top o’ the morning to you, Kevin Cheveldayoff.

I must say, Chevy, when the clock struck midnight (figuratively speaking) on the National Hockey League annual shop-and-swap hijinks Monday, I couldn’t help but think of the Miss Peggy Lee song Is That All There Is?

Chances are you’re not familiar with the tune, Chevy, because Miss Lee hit the charts with it in August 1969, seven months before you came into the world, but trust me when I tell you it’s a classic. So fabulous, in fact, that the great Tony Bennett included it on an album later in ’69, and if it was good enough for Peggy and Tony it’s good enough for the rest of us.

Anyway, I thought of Is That All There Is? because now that the dust has settled on a less-than-frantic NHL trade deadline, Jordie Benn is all there is to show for your day’s work.

Color me, and many others, unimpressed, Chevy.

I’m sure Jordie is a fine young man who’s kind to little, old ladies like myself and I’m guessing he’d buy a boatload of cookies if some fresh-faced Girl Guides knocked on his door, but I don’t see how he gets your Winnipeg Jets any closer to a Stanley Cup parade.

Chevy

Heck, Chevy, never mind a big, ol’ victory hooraw stretching from Memorial Boulevard to Portage and Main to the Forks later this summer, I’m not sure adding Benn to your blueline gets you much more than a one-and-done in the playoffs.

No doubt you noticed that your counterpart with the Toronto Maple Leafs, general manager Kyle Dubas, has been busier than a barman at last call, adding a defenceman or two here, a forward or two there, and grabbing some insurance for that tiny patch of ice painted blue. And I don’t have to tell you he was dealing with a first-place roster.

I’d say the boy wonder’s handiwork makes them a shoo-in to emerge from the Hoser Division, except they’re the Maple Leafs and we all know what happens to them when the games matter most. That’s right, they crumble like burnt toast.

But you shouldn’t have to rely on the Leafs’ old habits, Chevy.

All you had to do was add a top-four defenceman. That was your ticket to the final four of Beard Season. I knew it, you knew it, your barber knew it, and the squawk boxes on TSN certainly knew it.

I don’t know if you pay attention to anything those boys have to say, Chevy, because it’s usually a load of hollow blah, blah, blah to fill time during their marathon coverage of trade day goings-on, but they weren’t raining hosannas down on you. More to the point, they were underwhelmed.

Jeff O’Dog

“That defence corps is not going to lead you to a championship,” was Jeff O’Dog’s blunt analysis. “It falls short. I don’t think it’s enough. Not even close.”

Ray Ferraro and Noodles McLennan provided the backup vocals, saying, “What he said,” although Noodles was kind enough to add that Benn is “a decent find.”

Faint praise. But decent doesn’t get ‘er done, Chevy.

I mean, three Jacks, Ace high is a decent poker hand, but a full house beats it every time, and I think most among the rabble will agree you’re still one card shy of a full house.

Not that you didn’t try, Chevy. You informed news snoops that you took a couple of big swings at filling the gap on your blueline, and I believe you. No doubt the ask was too pricey, meaning would-be suitors were demanding a package that included Ville Heinola going the other way, and you weren’t having any of that.

Pickle Ball Button

As a quick aside, Chevy, TSN’s man about blue-chip prospects, Craig (Pickle Ball) Button, compares Heinola to Lars-Erik Sjoberg, and I can’t think of higher praise because The Shoe was the best defenceman to ever wear Jets linen, first or second edition. Craig’s not always right, of course, and my inclination was to suggest he doesn’t know sheep dip from Heinola, but I’ll take his word for it on young Ville. If he’s a reasonable facsimile of The Shoe, the kid’s a keeper.

Anyway, I don’t think your do-little day puts the kibosh on your team’s crusade, Chevy.

You’re still holding a decent hand. You’ve got serious strength down the middle with Rink Rat Scheifele, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Adam Lowry, and you’ve got a couple of fly-by wingers in Twig Ehlers and Kyle Connor. Most important, your guy in the blue paint provides the best goaltending in the Hoser Division, an iffy position in the Republic of Tranna and Edmonton (I don’t buy the Jack Campbell or Mike Smith hype).

Connor Hellebuyck is other-world scary good. Mind you, there are times when he’s just plain scary. Like when he wanders behind the net to handle the puck and looks like a guy trying to slice a tomato with a sledge hammer. On Monday night in Ottawa, for example, he was on his knees playing Whac-A-Mole on the Senators’ winning score, and he waved at another shot like someone trying to flag down a cab in the rain.

But we aren’t here to dwell on Bad Bucky, Chevy. He gives you hope nine nights out of 10.

It’s just too bad you couldn’t have provided him with the missing piece on Monday. But, what the heck, you’ve only had two years to find a top-four defender. Why did we expect anything different this time around?

Jennifer Botterill (top) and Tessa Bonhomme.

Observations from a trade deadline couch potato: You know there’s heavy lifting to be done when Bob McKenzie hauls hide from the cottage to join the boys (and girls) in the TSN studio. The Bobfather didn’t have a whole lot to say during the trade-day marathon, but it was nice to see him just the same…Hey, we had an all-goalie panel of Kevin Weekes, Marty Biron and Noodles McLennan. Goalies make boffo analysts (yes, even Kelly Hrudey), because they see the game from a different angle…I might have missed one or two, but the male-female breakdown between TSN and Sportsnet commentators/analysts was 44-7 in favor of the guys. Jennifer Botterill was fabulous, as always, as was Tessa Bonhomme…I’m not sure about TSN mascot Tradey. Can’t tell if it’s a mare or a stallion, so I’ll write it down as gender fluid…There was an all-female segment on TSN, with Tessa, Cheryl Pounder and Renata Fast gabbing about next month’s women’s world championship in Nova Scotia. Mostly good stuff, except they kicked back to Kendall Coyne Schofield’s fast lap at the NHL all-star game. Let it go, ladies. That was two years ago. Stop leaning on those 14 seconds to pump up your own tires. Tell us what you plan to do going forward, not what’s in the rear view mirror…Craig Button’s face looks like he lost an argument to Ryan Reaves’ fists. Turns out he’s a pickle ball casualty. And who knew there was such a thing?…TSN’s take off on The Brady Bunch was silly, of course, but The Tradey Bunch did deliver some boffo trade stories from former players…Best line of the day was delivered by Bill Mikkelson, who has the worst plus-minus rating in NHL history and played for the worst team in NHL history, the Washington Capitals. “We had a good team,” he told TSN host James Duthie. “We were just in the wrong league.”…Best question of the day came from Sportsnet anchor Ken Reid, who appeared in studio to chin-wag with Gerry Dee. “Gerry,” Reid asked, “what are we doing here?” Exactly. Dee offered zip, even if host David Amber lied to us, saying, “Great stuff from Ken and Gerry.” It was empty blather, with the unfunny Dee trying to be funny…Nice touch by Duthie to salute the TSN production crew…Carlo Colaiacova delivered the dumbest comment: “(Marc-Andre) Fleury is the best goalie in the league.”…Best bit was the commentator face mashups on TSN, whereby the mugs of two talking heads were merged into one. Scary, kids. Ghastly stuff…Kevin Bieksa told us that Josh Morrissey of the Jets has had “a great season.” No, he hasn’t…I watched this stuff from 5 a.m. until 1 p.m. Does the term “get a life” not mean anything to me?