O.J. Simpson – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about the CFL and the sexist toxins it allows in the game … the demise of the Desert Dogs … so long J.J. … Pinocchios in the golf broadcast booth … and other things on my mind

Grab your girlfriend by the hair and rag doll her? Smack her upside the head? Threaten to kill her?

Johnny Manziel, come on down! You’re the Canadian Football League’s next matinee idol and TSN’s favorite lousy quarterback.

Look the other way during a years-long sex-assault scandal that included football players and gang rape at Baylor University?

Art Briles, come on down! You’re the Hamilton Tiger-Cats next assistant head coach.

Get kicked off your college football team? Plead guilty to disorderly conduct after a bar brawl? Start a scrap at a high school football game? Punch out a videographer? Break into the dwelling of strangers and sit on the couch beside a woman holding her young child? Sexually harass a female coach?

Chad Kelly, come on down! You’re still the Toronto Argos starting QB.

Three cads, each of them somehow managing to pass the entry-level sniff test in Rouge Football, despite reprehensible and, indeed, criminal behaviour that victimized women.

So, just wondering: What part of their own policy about violence against women do the Lords of Rouge Football still not understand?

Yes, I realize Briles wasn’t on the Tabbies payroll long enough to stop for a bite and a beer at Bernie’s Tavern in the Hammer, but both team bankroll Bob Young and CEO Scott Mitchell signed off on the man who’d become a pigskin pariah stateside in the wake of the Baylor sex scandal.

“A good man caught in a bad situation,” is how Mitchell described Briles, who, according to the Dallas Morning News, said this when informed that certain of his players had allegedly gang raped a woman: “Those are some bad dudes. Why was she around those guys?”

Right. Blame the victim.

One of the team’s sponsors, Barry’s Jewelers, was having none of it, so they joined a hue and cry loud enough to wake the pharaohs and, once heads were given a good shake, the Lords of Rouge Football and the Tabbies determined that the sideline at Timbits Field was no place for the former Baylor head coach. It took them 12 hours of intense caterwauling on both sides of the border to undo what they never should have done.

That was two years after the CFL trumpeted its violence against women creed, which states: “The CFL condemns violence against women in all of its forms, including domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual assault, and verbal abuse, as well as the disrespectful and demeaning attitudes that foster violence or the tolerance of such violence. Whether these behaviours occur in public or private, violence against women will not be tolerated by the CFL.”

Yet Briles made it past the gatekeepers in August 2017, and Manziel received the okie-dokie less than a year later, bringing a rap sheet as long as a Winnipeg winter to Our Frozen Tundra.

It was those same Tabbies who signed the woman-beating Manziel to a two-year deal that included a Choirboy Clause, meaning the National Football League washout was at his Last Chance Saloon. Keep a clean nose, kid, or you’ll be playing football on a sandlot.

Turns out Johnny was rotten, both on and off the field. The Tabbies banished him to Montreal, where he became a lousy QB for the Larks, and the Lords of Rouge Football invoked the Choirboy Clause after Manziel got up to no good during the off-season. Although the nitty-gritty of his trespass was never disclosed, it only mattered that he was persona non QB and, less than a year after his arrival, he returned to the U.S. to engage in frat boy antics of his choosing.

Now it’s Kelly, another nogoodnik drummed out of the NFL for failure to accept that life isn’t one giant college dorm.

The jury’s still out on Kelly re sexual harassment, but that’s only because stewards of the three-downs game don’t want to believe their Most Outstanding Player is a world-class oinker who can’t grasp the concept of “no” means “no.” At least not when it’s said by a woman.

The Lords of Rouge Football have been attempting to dispel any notion that Kelly is a certified dirtbag since February, when a former Argos female strength and conditioning coach filed a lawsuit that outlined, in ghastly detail, Kelly’s alleged sexist conduct, which allegedly included the pitching of woo (i.e. proposals of dating and sleepovers, which registers tilt on the creep-o-metre).

CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie has had gumshoes on the sniff for more than a month now, in search of the truth, and they aren’t exactly the Pinkertons from the Old West. I mean, when Argos GM Pinball Clemons last came up for air to smile and discuss the matter, this is what he had to say: “We are moving forward as Chad Kelly is our starter.”

Lovely.

But the real mystery isn’t Kelly’s guilt or innocence. It’s why in the name of Albert Henry George Grey, 4th Earl Grey, do the Lords of Rouge Football continue to welcome these sexist, toxic drips into the country?

Isn’t beating up a woman and threatening her life enough of a red flag? What about overseeing a football program that keeps gang rape hush-hush? And, hey, isn’t frightening a woman during a home invasion a clue that females in your work place might be at risk? (Kelly, by the way, was chased out of the strangers’ abode by a man wielding a vacuum cleaner tube.)

CFL overlords are right to boot those boys out of our quirky game, but, good gawd, stop letting them in.

It wasn’t just the Lords of Rouge Football who looked the other way and ignored Manziel’s history of violence against women. Some among the flowers of Canadian jock journalism were fully on board with his arrival in the three-downs game. A sampling:

Stephen Brunt, Sportsnet: “There is no down-side here.”

Chris Cuthbert, CFL on TSN play-by-play voice: “Looking forward to seeing Johnny Manziel play in the CFL. Win-Win for the CFL.”

Matthew Scianitti, TSN: “Whatever you think of Johnny Manziel, the attention he’ll bring to the CFL won’t hurt.”

Dan Barnes, Postmedia Edmonton: “It will be fun for everyone to watch.”

Steve Simmons, Postmedia Tranna: “Welcome to Canada, Johnny Football. Johnny Football is coming to Canada. And where do I sign up?”

I’d like to think there’s been a seismic shift in attitudes on press row, but, who knows, perhaps the jock journos also prefer to buy bad apples when they’re at the fruit stand.

On the subject of bad dudes, apparently ghoulish is in, because there’s been a big run on O.J. Simpson memorabilia since the man who beat a double murder rap died from cancer the other day. Why?

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the name O.J. Simpson, I don’t think “former NFL running back and movie/TV actor.” I think cold-blooded murder. I think Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, the slasher-death victims. I think Judge Ito. I think Marcia Clark and smarmy Johnnie Cochran. I think of a white Ford Bronco low-speed chase. I think of Simpson’s objectionable vow to search for “the real killers.” I do not think football and bad acting.

So, the original Winnipeg Jets franchise (National Hockey League version) soon will haul butt out of the Arizona desert and pitch its tent in Salt Lake City. Just wondering: Are Bobby Hull and Dale Hawerchuk part of the move, or do the Salt Lake Somthingorothers plan to leave Winnipeg stuff in Winnipeg, where it belongs?

Dan Bickley of Arizona Sports describes the demise of the Desert Dogs as “such a sad, pathetic, unnecessary ending. The shame is that we are a very good hockey town. While Canadian critics are surely chuckling and chortling over our endgame failure, they will certainly miss the convenient flights and cheap tickets to see their favorite teams play in the Valley. They are also missing the point. This failure is not ours. This is on the overextended owners who always gave us a diluted, diminished product, failing to provide the kind of playoff hockey that grows a fan base and sells itself. This is on the politicians who have sabotaged their efforts every step of the way. So sad, so unnecessary.” If part of that lament sounds familiar, it’s because we heard it in Good Ol’ Hometown in 1996.

Not everybody in Arizona is bent out of shape due to the loss of the Coyotes, and my favorite comment was delivered on X by fan Remo Lalli: “Finally do a proper rebuild after 2+ decades of mostly God awful hockey and finally have an arena plan that looks like it will work and NOW you leave? That’s the most Coyote thing ever. One last kick in the nuts on the way out. I’d expect nothing less.”

In a perfect world, the Jennifer Jones swan song would have taken place on a sheet of pebbled ice in Good Ol’ Hometown, not in a Loblaws store in the Republic of Tranna, where curling is about the only sport that actually attracts less media attention than the Argonauts. But the Grand Dame of Pebble People bowed out of the four-player game one floor above the vegetable aisle in renovated Maple Leaf Gardens on Friday, losing 7-6 to Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg in the Grand Slam of Curling Players Championship. The occasion was aptly described by Rob Faulds of Sportsnet as “tissue time” and, yes, tears and hugs were in abundance, with Jennifer’s two daughters, Isabella and Skyla, clinging to mom. Losing her farewell game was a bummer, but still, it was a lovely adios for the six-time Canadian, two-time world and one-time Olympic champion. Perhaps Rachel Homan will match, or surpass, all of Jennifer’s achievements, but until that day arrives the product of St. Vital Curling Club pebble is unrivaled.

This from Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette on the TV menu Saturday: “So…curling, golf, NASCAR or the Blue Jays. When curling is the only offering that doesn’t make you want to throw yourself in front of a train, it’s time to read a book.” Guess that means Jack gave a hard pass to “tissue time” with Jen Jones.

So I flip on the flatscreen in the small hours this morning and who does Sportsnet lead with on its golf highlights package? Scottie Scheffler? Max Homa? Collin Morikawa? Nope. Tiger Woods, who took more chops than a lumberjack with a dull axe. His final stroke was his 82nd of the day, 10-over par and 18 adrift of Masters leader Scheffler. Never before had Woods taken so many swats in any of golf’s four majors. And yet someone at Sportsnet determined that his exhibition of weekend hacking was worthy of top billing. Sigh.

But wait! The fawning over Woods was worse on TSN, where they featured a number of Eldrick Tont’s botched swings before any mention of what they described as “the rest of the field.” Excuse me? Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 and tournament leader, is “the rest of the field?” Good grief. Sixty golfers made it to the Masters weekend and Woods has a better score than only four of them. He’s “the rest of the field.”

Is there anybody in sports more dishonest than golf broadcasters? I mean, in the leadup to the Masters there was repeated blah, blah, blah about Woods’ chance of winning his sixth ugly green jacket. “You never know” and “if anybody can do it, it’s Tiger” and “anything can happen” were the most common squawks. Such piffle. And I don’t get it. I mean, it’s like a tennis talking head telling us that Roger Federer is going to pick up his racket again and win Wimbledon. We know that isn’t doable, and the golf gasbags knew there was no chance—zero!—of Woods adding to his wardrobe. So why the con job? The undiminished greatness of Tiger Woods is the biggest false narrative since Dick Cheney and Colin Powell insisted Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. So just tell the truth, for gawd’s sake. Tiger’s done winning majors.

Saw this item on X a couple of weeks ago: “Without saying your age, who was the ace of your favorite MLB team when you started watching baseball?” For me it was Don Drysdale of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Yes, Dem Bums in the mid-1950s. My birth certificate is that dog-eared. (Once Dem Bums hauled butt out of Brooklyn and set up shop in Los Angeles, Sandy Koufax was the man.)

And, finally, tough call today: The Masters or Canada vs. U.S. A. in the world Ponytail Puck title skirmish? Probably the women’s hockey. Marie-Philip Poulin moves a lot faster than Bryson DeChambeau.

Let’s talk about the Mars and Venus dynamic of elite futbol and team sports…Rapinoe’s last stand…hockey power rankings in July…a criminal, a cheat and a hypcocrite…and long live Tony Bennett…

The FIFA women’s World Cup down there in Australia and New Zealand is not merely an example of fabulous sporting theatre, it’s also a stark reminder of the contrasting cultures in elite-level football.

For one thing, the women play a much more honest brand of futbol than the men. That is to say, they spend more time frolicking on their feet rather than on their backsides, gyrating as if they’re giving birth to 10 pounds of barbed wire.

Oh, sure, flopping is part of female footy, too, but when we see a player supine on the pitch there’s a high likelihood that she’s actually wounded, not Meryl Streeping in the hope of hoodwinking a referee into a red card or maybe even an Oscar nomination. (See 2011 Wake Forest study re female and male soccer players diving.)

But fake-injury time isn’t the main point of separation between the women’s and men’s games. Sexuality is.

According to the folks who track such things at the website Outsports, 94 of the 736 players (12.7 per cent) getting their kicks Down Under are LGBT(etc.), and that’s likely a low number because the tally doesn’t include those in the closet. Twenty-two of the 32 sides feature at least one out player, with the co-hosting Matildas leading the way at 10 and Ireland and Brazil right behind at nine apiece.

Our Canadian side includes out players Kadeisha Buchanan, Quinn and Kailen Sheridan, plus Bev Priestman, one of two gay coaches.

Now consider the men’s World Cup.

Number of out gay men at Qatar in 2022: Nil. Number of out gay men at any of the 22 World Cup tournaments: Nil.

I suppose we could say this is all much ado about nil, because a player’s sexual orientation isn’t noted on a game sheet and no one wins the Golden Boot based on clicks on a dating app. Except that misses the point, which speaks to where we are in team sports 23-plus years into the 21st century.

It’s no secret that female athletes are comfortable in their own skin. The WNBA is the clubhouse leader on the inclusion file, with estimates of gay players ranging from 20 to 50 per cent. Connecticut Sun stars Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner announced their engagement on Friday. Meantime, soccer and hockey aren’t lagging far behind. Canada’s gold-medal winning shinny side at the 2022 Olympics, for example, included nine lesbians—Brianne Jenner, Erin Ambrose, Emily Clark, Melodie Daoust, Jill Saulnier, Jamie Lee Rattray, Micah Zandee-Hart, and two who became engaged in May, Laura Stacey and captain Marie-Philip Poulin. Meantime, the Yankee Doodle Damsels who won the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France featured half a dozen out gays—Tierna Davidson, Adrianna Franch, Ashlyn Harris, Ali Krieger, Kelley O’Hara and captain Megan Rapinoe, who’s engaged to WNBA legend Sue Bird.

“Go gays. You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s never been done before, ever,” is how American captain Rapinoe put it during her fabulous French journey to a fourth WC title.

It’s to the point whereby a gay female athlete need not out herself. It’s dog-bites-man stuff. Nothing to see. Let’s move on.

The men, on the other hand…well, homosexuality remains a major bugaboo. You know, that scary thing that goes bump in the night.

Gay men continue to make their mark in most segments of society, but not major team sports. Go ahead and scan the landscape. The out gay man in the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS is as scarce as belly laughs in a graveyard. Carl Nassib is a football player without a team, and Luke Prokop is a Nashville Predators prospect who might one day defy the longest of odds and actually become the first openly gay player—ever!—to wear an NHL jersey. That’s it. Two gay guys, one who’s been to the show and the other a wide-eyed wannabe.

So why the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus dynamic in elite team sports?

Well, people with egg-shaped heads have spent considerable time studying that very issue, and there doesn’t appear to be a one-size-fits-all conclusion.

One theory holds that young straight men remain tethered to the antiquated notion that gay equals lesser-than, and that the mere existence of a gay guy on the roster would up-end the apple cart (Tony Dungy called it a “distraction”), thus making on-field success an extremely remote, also illogical, likelihood.

But would Argentina have been less likely to win the 2022 men’s World Cup had there been an openly out gay sharing the pitch and changing room with Lionel Messi and the straight guys? We can only speculate, but we do know that the LA Galaxy became lords of Major League Soccer with Robbie Rogers on the pitch and in the changing room in 2014. So what’s to fear?

The abundance of successful LGBT(etc.) players on the distaff side of the playground is the strongest indicator that a mix of gays and straights is doable. They work in concert and lift championship trophies together, not to mention pad their bank accounts with playoff coin.

Yet, despite overwhelming evidence, that remains a foreign concept among the men, even as studies tell us a majority of gays who come out experience a favorable reception from teammates. So why is it that gay male athletes are still considered poisonous fruit best kept out of sight? If they truly believed it was safe to come out, wouldn’t we be seeing them?

Perhaps it really is as simple as the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing.

Whatever the case, I don’t expect to see a men’s World Cup featuring 94 out LGBT(etc.) players in my lifetime, but it would be nice if the guys would learn the lessons of Venus and, even better, live in the same century.

If Canada doesn’t win Down Under, my World Cup rooting interests shift to these countries, in this order:
Ireland…What can I say? I’m Irish.
Sweden…Never met a Swede I didn’t like.
England…It’s a Commonwealth thing.
Brazil…Big fan of Marta.
Australia…Matildas have the most gay players.

Attendance for the first three days of the women’s World Cup of soccer:
42,137 Eden Park, Auckland (record for New Zealand futbol).
75,784 Stadium Australia, Sydney (record for Aussie female futbol).
21,410 Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
13,711 Dunedin Stadium, NZ.
22,966 Wellington Regional Stadium, NZ.
41,107 Eden Park.
16,111 Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, NZ.
44,369 Brisbane Stadium, AU.
16,989 Perth Rectangular Stadium.
18,317 Wellington Regional Stadium.
But, hey, they say nobody wants to watch women’s sports (whoever “they” are).

America’s talk-a-lot forward, the blue-haired Megan Rapinoe, plans to hang up her futbol boots and live happily ever after with the lady in her life, Sue Bird, after the World Cup and National Women’s Soccer League season. Does that mean she’ll finally shut the hell up?

Actually, I’ve usually found myself nodding in agreement with much of Rapinoe’s blah, blah, blah over the years, so I’d rather she doesn’t take a vow of silence once the cheering has stopped.

Here’s Damien Cox of the Toronto Star on our soccer side reaching the top step of the medal podium at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo: “It was the first time a Canadian women’s team had won gold at the Summer Games in any sport.” D’oh! Our female rowers (eights) struck gold seven days before our female footballers, and it wasn’t a “first.” Here’s a list of earlier gold medal-winning outfits:

2020: Susanne Grainger, Lisa Roman, Chrstine Roper, Sydney Payne, Madison Mailey, Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Avalon Wasteneys, Andrea Proskie and Kristen Kit (cox) – rowing, women’s eight.
1996: Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle – rowing, women’s double sculls.
1992: Kathleen Heddle and Marnie McBean – rowing, women’s pairs.
Kay Worthington, Kirsten Barnes, Jessica Monroe and Brenda Taylor – rowing, women’s coxless fours.
Marnie McBean, Kathleen Heddle, Kirsten Barnes, Brenda Taylor, Jessica Montroe, Kay Worthington, Megan Delehanty, Shannon Crawford and Lesley Thompson – rowing, women’s eights with coxswain.
1988: Carolyn Waldo and Michelle Cameron – synchronized swimming, women’s duet.
1928: Ethel Smith, Bobbie Rosenfeld, Myrtle Cook, Jane Bell – athletics, women’s 4×100 metre relay.

I’m not sure what part of “team” Cox fails to understand, but apparently he would have us believe that two-to-eight women pulling oars in unison doesn’t qualify as a “team.” Ditto two women sync swimming or four women foot racing. It boggles the mind.

On the subject of teams, Ryan Dixon of Sportsnet has delivered a Dog Days of Summer power rankings list for National Hockey League outfits, and he rates the Winnipeg Jets No. 24. “It’s almost easy to forget Winnipeg made the post-season this past year because it struggled for so long down the stretch and got bounced in five games by Vegas,” he writes. “Clearly it’s time to turn over a new leaf in Manitoba and while GM Kevin Cheveldayoff did well in the Dubois deal, it’s still seems like some tough days are ahead for this club.” The Jets won’t know tough until they no longer have Connor Hellebuyck in the blue paint to bail them out.

Interesting, also odd, that Dixon has the Toronto Maple Leafs listed at No. 4. I mean, don’t news snoops in the Republic of Tranna normally have the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup at this time of year?

Rory McIlroy says he’ll quit golf if LIV becomes the only tour available. Ya, and Joey Chestnut will stop pigging out on hot dogs if they aren’t Nathan’s.

Wasn’t it thoughtful of O.J. Simpson to take a break from his life’s mission of finding the real killers to explain what should be done with transgender athletes? I mean, what would the discussion be without input from a convicted felon whose rap sheet includes kidnapping, armed robbery and, oh ya, the murder of a woman? “It just isn’t fair,” is Simpson’s take on the transgender/female athlete issue. I’d say his concern for women is touching, if not admirable, except there’s that small matter of double homicide, one of the victims being his ex-wife, Nicole Brown. I fail to see what’s “fair” about murder, but perhaps the real killers can explain it to us once Simpson finds them on a golf course.

Let’s see, which notables have recently joined the “fairness” discussion as it relates to transgender females competing against biological females? Well, there’s Simpson, a convicted felon. There’s Lance Armstrong, a disgraced cyclist under a lifetime ban for being the biggest cheat in the history of pedal-pushing. And there’s Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender female full-score against the inclusion of transgender females in female sports, yet she competes in female golf tournaments. So we have a convict, a cheat and a hypocritical attention hog. It’s like getting Larry, Curly and Moe together for a panel chin-wag on quantum physics.

On the other side of that discussion is Charles Barkley, the NBA great who teed it up in a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe last week and popped into a pub to share some suds and thoughts with locals. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that the anti-transgender mob has boycotted Bud Light because Anheuser-Busch used Dylan Mulvaney to pitch its product. Well, Sir Charles is having none of that. “If you’re gay, God bless you. If you’re trans, God bless you. And if you have a problem with them (f–k) you. If you are gay, lesbian, transgender, live your f—–g life,” Sir Charles told patrons. He also bought them pints. Bud Light, naturally.

And, finally, Tony Bennett is dead. Damn. I love the man’s voice, his singing style, the joy he expressed when the band began to play. It would be a total bummer if not for the fact his voice and music play on. Tony Bennett is dead, long live Tony Bennett.

Let’s talk about Opposite Chevy and the George Costanza method of managing…Jets on the move…Is Coach PoMo a better bench puppeteer?…the price of used clothing…a team to be named later…LIV Golf and the WHA…and other things on my mind…

Twin sisters Dr. Patti van Puck and Dr. Patti van Pigskin are internationally renowned sports psychologists who specialize in what makes athletes/coaches/managers/owners/sports scribes/broadcasters tick. Jocks the world over flock to their clinic, the River City Shrink Wrap, and Drs. Patti and Patti have a waiting list longer than a politician’s nose at election time. They don’t always have the right answer, but if loving the Winnipeg Jets and Blue Bombers is wrong, they don’t want to be right.

Dr. Patti van Puck is in today, and she has general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff of the Jets on the couch…

DR. PUCK: “Welcome Kevin. How can we help you this fine morning?”

CHEVY: “Well, you can start by calling me Chevy. Most of my friends do, although I’m a bit short on friends these days. Who wants to hang out with a loser, right?”

DR. PUCK: “Whoa! Where’s that Gloomy Gus talk coming from, Chevy.”

CHEVY: “Let me count the ways, Doc: I have a coach who trash talks his players in public, and I have players who trash talk their coach and each other in public. I have players who want out of Winnipeg like John and Paul wanted out of The Beatles. I have an owner who won’t let me take a pee without his okie-dokie. And I have to deal with a media that thinks I’m all hat and no cattle. Add it all up: I’m Gloomy Gus!”

DR. PUCK: “Come on, Chevy. You’re GM of a National Hockey League franchise in Canada. You know that headaches come with the gig. So why don’t you tell me the real reason you’re here?”

CHEVY: “Well, I’ve been bitten by the green-eyed monster, Doc.”

DR. PUCK: “Oh? Please share.”

CHEVY: “I’m jealous of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I look at the Bombers and I see them trot out the same core of key players year after year. And what does that same core of players do? They win. They have championship parades. I trot out the same core of key players year after year and what do I get? A pant load.”

DR. PUCK: “Why do you think that is, Chevy?”

CHEVY (snivelling): “Because life isn’t fair, Doc! Is it fair that the Bombers have people who love playing in Winnipeg? Is it fair that they wouldn’t want to play anywhere else? Is it fair that some of them take less coin to be a Blue Bomber? Is it fair that some of them leave for greener grass, then realize the grass isn’t so green on the other side, so they return to the Bombers roost? Again, is it fair that I’ve got players who want out of Dodge the way O.J. wanted out of jail? It started with Evander Kane, then turned into Escape from Alcatraz…Jacob Trouba and Patty Laine and Jack Roslovic and Kristian Vesalainen and Andrew Copp and Big Buff, and now it’s Pierre-Luc Dubois and Logan Stanley. Is that fair? Why, why, why? It’s the same damn city for hockey players as it is for football players! Isn’t it?”

DR. PUCK: “I hear you, Chevy. A pothole is a pothole is a pothole, and 30-below is 30-below is 30-below, and lousy WiFi is lousy WiFi is lousy WiFi.”

CHEVY (pleading): “So what can I do about it? You’re the shrink, Doc. Tell me how I make my players love Winnipeg the way the Bombers love Winnipeg, so Winnipeg can love me.”

DR. PUCK: “What I’m hearing from you, Chevy, is a desperate need to be hugged.”

CHEVY: “Hug shmug! What I really need, Doc, is some of that Blue Bombers Kool-Aid. I’m entering the most critical month in my 13 years as Mark Chipman’s errand boy, and I have to sweet talk some of our key core pieces into staying. Mark Scheifele, Connor Hellebuyck and Pierre-Luc Dubois—they’re all due to become free agents next summer, so I need to convince them that this is shinny Shangri-la. I can’t have a Johnny Gaudreau situation on my hands, where they swan off and I’m left with a bucketful of nothing. Again, it was easy to sway guys like Scheif and Bucky when they were fresh-scrubbed and naive, but now that they’ve been around the barn and back they won’t be so quick to swill the Jets Kool-Aid. And that’s not to forget Blake Wheeler. It’s costing me $8 million-plus to keep the old warhorse in harness. That’s money better spent. But letting Wheels go would be like putting down Ol’ Yeller.

DR. PUCK: “I thought your core players were the problem.”

CHEVY: “They are. All they do is bitch and moan, but they’re my bitch-and-moaners and I believe in them. I’d like to give these same guys the chance to bitch and moan again.”

DR. PUCK: “Have you ever considered parroting George Costanza?”

CHEVY: “What do you mean, Doc? George Costanza was a basket case. He was the most neurotic character in the history of TV. A total loser. He did nothing but cough up hair balls.”

DR. PUCK: “Except when he didn’t. To quote Jerry from Seinfeld, if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”

CHEVY: “Giddyup, Doc! I remember that Seinfeld episode when George did the opposite of everything he’d ever done, and he became a success. Chicks loved Opposite George. That’s the ticket! I will do the opposite of everything I’ve ever done with the Jets! Oh, that’s gold, Doc! Gold!”

DR. PUCK: “Well, Chevy, our time is up. Good luck to you in your ‘most critical’ month, and remember to ask yourself this when there’s a big decision to be made: What would the Bombers do?”

CHEVY: “Forget the Bombers! I’ll do what George Costanza wouldn’t do. I’m Opposite Chevy! Stanley Cup, here I come! Thanks Doc.”

Florida Panthers might be the worst thing to happen to the Jets since Big Buff took his fishing pole and went home. How so? Well, Chevy and Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman could be buoyed by the notion of an eighth-seed advancing to the Stanley Cup final. It’s possible they’re thinking, “If the Panthers can crawl into the playoffs and reach the final, we can do it, too.” Thus, no need for a makeover.

The most traded members of the Jets this off-season are goaltender Hellebuyck and fleet forward Twig Ehlers. So far, either one or both have gone to the Republic of Tranna, Buffalo, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Philly, Los Angeles, Edmonton, Detroit, New Jersey and maybe even one or two locales in Russia. My guess? Hellebuyck and Ehlers are in Good Ol’ Hometown when the Jets assemble for training exercises in September.

For all his flash and dash (the guy truly is electric), Ehlers might be a risky bit of business for any team to take on. The guy appears to be snake bit. He was available for just 107 of 164 regular-season games the past two campaigns, and the Jets haven’t gotten a full body of work out of him since the Covid-shortened crusade (71 games) of 2019-20. That’s not bang for 6 million bucks.

Do I think Paul Maurice is a better bench puppeteer today than when he walked away from Good Ol’ Hometown in December 2021? No. But I will suggest Coach PoMo has more coachable players in Florida than he had in the Jets changing room.

Interesting piece in the Drab Slab from Mad Mike McIntyre on old friend Joe Daley, the one-time holy goalie with the Jets. Seems Joe’s equipment from days of yore has vanished and he’d like it back, especially his mask.

Astronomers have gazed to the sky and tell us there are 151 planet-killing asteroids in our neighborhood, but us earthlings should fear not. “It’s good news,” says study leader Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz, a University of Colorado Boulder researcher. “As far as we know, there’s no impact in the next 1,000 years.” That should give O.J. plenty of time to find the real killers.

I’m no star/planet-watcher, but if an asteroid were to strike our blue orb a thousand years from now, I doubt there will be anyone left to feel it. Except Keith Richards, of course.

NBA legend Karl (The Mailman) Malone auctioned off some used clothing last week, so let’s do some comparison shopping:
Michael Jordan 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $3.03 million.
Larry Bird 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $360,000.
Magic Johnson 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $336,000.
Charles Barkley 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $230,400.
Those aren’t exactly thrift store prices and the auction fetched $5 million for a guy whose net worth is estimated at $55 million. Proving once again that one man’s junk is another man’s chump change.

The Malone collection also included some sneakers: Jordan, $450,000; Bird, $91,000; Barkley, $79,200. Frankly, I’m surprised the Barkley sneakers went for so little. I mean, I can’t say for certain, but I think they’re the same pair Sir Charles wears every time he puts his foot in his mouth on TV.

The promotion of Craig Conroy to GM of the Calgary Flames was worth a two-minute bit on Sportsnet Central and three minutes on TSN SportsCentre, and it wasn’t top of the news on either (15 minutes into the show on Sportsnet, 18 minutes on TSN). Now, how do you suppose our two national sports networks will react when a puff of white smoke goes up at Scotiabank Arena in the Republic of Tranna, signalling the arrival of a new GM for the Toronto Maple Leafs? Try this: Lead story, sound bites featuring everyone from Justin Bieber to Doug Ford to King Chuckie and Her Royal Missus, analysis from Jeff O’Dog, Marty Biron, Noodles, Gino Reda, Bob McKenzie, James Duthie, Pierre LeBrun, Dregs, Elliotte Friedman, Frankie Corrado, Frank Seravalli, Ray Ferraro, Tessa Bonhomme, Craig Button, Mike Johnson, Jennifer Botterill, Kelly Hrudey, Kevin Bieksa, David Amber, Ron MacLean and Anthony Stewart, to be followed by a five-day, five-part documentary on the life and times of the new guy. Why, it’ll be such a grand production that Cheryl Pounder might even drag a brush through her hair.

Apparently Brad Treliving is the front runner for the GM job in The ROT. Little wonder. I mean, look what he’s done for Matthew Tkachuk’s career.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders have a big extravaganza planned for their home opener on the Flattest of Lands, June 16 vs. Winnipeg. They’re billing it as Dad’s Night Out and it will feature all sorts of dad things, like the inaugural Roughrider Cornhole tournament and a halftime sing-song with Kim Mitchell, who’s actually older than the Canadian Football League. I’d suggest Kim’s a bit too wrinkled to be rockin’ and rollin’, but he’s two years younger than me so I won’t go there.

Looks like the Washington Commanders are about to become a team to be named later due to a patent/trademark snag for the NFL franchise. Seems there are already claims on Commanders. So how about the Washington Swamp? I mean, it doesn’t get much more reptilian than the creatures who inhabit the American House and Senate, does it?

What does Brooks Koepka’s success in the PGA Championship tell us about LIV Golf? Nothing we didn’t already know. We knew there were elite players among the renegades who took the money and ran from the PGA Tour, so it was inevitable that one would win a golf major. It will happen again, and no one should be surprised.

The PGA-LIV golf duality is no different than the NHL and World Hockey Association in days of yore. The NHL housed the majority of the elite players and many among the rabble pooh-poohed the WHA product. Except the upstarts had considerable star power (Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Dave Keon, Bernie Parent, Gerry Cheevers, Mark Howe, Teddy Green, J.C. Tremblay, Andre Lacroix, Marc Tardif, Ulf Nilsson, Anders Hedberg, Vaclav Nedomansky, etc.) and, according to Curtis Walker’s WHA Hall of Fame website, the WHA had a winning record in friendlies vs. the NHL: 35-30-8.

Club professional Michael Block on what it was like being paired with Rory McIlroy in the final round of the PGA Championship last Sunday. “He’s a lot longer than I am. What I would shoot from where Rory hits would be stupid. I think I’d be one of the best players in the world. Hands down. If I had that stupid length, all day. My iron game, wedge game, around the greens, and my putting is world-class.” Ya, and if I could hit the high notes like Aretha Franklin I’d be on a world tour. But I do my singing in the shower, and Block gives golf lessons to put bread on his table.

And, finally, the women in my family have it all over the men when it comes to birthday candles. My Gran made it to age 100 before leaving for the great misty beyond, and my mom turned 95 on Friday. She’s in a care home and I doubt she realized it was her 95th, but it’s quite a milestone. Happy birthday, mom.

Let’s talk about everything’s Ducky and the Winnipeg Jets ‘hands-on’ owner…the Rink Rat takes a tumble…the price of a souvenir baseball…Little Tiger…drawing the line on the draw to the button…a $52.5 million part-time job…Henderson has scored for Canada…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Mark Chipman, or as I prefer to call you, Puck Pontiff.

I don’t mean anything nasty by the nickname, Mark. It’s just that I harbor a long-held belief that you exercise papal power as it relates to the jewel in your True North Sports + Entertainment crown—the Winnipeg Jets.

You even confessed as much in a Hockey Night in Canada natter with then-host George Stroumboulopoulos a few years back, saying you’re in GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s kitchen every day, and the larger the decision the louder your voice. It short, you’re a buttinski.

That, of course, is the privilege of rank and, as executive chairman of the True North fiefdom and governor of the National Hockey League franchise, it’s your prerogative to stick your nose where others think it doesn’t belong.

However, I’m not here this morning to rattle your cage or yank your chain, Mark. Instead I salute you for the salute to Dale Hawerchuk on Saturday. Nice. Very nice. Or should I say it was “just Ducky” of you? (Sorry, Chipper. I agree, that’s a Ron MacLean-level bad pun.)

Give or take Teemu Selanne, no player in Jets NHL history was more impactful than our Ducky. The difference between the two legends is this, Mark: Dale spent nine seasons wearing the linen (and the ‘C’ for six), and he butted heads every winter with Gretzky, Messier, Coffey, Fuhr and the rest of that dreaded Edmonton Oilers lot in the 1980s, a moment in time that defines Jets 1.0. Teemu’s time in Good Ol’ Hometown was, by comparison, a fly-by.

So, ya, a statue at True North Square to honor a shinny icon who left the building before any of us wanted is a beautiful thing, and I continue to curse the cancer that claimed Ducky at such a young age.

One final thing, Chipper: I’m especially pleased that you gave a shoutout to two people in particular: Former owner Barry Shenkarow, a major player in arranging the Jets entry into the NHL, and the late John Ferguson, the man responsible for bringing Ducky to Good Ol’ Hometown.

You did good, Puck Pontiff. Real good.

Chipman is, literally, a hands-on owner. The Puck Pontiff, you see, poured the metal for the right glove on the Ducky likeness unveiled yesterday, and it doesn’t get much more hands-on than that. Ben Waldman of the Drab Slab had a natter with sculptor Erik Blome, and he gives us the skinny on the making of Ducky in bronze.

Well, the “experts” at TSN put their little heads together to determine the top 50 players in the NHL, and Rink Rat Scheifele has taken the greatest fall since Humpty Dumpty. A year ago, the geniuses had the Jets centre rated 20th overall, but this time around they couldn’t find room for him in the top 50. Hey, I get it. He’s a pooch defensively and some of his shifts are longer than a Sunday sermon, but he’s been a point-a-game producer for the past six crusades and I can’t think of a guy not named Connor McDavid who can say that. So, I’m sorry, but they can’t sell me on the notion that Jack Hughes is a better player than the Rink Rat.

I’m not convinced the Jets will be the stumble bums that many of the pundits are suggesting in advance of the 2022-23 crusade. Oh, I realize the Rolling Stones make more lineup changes than Winnipeg HC, but I believe success/failure depends on the amount of ice time Blake Wheeler and Logan Stanley don’t get. The less time on the freeze for those two, the better the chances of proving the naysayers wrong.

It’s about the Aaron Judge home run chase: Many of my vintage consider Roger Maris’ 61 dingers in 1961 the true single-season record, because those who’ve gone yard more often—Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa—wear the stink of steroids. A younger generation, however, might be more inclined to accept Bonds as Major League Baseball’s king of clout for his 73 four-baggers in 2001. Whatever the case, the debate brings to mind a lyric from the Buffalo Springfield protest classic For What It’s Worth: “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”

I don’t know about you, but I was delighted to see Judge swat HR No. 61 in the Republic of Tranna last week, and it’s just as well that the souvenir ball landed in the Blue Jays bullpen and wasn’t caught by a fan at Rogers Centre. I mean, it’s estimated that the thing is worth upwards of $250,000 US, but only about $1.50 on the Canadian exchange rate.

Thirteen-year-old Charlie Woods fired a 4-under 68 last weekend in the Notah Begay III Junior National Golf Championship, and a lot of people are saying the kid’s just like dad Tiger. I don’t know about that. I mean, he’s barely old enough to give a waitress a food order, let alone have an illicit affair with her.

Dumb headline of the week, from Golf Week: “Charlie Woods shoots career-low round with dad Tiger on the bag.” A “career” low? Good gawd, when did puberty become a career? I guess it’s another example of how life happens at a lickety-split cadence in this 21st century, and I suppose we can expect young Charlie’s autobiography to land on bookstore shelves any day now.

Scofflaw O.J. Simpson decided to play Couch Coach and used Twitter to advise Pittsburgh Steelers head man Mike Tomlin it would be in his best interest to plunk starting QB Mitch Trubisky on the pine and anoint Kenny Pickett starting QB. Oh, put a sock in it, Juice. Don’t you have some “real killers” to catch?

Simpson has 888.2K followers on his Twitter account. My question is this: “Why?” Are those people expecting him to cop to the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman?

A couple of our most-decorated Pebble People, Jennifer Jones and Marc Kennedy, tell Teddy Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun that they aren’t fond of the experimental draw-to-the-button method of breaking ties in elite curling events. “I don’t like it,” said Jones, whose freshly minted team cashed in to the tune of $50,000 in the freshly minted PointsBet Invitational last weekend. Kennedy, meanwhile, provided the backup vocals, saying, “Personally I wish they wouldn’t touch extra ends.” Hear, hear! I mean, I’m all for gimmickry…if it’s at the carnival or some kind of parlor trick when friends are over for din-din. But I don’t want to see the Scotties or Brier champion determined by silly shenanigans. Let soccer and hockey have the stupid stuff.

One of our very own, Cathy Gauthier, has moved into the chair vacated by Cheryl Bernard—smack dab between Vic Rauter and Russ Howard—on TSN’s Season of Champions curling coverage, and that has to be about the best call since John, Paul and George asked Ringo to grab his Ludwig drum kit and tag along with them. Like Cheryl, Cathy’s always been able to go jab-for-jab with Vic and ol’ Hurry Hard Howard in the verbal thrust-and-parry, and her appointment means another winter of good banter from the booth.

Another of our very own, Sami Jo Small, has been anointed el presidente of the Toronto Six, where she joins Hockey Hall of Famers and world champions Angela James (GM) and Geraldine Heaney (head coach) in leading the Premier Hockey Federation franchise. If sports editors at the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star noticed, they failed to find room for the news on their sports pages. Kind of tough for Ponytail Puck to gain traction in the Republic of Tranna when the local rags put the home side on ignore.

Strange tweet of the week comes from former NHLer and present-day conspiracy theorist Theoren Fleury: “The biggest spreaders of misinformation are the ones who are spreading misinformation.” Thanks Theo. And the leading cause of death is life.

I really don’t think anyone should be surprised the Calgary Stampeders have moved on from QB Bo Levi Mitchell and handed the football, plus gobs of coin on a two-year contract, to Jake Maier. Bo’s been off his feed the past couple of years, and when head coach Dave Dickenson and GM John Hufnael say it’s time, it’s time. I mean, if there’s one thing those two know above all else, it’s Rouge Football QBs.

After watching the Toronto Argos score just two points in a loss to the Stampeders last night, it’s hard to believe they entered the fray on a four-game winning run. Who’d they beat? A dozen kids from my neighborhood?

When the time arrives, Novak Djokovic wants a warm-and-fuzzy farewell, just like Roger Federer, and he’d especially like rival Rafael Nadal to be present. “We played the most matches against each other of any other rivalry in the history of tennis,” he says. Yo! Novak! Women play tennis, too. Martina Navratilova and Chrissie Evert met 80 times in singles play. You and Rafa have been on opposite sides of the net 59 times. Do the math.

Tyreek Hill has already collected more than $25 million to catch passes and run the ball for Miami Dolphins this NFL season, and he’s guaranteed $52.5M on his current deal. Yet he says football is “just our part-time job.” Earth to Tyreek. Tell that to the kid making $10 an hour to bag groceries at the local market on weekends, or a student scrubbing pots and pans in the back of a greasy spoon three days a week to pay tuition.

Things I discovered in the past week: 1) There is a Professional Disc Golf Association, complete with a tour; 2) there is a Professional Pickleball Association, also with a tour. I’m particularly curious about disc golf: How do they fit a frisbee into that wee, little hole?

Still can’t believe how weak some of the acting is on the new Law & Order. Angry cop Cosgrove and ADA Price are truly lame. I keep watching in the hope they’ll improve, but no.

Only once during my 30 years in jock journalism did I ask an athlete I covered for an autograph: Paul Henderson. And, you’re right, that put me in breach of one of the unwritten commandments in the sports scribe’s code of conduct. I’m not sure which commandment it is, but it clearly states: Thou shalt not collect autographs. It’s totally taboo. At least it was back in the day (I can’t speak for today’s news snoops). At any rate, I sought Henderson’s signature after he and his Birmingham Bulls associates had concluded a morning, game-day skate. Knowing I was in breach, I made my request on the QT, asking him to sign a Prudential Insurance print depicting the moment that had earned him a prominent and permanent place in Canadian hockey folklore—the winning goal in Game 8 of the 1972 Summit Series between our good guys and the Soviet Union comrades. No one heard my request, and no prying eyes were nearby, but a wave of guilt washed over me. Didn’t matter. He happily scrawled his signature on the bottom right-hand corner of the print, and we made small talk. Years later, I had Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretiak sign that same print. What a keepsake. Alas, a person to whom I’m no longer wed sold it on the QT at a yard sale for 50 cents.

Henderson scored the most iconic goal in Canadian hockey history, and he had the winning tallies in Games 6 and 7 of the Summit Series, as well. Question is, why, 50 years later, does he still have to pay his way into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the Republic of Tranna? Okay, sure, most would rate his NHL/World Hockey Association career a notch above garden variety, but, give or take Tretiak, Henderson was the most significant performer in the most significant shinny series ever played—Canada vs. U.S.S.R. 1972. What he did was lightning-in-a-bottle stuff, and it seems to me it’s HHOF worthy. I mean, Harper Lee wrote just one book (some say two tomes) and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.

And, finally, this week’s vanity license plate:

Let’s talk about Bill Belichick and his Patriots games…fan girls and fan boys on TV…a clueless Bayless…long live Emma Peel…the mother of all tennis tournaments…Danny Gallivan and the Kit Kat Chunk-O-Rama…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored..and apparently the border closing doesn’t apply to wild fires because I’ve spent the past three days sucking in smoke from Washington state. Most unpleasant…

The National Football League season has kicked off, and the New England Patriots will try to win the Super Bowl with Cam Newton at quarterback instead of future Hall of Famer Tom Brady.

Patriots fans need not worry, though.

Head coach Bill Belichick assures them that Newton can throw a deflated football as far and as accurately as Brady, and the rest of the cheating will take care of itself.

Zack Wheeler was unable to make his scheduled start on the mound for the Philly Phillies on Saturday, because he tore the nail on his middle right finger while putting on his pants. Serves him right for breaking one of those “unwritten rules” of baseball and trying to put his pants on two legs at a time.

Just a thought: In this truly bizarro, upside-down/inside-out 2020, I wonder if the real killers are searching for O.J.?

Okay, let me get this straight: Last year, Kawhi Leonard was God of Hardwood and a legend. There was talk of a statue. This year, Kyle Lowry is God of Hardwood and a legend. There is talk of a statue. If this keeps up, the Tranna Jurassics will have as many statues as the Maple Leafs blueline.

The shameless cheerleading for the Jurassics on TSN reached epic levels following their win in Game 6 of the now-concluded National Basketball Association playoff skirmish v. Boston Celtics. Fan girls Kara Wagland and Lindsay Hamilton were borderline orgasmic, with a breathless and swooning Wagland clutching her prayer beads and gasping, “Hopefully, the Raptors will find a way to keep it going in Game 7.” I swear, I haven’t seen anyone at TSN so smitten since Glen Suitor leaned in and gave Keith Urban a hickey during last year’s Grey Cup game. Meantime, after the Jurassics had been ushered out of the NBA bubble, Hamilton began SportsCentre by saying, “This one stings.” Geez, I hope her dog doesn’t dies.

Similarly, Michael Grange of Sportsnet went all fan boy scant seconds after the Jurassics’ Game 7 ouster in Florida on Friday, saying: “As Raptors fans we…” As Raptors fans? We? C’mon, man. You’re supposed to be covering the team, not waving pom-poms.

Did anyone miss Drake jumping to his feet and doing the court jester thing during the Jurassics’ aborted playoff push? Didn’t think so.

I don’t know Skip Bayless, but I’m pretty sure he’s a complete ass. If you haven’t been introduced, Bayless is one of those TV gum-flappers who long ago fell in love with the sound of his own squawk box, and that somehow led him to a gig as blowhard-in-residence on the Fox Sports rant-and-rave show Undisputed. And that’s where he decided that World Suicide Prevention Day was the ideal time to trash Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who had appeared on In Depth with Graham Bensinger and spoke candidly of battling depression. “I don’t have sympathy for him going public with ‘I got depressed, I suffered depression early in COVID, to the point that I couldn’t even work out,” Bayless barked in a chin-wag with Shannon Sharpe. “Look, he’s the quarterback of America’s Team, and you know and I know, this sport that you play, it is dog-eat-dog. It is no compassion, no quarter given on the football field. If you reveal publicly any little weakness, it can affect your team’s ability to believe in you in the toughest spots, and it definitely can encourage others on the other side to come after you. You just can’t go public with it, in my humble opinion.” Well, first of all, if you’ve seen and heard Bayless, you’ll know that he’s humble like a bowl of Corn Flakes is a cure for COVID. Second, what he said was disgraceful. Depression should be discussed. Out loud. And it’s beneficial when someone in Prescott’s position isn’t shy about sharing his experience and vulnerability.

Dame Diana Rigg is dead. Long live Emma Peel, probably the sexiest, most kick-ass woman in the history of television. Dame Diana as Mrs. Peel on The Avengers was Audrey Hepburn with a fencing sword, guns and serious smarts. Adorned in black leather cat suits, 1960s-chic jump suits, mini-skirts and heels, she whomped more bad guys than John Wayne, and a swift kick to the groin never looked so elegant and graceful. “Give a man a pudding and Diana Rigg during the lunch hour and experience shows he will be a thing of slobbering contentment from start to finish,” New York Newsday declared in 1994. Men who remember The Avengers will nod in agreement. Ditto some women I know.

Olympic champ Mo Farrah of Britain ran 13¼ miles in one hour recently. No man has run that far, that fast since Saddam Hussein heard there were U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq.

Why is it that when someone whispers a discouraging word about Serena Williams her apologists go into attack mode like junkyard dogs and make it about race and gender? I don’t like her because she’s been the neighborhood bully for years, also a total drama queen. Those are the same reasons I detested tennis brats John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors when they’d go off their nut during the 1970s and ’80s. It isn’t always about race and gender. Sometimes it’s about being a poor sport and ugly loser.

Apparently, the U.S. Open was the mother of all tennis tournaments because there were nine moms in the draw, and the squawk boxes on ESPN took the motherhood theme and milked it as though they were the first female athletes to give birth. As if. The talking heads might want to check out the Scotties Tournament of Hearts some time. It’s not official unless at least a dozen players are pregnant or breast feeding.

Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams after the 2018 U.S. Open final.

When is a tennis Grand Slam not a Grand Slam? When six of the top eight women in the world, and 15 of the top 50, take a pass. Which means, yes, Naomi Osaka’s victory in the women’s singles final at Flushing Meadows in Queens, NYC, warrants an asterisk. I can’t recall a weaker women’s draw, and I’ve been following tennis since I was knee high to Billie Jean King. No Ash Barty (No. 1), no Simona Halep (No. 2), no Elina Svitolina (No. 5), no Bianca Andreescu (No. 6), no Kiki Bertens (No. 7), no Belinda Bencic (No. 8). Having said that, it was nice to see young Naomi enjoy a U.S. Open title without Serena Williams taking the moment hostage with her boorish bullying.

The same has to be said about the men’s draw, which began sans Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer and lost Novak Djokovic due to a hissy fit, whereby the world No. 1 launched a tennis ball into the throat of a line judge and was told to leave the building. You have to beat the best to be the best, and neither Dominic Thiem or Alexander Zverev have done that in Gotham.

Gasbag Stephen A. Smith of ESPN says U.S. Open officials were too harsh and hasty in defaulting Djokovic. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he squawked. The way Stephen A. has it figured, a whispered tsk-tsk and slap on the wrist would have been sufficient punishment because the Joker “showed up to play during a pandemic when he didn’t have to.” Ya, that makes him a real hero. Look, Djokivic only showed up because he wears tin foil on his head and thinks COVID is a rumor. And, of course, he saw a U.S. Open title that should have been easy pickings.

Got a kick out of a Cathal Kelly column in the Globe and Mail last week. “That golden age of Canadian tennis everyone started talking about 10 years ago? It’s no longer coming. We’re in the middle of it,” he declared. Sounds reasonable, except Kelly informed us that Canadian tennis was already “in the midst of its golden age” back in 2016. Hmmm. Milos Roanic won the grand total of one tournament that year, although he flirted with history at Wimbledon, and Genie Bouchard was already into her plummet from world No. 6 to bikini model (she was ranked No. 272 this morning). In 2016, it was more like the Golden Age of Coming Close and a Dizzying Freefall.

Kelly also noted that three homebrews—Felix Auger-Aliassime, Vasek Pospisil, Denis Shapovalov—advanced to the round of 16 at the current U.S. Open, making it “already the greatest tournament in Canadian history.” Good grief. Two guys getting properly paddywhacked in the fourth round and a third bowing out in the quarters of a watered-down tournament is “the greatest?” That’s like sitting in a five-star restaurant and saying the scraps under the table next to you are better than anything you see on the menu. I mean, at Wimbledon 2014 we had one finalist, Genie Bouchard, one semifinalist, Milos Raonic, and one doubles champion, Pospisil. And oh, by the way, I seem to recall a young lass named Bianca Andreescu collecting all the marbles just a year ago at Flushing Meadows. Yup. Whupped Serena Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open final. But, hey, perhaps Kelly was napping that day. Ya, that must be why he’s telling us that winning in the third and fourth rounds trumps Wimbledon 2014 and Bianca’s Grand Slam singles title. Also her win at Indian Wells. And the Rogers Cup. Kelly needs a Tennis 101 primer.

Depending on one’s definition of “Golden Age,” here’s what our net set has delivered in singles play on the main WTA and ATP tours in the past decade:
Whenever I see the name Dayana Yastremska in a tennis draw, I always think someone has misspelled Yastrzemski.

Hey now, here’s some dandy news: Squints at the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland claim to have discovered a cure for the hangover. It’s something called L-cysteine supplements and it also reduces “the need of drinking the next day.” If true, it’ll be the greatest discovery since Sandy Koufax found the strike zone in the 1960s.

Great tweet from long time broadcaster and former Hockey Night in Canada host Dave Hodge: “The ultimate definition of ‘priceless’ would have been the look on Danny Gallivan’s face if they told him to identify power plays as brought to you by ‘Kit Kat Chunky, now 20% chunkier.’” I can hear the great Gallivan doing the play-by-play now: “There’s the Savardian spinorama and now a cannonading blast by Lafleur, who couldn’t beat Gerry Cheevers’ rapier-like right hand as the 20 per cent chunkier Kit Kat Chunky power play comes to an end and Cheevers adjusts his paraphernalia.”

How does this figure? Marc-Andre Fleury, a goaltender, finished 19th in Lady Byng voting as the National Hockey League’s most gentlemanly player, and another goaltender, Connor Hellebuyck, finished 21st. Either some members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association don’t take their voting privilege seriously, or they shouldn’t be casting ballots.

This made me laugh…
Steve Simmons, Postmedia Tranna, on Sept. 6: “Two words that never, ever, should be attached to Steve Nash: White privilege.”
Steve Nash, head coach Brooklyn Nets, on Sept. 9: “I have benefited from white privilege.”
D’oh!

More stupidity from Simmons: “Suddenly, the Vancouver Canucks matter. They haven’t mattered much since the years of the Sedin brothers, Roberto Luongo and the Stanley Cup that should have been. They didn’t matter much before that.” Sigh. Only someone in the Republic of Tranna would write something so foolish. For the record, the Canucks have mattered since 1970 on the West Coast, long before they didn’t win “a Stanley Cup that should have been.”

Simmons scribbles his slop about the Canucks, then has the gonads to call out “writers and broadcasters spreading falsehoods.” I have four words for him: Phil Kessel, hot dogs.

And, finally, how can the 2020-21 PGA season already be underway when they haven’t played the 2020 U.S. Open yet? Or is next weekend’s golf tournament the 2021 U.S. Open? I’m so confused.

Let’s talk about the NHL starting something if might not finish…the Edmonton mountains…outing COVID patients…Blue Jays bursting baseball’s bubble…Commish Randy’s odd panhandling…the Bank of God…Rink Rat Scheifele and a box of Timbits…and other things on my mind

A Monday morning smorgas-bored…and today’s post is brought to you by the letter ‘C’ as in cynical…

You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not all geeked up about the National Hockey League reboot. First off, I’m not big on summer shinny and, second, I’m not convinced they’ll be able to finish what they plan to start. Frankly, the whole idea seems more iffy than a date with O.J. Simpson.

The Calgary Flames have already lost one of their top defenders, Travis Hamonic, who’s chosen to sit this one out and stick close to his bride and kids rather than pursue the Stanley Cup in a quirky, made-for-TV championship go-round limited to two Ziploc locales—Edmonton and the Republic of Tranna.

Also bugging out of Camp COVID West are Mike Green of the Oilers and Roman Polak, a D-man with the Dallas Stars.

Meanwhile, Karl Alzner has informed the Montreal Canadiens that they’ll have to do without him once the puck is dropped, although that shouldn’t be too great a hardship for the Habs, since they did mostly without him last winter. Three of les Canadiens have tested positive for COVID and Max Domi’s diabetes makes his participation in the 24-team tournament iffy.

In Boston, D-man Steven Kampfer has determined the health of his bride and child are more important than playing hockey in a risk environment.

And that won’t be the end of it. More players—and perhaps sizable chunks of teams—will be laid low by the coronavirus once the lads commence their official pre-tournament frolic.

You think not? Then you haven’t been paying attention to women’s and men’s footy.

Orlando Pride of the National Women’s Soccer League bugged out on the Challenge Cup when six players and four staff were infected with COVID-19, while Major League Soccer sides Nashville SC (nine players) and FC Dallas (10 players, one coach) pulled the chute on the MLS Is Back jamboree.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that Sunday’s Toronto FC-DC United skirmish was postponed due to positive COVID-tests?

That’s not to say any of this will happen in the NHL. But it could, and I should think the possibility of a team forced to forfeit a playoff series in mid-stroke would give the puck overlords cause for pause.

But no. There’s TV money to be made, don’t you know.

Some head-shaking natter from John Tory, mayor in the Republic of Tranna. Speaking with Mark Masters on TSN, Hizzoner Tory said this about the NHL hub bubbles in Edmonton and The ROT: “It’s a big thrill for our country. That’s a great thing for Canada. This is good news for Canada.” Call me slow-witted, but I still don’t get it. This is “a great thing for Canada” how? “I think it’s going to be a big deal in terms of putting the city of Toronto and the city of Edmonton on the map across North America, so that’s good,” Tory explained. Terrific. The rest of the continent will soon discover what the rest of us already know—Edmonton doesn’t really have mountains.

What the hell is wrong with Steve Simmons, Vol. 3,492? The Postmedia Tranna scribe is royally miffed because the NHL has the (apparent) bad manners to keep private medical records private. That is, names of COVID-stricken players are strictly on the QT. “Welcome to the NHL, where double secret probation is the standard,” he tweeted the other day. “There is no social stigma to testing positive for COVID. It’s happening to friends and relatives. But shhh don’t tell the NHL.” He then doubled-down in his weekly alphabet fart of notes, quotes and cheap shots, writing, “I can name about 60 players in the NBA, MLB and NFL who have tested positive for COVID-19. There is no social stigma for testing positive. With the see-no-evil ever-secret NHL, though, not a name has gone public.” Again, call me slow-witted, but why the pressing need for names? Would outing players make anyone in E-Town or The ROT feel safer? Or perhaps non-disclosure makes the poor dear’s job more difficult. I swear, Simmons has an upper-body injury—between his ears.

Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail also took a jab at the NHL’s refusal to go public with COVID-stricken players, only his take wasn’t quite so petulant. “If nothing else, you have to admire the NHL’s cheek,” he wrote. “This isn’t a family of four being reunited after a long separation. It’s a business asking Canadians for a special favour. And our reward for granting it is being told to shut up and leave them alone.”

Jock journos who have difficulty with the little inconveniences in life need reminding of something Mark Bradley wrote recently in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “It’s a truism of sports journalism that readers don’t care what sportswriters endure to do what we do.”

Thanks to Travis Shaw and Marcus Stroman, it’s doubtful the Tranna Blue Jays will receive the okie-dokie from Trudeau the Younger to play the home portion of their Major League Baseball schedule in the Republic of Tranna, so chalk one up for brutal honesty.

If you missed it, the notion of being confined to quarters for the duration of an abbreviated MLB crusade is an irksome bit of business to Shaw of the Tranna Nine, so much so that he vowed to burst through the baseball bubble.

“We were told two weeks…not all summer…all summer is a bit much,” he tweeted. “All summer isn’t gonna happen. Not an option.”

In a couple of since-deleted tweets, bubble boy Shaw mentioned something about an urgent need to go for a stroll (face mask included) and to suck in some fresh air, at the same time hitting a local eatery for a takeout order, then making a pit stop at his nearby, paid-for condo, presumably to change his socks.

Shaw has since delivered a mea culpa for his frankness, but surely it’s a done deal: The prospect of ball games in Canada? Fuggedaboutit.

Former Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman, now with the New York Mets, provided the backup vocals, tweeting, “Guys are going to be walking around in full disguises.” That wouldn’t be anything new for the Blue Jays. They spent all of 2019 masquerading as a Major League team.

What’s up with Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie? First he approached the feds for a $30 million handout. Then it was $150 million. Now it’s $42.5 million. Cripes, man, an auctioneer doesn’t shout out that many different numbers. What we have here is a classic case of a guy hurling crap against a wall and hoping some of it sticks.

So tell us, Patrick Mahomes, how does it feel to sign a contract extension worth half a billion bucks? “I want to give thanks to so many people,” the K.C. Chiefs quarterback says of his windfall, “but always first I just want to give thanks to God for putting me in this situation.” Who knew there was a Bank of God?

Mahomes’ new contract is 117 pages long. I’ve lived in towns that didn’t have phone books that big.

Sad to hear that Eddie Shack is in a cancer care home in the Republic of Tranna. Always got a kick out of Clear the Track Shack when he was with the Maple Leafs, and I have a fond memory of playing on a line with him one year at Schmockey Night in the Old Barn On Maroons Road. As I recall, Ray Jauch was our coach that game, and he kept Shackie and I on the ice for the final five minutes, hoping one of us would score a tying goal. Alas, we failed. But we had fun failing.

Good to see Ken Wiebe back on the hockey beat. Ken left the Winnipeg Sun to scribble for The Athletic a while back, but he was among the victims of pandemic-related staff cuts. Now he’s found a home at Sportsnet, scribbling about the Winnipeg Jets, and I doubt that he minds if it cuts down on his tee times.

Somebody’s goose is cooked, or undercooked, depending on who you choose to believe. Rink Rat Scheifele of the Jets and his former personal chef, Jeremy Senaris, are engaged in a bit of a food fight, whereby the cook would like to lighten Scheifele’s bankroll by $75,000, claiming the Winnipeg HC centre performed the kind of dine-and-dash that only filthy rich people can understand. Rink Rat, on the other hand, insists that Senaris couldn’t stand the heat, so he kicked him out of the kitchen due to an assortment of culinary misdeeds that included undercooking meals, not serving din-din on time, and pretending a box of Timbits is health food. Apparently the dispute is headed for court, and we all know what that means. That’s right, fat-cat lawyers feasting at the All You Can Take The Suckers For Buffet.

Add John Doyle of the Globe and Mail to the list of mainstream media types just now discovering that there’s blatant sexism in sports coverage. Noting that both TSN and Sportsnet have dipped deep into the retro file to fill air time during the COVID pandemic, he writes: “They’re reporting on sports that aren’t actually happening and might—maybe, might—happen in the future. Meanwhile there’s a women’s pro-sports league going full throttle in a gripping tournament, which is blithely ignored. What do you call that blissful ignorance? Sexism, to be accurate.” Never mind broadcasting the NWSL Challenge Cup games. TSN and Sportsnet don’t even show the highlights. Sad.

Det. Danny Reagan, telling Sgt. Jamie Reagan what to do.

This has nothing to do with sports, but I must say that Danny Reagan of Blue Bloods is the most annoying character on TV. The guy holds the rank of basic gumshoe, but he tells his partner Baez what to do. He tells his sergeant brother Jamie what to do. He tells Jamie’s cop bride Eddie what to do. He tells his sister ADA Erin what to do. He tells his sister’s gumshoe Anthony what to do. He tells his boss Sid what to do. He tells the guys on the SWAT team what to do. He even tells his dad, NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan, what to do. And none of them make him stay in his lane! At worst, they scold him, then he scurries away to save Gotham from the bad guys once again and growls during the family dinner.

And, finally, here’s someone else who needs to stay in his lane—Donald Trump. In a recent tweet re pro sports outfits changing their racist names, the U.S. president wrote: “They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct. Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now.” Yes, team names are based on STRENGTH. You know, like Ducks and Penguins and Pelicans and Angels and Saints and Red Wings and Stars and Wizards and Cardinals and Blue Jays and two different pairs of Sox.

Let’s talk about empty seats in the Little Hockey House On The Prairie after COVID-19…what’s on my book shelf?…tee times…horrible takes on Ponytail Puck…a bull session with Chris Streveler in the Drab Slab…and other things on my mind

There’s been much natter about National Hockey League millionaires returning this summer to perform in front of empty seats in four select cities, none of which will be named Winnipeg (reportedly).

That’s a deep concern because the NHL is a gate-driven enterprise.

There is, however, a greater fret and threat looming. Try this: How many of those empty seats will remain unoccupied once the faithful have been given the okie-dokie to gather in groups and return to rinks hither and yon?

The Jets have made due with 15,000 and change at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie since 2011 and, once they’ve finished feeding at the public trough, it’s believed there’s black ink on the bottom line of the balance sheet. The profit is likely minimal, but we don’t know for certain because True North Sports+Entertainment has never been eager to open its books, even as it smugly expects the rabble to continue opening their wallets.

Unfortunately, the scourge that is COVID-19 has many thousands of workers also feeding from the public trough, and some of them won’t have a job at the far end of the pandemic.

It’s tough to part with thousands of dollars in support of the players’ millionaire lifestyles when you’re on pogey.

So let’s say the Jets lose 1,000 customers post-COVID-19 and can’t replace them. Is the NHL doable in Good Ol’ Hometown with just 14K in the pews? Well, when the Atlanta caravan rolled into River City in 2011, I seem to recall NHL commish Gary Bettman saying something about sellouts and SRO audiences being the absolute, no-margin-for-error requirement.

If so, 14,000 customers won’t cut it.

Oh, sure, the Jets boast of a robust wait list, so any available tickets would be scooped up faster than toilet paper at the start of the pandemic. But whoa Nellie. That was pre-COVID-19. The game has changed. It costs $100 (non-refundable) per annum to stay on that list, and $50 (non-refundable) to get on that list. Know anyone with a spare C-note or 50-dollar bill lying around these days, just in the hope of spending in excess of $1,000 to watch the millionaires frolic on the local freeze?

This isn’t meant to be a doomsday essay. It’s simply a cautionary note that once there’s a vaccine and the NHL arrives at its “new normal,” crowd concern might not be limited to warm-weather locales like Sunrise, Fla, and Glendale, Ariz. It might hit hard at the frost-bitten heart of the continent as well.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been catching up on my reading during the COVID-19 lockdown. So far, these have been my favorite books:

My Pants Were Always Lower Than My Score: The Sex Scandal That Sank Tiger Woods, In His Own Words.
If It’s Too Late for a Prenup, I’m Totally Screwed: The Tiger Woods Tell-All About Infidelity and Divorce (with special forward by Elin Nordegren).
I Bit Off More Than I Could Chew: Mike Tyson Recounts the Night He Made a Snack Out of Evander Holyfield’s Ear.
D’oh Canada! The Duping of a Dope: The Rise and Fall of Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics.
Deflated: Who Really Let the Air Out of Tom Brady’s Balls (with special forward by Gisele Bundchen)?
The Dead Speak Scrolls: Complete Transcripts of Everything Bill Belichick has Ever Said that the Media Understood (Total number of pages-2).
Serena Williams

I’ll Shove This %$#% Ball Down Your *%$#% Throat: Memoirs of Serena Williams at the U.S. Open.
Grey Cup and the Groupie: E! News Canada Takes A Deep Dive Into the Glen Suitor-Keith Urban Broadcast Booth Bromance (with special forward by Nicole Kidman).
You People: The Official Don Cherry Code of Conduct for Wannabe Canadians, where the former star of Coach’s Corner explains Milk & Honey & Poppies & EVERYTHINK LIKE THAT!
Still Searching In A White Ford Bronco After All These Years: O.J. Simpson Takes Us to Various Golf Courses In His Hunt for the Real Killers.

Speaking of golf, it looks like some courses across the land will be opening next month (a few in my neck of the woods never closed). I haven’t swung the sticks in more than 12 years, but I’ve been thinking about my ideal foursome were I ever to tee it up again. This is it: Moi, Alison Krauss, Babs Streisand and, of course, Jesus, because I figure that walk-on-water thing might come in handy given my skill level.

Oh drat. The Scripps National Spelling Bee in the U.S. has fallen victim to COVID-19, canceled for the first time since World War II. Such a shame. I was really looking forward to watching 10-year-old kids make me feel like a complete doofus again. Or is that spelled d-u-f-u-s? Or d-o-o-f-a-s? Or d-u-f-is? Or d-u-f-f-a-s? Geez, where’s a 10-year-old whiz kid when you really need one?

I note that Scotiabank Arena in the Republic of Tranna is now a kitchen, where they’re cooking 10,000 meals a day for front-line health workers, their families and the needy. Just wondering: How will the Tranna media make that feel-good story about Drake?

So, the National Women’s Hockey League has added an expansion franchise in the Republic of Tranna and, not surprisingly, at least one of the Dream Gappers (Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association) couldn’t resist the urge to take a cheap shot at the team to be named later. That would be Liz Knox, who attempted to paint NWHL execs as uncaring, tone-deaf oafs for conducting business during the pandemic. “It’s difficult to imagine expansion being at the forefront of many business strategies,” she snarked in a text message. Oh, for sure, Liz. No businesses should look ahead to the day COVID-19 is behind us. The NHL shouldn’t make plans to finish its season or begin the 2020-21 crusade. The National Football League shouldn’t have conducted its draft last week. And, hey, Roger Federer has no business talking about a marriage between the women’s and men’s pro tennis tours. All sports operations should just sit and twiddle their thumbs. What a pathetic take, but totally in line with the PWHPA hate-on for the NWHL, which refuses to get out of the Dream Gappers’ way.

Tim & Sid granted air time on Sportsnet to another Dream Gapper, Natalie Spooner, who informed the boys that the PWHPA will “keep fighting for what we deserve.” Part of what they claim they “deserve” is a living wage, but none of the Dream Gappers has ever explained how anyone can pay for it.

Second worst take on the NWHL franchise in The ROT came from (who else?) Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna.

“It has been officially announced that Toronto has been awarded an expansion team in the National Women’s Hockey League,” he scribbled without allowing his grey matter and fingers to connect. “What hasn’t been announced: the team’s name; the team’s logo; the team’s venue. And some of those things, if not all of them, can make an outsider rather skeptical and troubled about the future of this kind of endeavour. You don’t gain credibility by announcing a team with no name, no place to play, and no big-name players. When you have all that in place, then make the announcement. The press release referred to the expansion team as a ‘first class team of professionals.’ Time will answer that, but the new Toronto Whatevers are not off to a great start.”

Really? There’s no credibility without a team name, a team logo or big-name players? Like the NHL’s expansion franchise in Seattle? The one that was announced in December 2018 and, 16 months later, remains without a team name, a team logo or any players. Or like the NHL Las Vegas expansion franchise that was announced in June 2016 without a team name, a team logo or any players? Or like the Jets, who arrived in Winnipeg sans a team name or a team logo in 2011?

Or does that lack of “credibility” only apply to female shinny outfits with no name, no logo and no big-name players at startup?

Simmons is on record as saying Ponytail Puck is a “charade,” so he’d be wise to concentrate on Golden Boy Auston Matthews’ mustache, Phil Kessel’s hot dog stand and Drake’s clown act, and leave the women’s game to news snoops who actually care and know something about it.

This week in jock journalism…

Jason Bell of the Drab Slab wins the prize for best off-beat yarn, with his piece on a Charolais bull named after Chris Streveler, former Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback and party boy. Streveler the bull is 1,499 pounds of pure Western Manitoba beef on the hoof—about the same as the entire Bombers O-line—and the brute recently sold for a whopping $45,000 at the Nykoliation family auction. The way Jason tells the story, 50 bulls were sold that day for $335,000, or about the value of a Tier-II starting QB in the Canadian Football League…I monitored bylines in the Winnipeg Sun from last Sunday through Saturday, and here’s the scorecard: Postmedia bylines 32; Toronto bylines 21; Winnipeg bylines 15; lady rassler bylines (Natalya Neidhart) 1. I swear, if I ever win Lotto Max, I’ll offer Postmedia the $1 Cdn. that the tabloid is worth today and convert it back to a local newspaper with local stories and enough scribes to actually cover the city…The NFL’s remote draft received favorable reviews from Bombers play-by-play guy Knuckles Irving and Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab. Here’s Knuckles on Twitter: “Watching the NFL draft and once again it’s completely apparent that no sports entity in the world can deliver elaborately choreographed, brilliantly produced, dragged out, mind-numbing TV hype like the NFL. Man are they good at it. Gotta be impressed.” And here’s Mad Mike: “You’ve got to hand it to the National Football League. Real life handed the league a lemon—in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic—but they showed why they’re the world’s most popular and successful sports operation by turning it into glorious, refreshing lemonade.” I never watched one second of the production, so I’ll just have to take their word for it…Laura Armstrong of the Toronto Star misses sports and feels guilty about it. I don’t miss sports and feel guilty about it. Hmmm. I never thought of COVID-19 as a guilt trip, but apparently that’s what it is.

Jesse Stone and Thelma, one of his many female admirers.

And, finally, I went on a Jesse Stone movie binge last week. Watched all nine of the made-for-TV flicks. Jesse, played by Tom Selleck, is a scotch-swilling, non-smiling wreck of a cop so hung up on his ex-wife that he talks to her long distance every night. Between benders, sessions with his ex-wife’s shrink, and trying to figure out how to work a cellphone, Jesse always catches the bad guys in Paradise, Mass. He probably drinks too much caffeine, but Jesse’s coffee breath isn’t a turnoff to the ladies in Paradise. Apparently the woman who can resist his dimples has yet to be born. Jesse always gets the girl. And I do mean always. Tall, short, black, white, young, old…every woman falls prey to Jesse’s dimples and must dine or do lunch with him. Even a nun, Sister Mary John! It’s quite silly stuff, really. So why do I like it so much?

Let’s talk about kids’ piggy banks, Peter Warren and empty seats…the Winnipeg Jets D…Tiger’s tell-all tome…a coverup in Tinseltown…dumb stuff at Sportsnet…St. Louis Blues visit the Trumps…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and I understood some of what Don Cherry said on Saturday night, so I’ve made an appointment with my shrink…

Okay, kids, time to bust open the piggy banks and empty the coin jars.

And, hey, is it too soon to send an S.O.S. to Peter Warren, asking him to fire up the flatbed Ford and start tooting around town to prod senior citizens into turning over their pension cheques?

I know. Sounds crazy.

I mean, just because our hockey heroes recently performed in front of (unsold) empty seats for the first time (officially) since 2011, there’s no cause to declare a state of emergency. The Winnipeg Jets aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so let’s have no talk of Houston or Cleveland or San Diego or Ville de Quebec.

Still, for those of us who recall dire times and more than one Save The Jets campaign that really did include kids and piggy banks—and Warren turning his CJOB Action Line into a Jerry Lewis-style telethon—it feels like deja vu all over again.

We remember Warren’s pleas from the lobby of the Marlborough Hotel in June 1974, and on downtown streets in May 1995. The legendary broadcaster who always got “right down to business” did more groveling than a dude whose wife found the wrong shade of lipstick on his collar.

It worked in ’74. Not so much 21 years later.

Benny Hatskin, noticing too many empty seats in the Winnipeg Arena and weary of writing cheques in red ink in 1974, turned his then-World Hockey Association franchise over—lock, stock and Bobby Hull’s hairpiece—to civic leaders with all the right intentions, but only after the rabble had ponied up in excess of $600,000 in nickels, dimes and cashier’s cheques not made of rubber.

One of the many who helped save the Jets that year was Margaret-Ann Farr, a 76-year-old who had earmarked $500 in savings for a trip to her homeland in Scotland. Instead, she gave it to the Jets, even though she had never seen them play. No, I can’t tell you if Maggie eventually found her way home to the ol’ sod, but I can tell you that your favorite hockey team was once owned by a dog, because one guy donated $25 on behalf of his pooch, Lady Jet.

And so it went.

It was much the same in 1995—not enough customers in the old barn on Maroons Road, amped-up salaries ($13 million player payroll), lousy Canadian dollar and, most important, no one with deep pockets interested in frittering away what remained in their deep pockets. Again, they went hat in hand to the people and raised more than $13 million in a bid to preserve their National Hockey League outfit. Trouble was, they needed $32 million, thus the Jets swanned off to Arizona.

And now we’re noticing reminders of the way it was.

The Jets were 561 people short of a sellout at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie last Tuesday with the Arizona Coyotes in town. Two nights later, they were 262 shy of a full barn for a visit from the New York Islanders. The Jets payroll is now $75 million, with gusts up to $83 million depending on Dustin Byfuglien’s mood du jour, the dollar is about as strong as the Jets penalty-kill, True North is charging more for a beer and a hot dog than what a ticket cost back in the day, and some folks are taking out second mortgages to pay for their season packages.

The difference, of course, is in ownership.

This time around, the dude with the deepest pockets in the country, David Thomson, is part of the package, and you’re never going to see him standing at the corner of Portage and Main asking little, old ladies to nix a trip to Scotland so he and Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman can keep Blake Wheeler and Rick Rat Scheifele in champagne and caviar.

A 4,000-person waiting list for season subscriptions suggests there’s plenty of shelf life left in these Winnipeg Jets, but I’m guessing some of you would probably feel a lot better if you were hearing that from Chipman instead of me.

Bottom line: You can tell your kids to keep what’s in their piggy banks. Once they’ve grown up, they can use it for college tuition or a mortgage on a nice house.

They just won’t be able to afford Jets season tickets.

Both main columnists with the daily rags weighed in on the head counts at last week’s Jets jousts, with Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab pointing to Good Ol’ Hometown’s “saturated” sports/shinny market as one possible reason for the non-sellouts. He added, “While there’s no sign a divorce is on the horizon, it seems the (fan/team) relationship is a lot more complicated than it used to be.” It isn’t complicated at all. As Paul Friesen pointed out in the Winnipeg Sun, it’s all about costs. The Jets, according to numerous folks who contacted Friesen, are pricing themselves out of their own market. As for a “saturated” market, what, they don’t have sports entertainment options in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver? As if.

If you’re wondering, the highest average head count for Jets 1.0 was 13,620 in 1985-96. That’s only 1,144 customers fewer than last week with the Coyotes in town, and they weren’t paying anyone $8.25 million per annum (hello, Blake Wheeler). In their final whirl at the old barn on Maroons Road, Jets 1.0 attracted an average of 11,316.

Tiger Woods has taken up the quill and will write a memoir to tell the “definitive story” of his life as a golf prodigy and icon. So we’ll finally get the answer to that burning question: “When Elin found out about all the blonde cocktail waitresses and escorts that Tiger was shagging, did she attack him with a nine-iron or a pitching wedge?”

HarperCollins Publishers considered several titles for Tiger’s tell-all tome before settling on Back, and it’s believed these were among the rejected suggestions:
1) Birdies, Bogeys, Bunkers & Bimbos.
2) That’s Not A Putter In My Pants…I’m Just Happy To See You.
3) T&A at the R&A (Tits & Ass at the Royal & Ancient).
4) Pin High & Horny.
5) Tiger Woods: My Pants Were Always Lower Than My Score.

News item: The NHL tells Valentin Zykov of the Vegas Golden Knights to get lost for 20 games because he either stuck a needle in his butt or swallowed a PED. Imagine that, a Russian using illegal drugs. Who would have thought?

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that young Ville Heinola has become the darling of the local media. The Finnish kid can do no wrong with news snoops, even when he’s doing something wrong on the Jets blueline. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just saying.

The more I watch the NHL, with its limited fisticuffs and greatly reduced body belting, the more I think of former Jets centre Peter Sullivan. Today’s game was made for the man we called Silky.

Stupid headline of the week No. 1, from Sportsnet: “Why the Maple Leafs need a statement game against struggling Wild.” Oh, c’mon man. No one makes a statement game against the Minnesota Wild, the worst team in the NHL. Beating a team with a pulse, like the Boston Bruins, is a statement game.

Stupid headline of the week No. 2, from the Drab Slab: “Pionk steadies young D.” Good grief, Charlie Brown. Two days earlier, the Jets surrendered seven—count ’em seven!—goals v. Sid and his Pittsburgh pals. Then they gave up a four-spot v. Arizona. Then three v. the Islanders. Fourteen goals in three games. That’s steady like the back of a garbage truck is a salad bar. The accompanying Taylor Allen article was no better. It read like a puff piece hot off the True North propaganda printing press. Look, it’s time the Drab Slab told the truth, which is this: Neal Pionk is a top pairing defenceman for one reason—everyone who can skate and chew gum at the same time left Dodge long ago, Josh Morrissey being the exception.

Oh, wait, now I’m really confused. Just four days after Allen’s puff piece on Pionk and the “steady” blueline, along comes Mad Mike McIntyre to tell us this about the Jets: “The needs are many, with two major areas of concern—the blue-line and the penalty kill.” I see. The steady defence actually sucks. Methinks the boys on the beat might want to exchange notes before hitting the send button.

Los Angeles Kings fans decided that Taylor Swift had a curse on their team, so a banner saluting the pop singer’s record number of sellouts at Staples Center is now blotted out by a large black cloth at each game. It’s the most talked-about coverup in Tinseltown since the O.J. Trial.

Stupid tweet of the week, from Kristina Rutherford of Sportsnet: “The NHL season is underway and MLB playoffs are happening and the #1 article on @sportsnet yesterday was about the @nwhl and pro women’s hockey. So I guess all y’all that say ‘nobody cares!’ about women’s hockey can go fly a kite.” That smacks of Grade 5 schoolyard na, na, na, na, na-ism. Yes, it’s juvenile. The placement of Rutherford’s article at the top of the main page on the Sportsnet website means just one thing—they did something dumb again. You know, like on Saturday morning after a Major League Baseball playoff game, numerous NHL games including the Edmonton McDavids, two CFL games, Brooke Henderson firing a hole-in-one and leading an LPGA tournament, Sportsnet’s main story was an exhibition basketball game. Like I said, dumb.

On the matter of Pontytail Puck, I wonder why it is that the National Women’s Hockey League refuses to include attendance figures in its game summaries. I asked but didn’t receive a reply. So I can only assume they’re embarrassed by the modest head counts.

I also find myself wondering why no one in mainstream media is challenging the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association on their true mission, which is to put the NWHL out of business. They can talk all they like about building a better future for little girls, but I’ll believe that fairy tale the day they actually sit down with NWHL commish Dani Rylan and look for ways to make the women’s game work. As it is, the PWHPA refuses to engage in meaningful dialogue, instead serving up a sham called the Dream Gap Tour.

Interesting take from Cathal Kelly on the St. Louis Blues’ visit to the Trump household last week. The Globe and Mail columnist had no problem with the Stanley Cup champions’ Tour de Oval Office, and he managed to squeeze in a swipe at National Basketball Association stars. “NBA players often make a bit of a deal announcing they will not set one foot in the White House while Trump remains in office, always to great cheers,” he wrote. “These are occasionally the same players who don’t know anything about China, won’t take questions about China and couldn’t find China on a map, all while they are in China.” Here’s my question: Why would NBA players need to find China on a map when they’re already in China?

Got a kick out of a couple tweets from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna. Apparently, he’s “still walking on air” after being elected to the media wing of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, and he’s “still walking on air” about the Tranna Jurassics hoops title. I know the air is thick in the Republic of Tranna, but unless Steve has dropped a few pounds since I last saw him, it ain’t that thick.

And, finally, the Drab Slab devoted an entire page to curling in its Saturday edition. Nice. The three-part package included a sidebar from Taylor Allen on new mom Rachel Homan’s balancing act of mother-curler. Good stuff.

Let’s talk about Randy Carlyle and Body by Pillsbury…liars, liars pants on fire…what say you, Jeff Hecht?…E-Town trumps Pegtown…the CFL’s best newspaper market…men overboard at Sportsnet…and the WJM newsroom

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and this post was written without the benefit of performance-enhancing nouns, verbs, adjectives or metaphors, but there are trace amounts of sarcasm, irreverence and flippancy…

Back in April 1989, when drug cheat Ben Johnson still had our attention after his fall from grace at the Seoul Olympics, word drifted out of Stockholm that Randy Carlyle had failed a drug test.

I laughed.

Anyone who’d ever met or seen Randy Carlyle probably laughed.

I mean, you didn’t get Carlyle’s body with daily visits to the gym, augmented by human growth hormone milk shakes. We’re talking Body by Pillsbury. Whatever muscle the Winnipeg Jets defender had was well concealed by a pleasantly soft exterior, most likely the product of jam-filled pop tarts or crescent rolls stuffed with cheese and bacon. His soft under belly really was his soft underbelly.

Thus, after Carlyle had piddled in a bottle at the World Hockey Championship and women/men wearing lab coats didn’t like the color of his pee—they discovered traces of the banned substance mesterolone—there were many giggles, even though he had officially joined Johnson on the Drug Cheat Hall of Shame roll call.

“When we first heard the words ‘steroids’ and ‘Randy’ in the same sentence, everyone in the room laughed,” Dave Ellett, a teammate of Carlyle’s in Sweden and with the Jets, once recalled in a natter with Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun. “John Ferguson Sr. had the best line: ‘If that’s what steroids does for your body, a lot of people will want their money back.’ Then we realized how serious it was.”

As it happened, Carlyle’s ‘B’ sample came back cleaner than a saint’s soul, so neither he nor Team Canada was disqualified from the tournament.

“I’ve been through hell,” the Pillsbury D-Boy told news snoops at the scene of the non-crime. “I was in total shock. How do you live with yourself when they say you’ve taken this and you know you haven’t? I lost a few pounds with sweaty palms.”

So, sure, squints make mistakes, and many among the rabble believe the lab rats did a dirty to Andrew Harris, who won’t join his Winnipeg Blue Bombers teammates in their annual Labor Day Weekend frolic v. the Saskatchewan Roughriders today on the Flattest of Lands. He’s also been told to find something else to do when the large lads assemble for the rematch in Good Ol’ Hometown on Sept. 7.

The Canadian Football League’s now-suspended leading rusher vows he didn’t knowingly take the illegal drug they say he took, but, for every local who believes Harris got a raw deal and shouldn’t be twiddling his thumbs this afternoon, there are probably 10 beyond the boundaries of Manitoba who’ll tell us that his pants are on fire. You’d have better luck convincing them that O.J. is honest-to-gosh looking for the real killers.

And that’s for good reason: When caught with their hands in the juice jar—or, in the case of Pete Rose, cozying up to friendly neighborhood bookie—most high-profile cheats in sports immediately take a trip to Planet Pinocchio. Examples…

Lance Armstrong: “If you consider my situation, a guy who comes back from arguably, you know, a death sentence (cancer), why would I then enter in a sport and dope myself up and risk my life again? That’s crazy. I would never do that. No. No way.”

Mark McGwire (appearing before U.S. Congress): “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

Rafael Palmeiro: “I have never used steroids. Period.”

Sammy Sosa: Pretended he couldn’t understand English when asked about his steroid use.

Roger Clemens: “I’ve been accused of something I’m not guilty of…I’ve never taken steroids or HGH.”

Justin Gatlin: “I am not using and have not used PEDs.”

Marion Jones: “I am against performance enhancing drugs. I have never taken them and I never will take them.”

Ben Johnson: “When I was a kid, I never took drugs. People who know me in Jamaica and people who know me here know I would never take drugs. I have never, ever knowingly taken illegal drugs, and I would never embarrass my family, my friends, and my country, and the kids who love me. For now, there’s nothing more I can tell you, because I just don’t know.”

Floyd Landis: “I declare convincingly and categorically that my winning the Tour de France has been exclusively due to many years of training and my complete devotion to cycling, to the sacrifice of an entire life to carry out my dream, a dream of thousands of kilometres that I have completed through an absolute respect to the cleanness of the sport.”

Alex Rodriguez: “I have been clear that I did not use performance enhancing substances as alleged.”

Pete Rose (gambling): “I’m not going to admit to something that didn’t happen. Never bet as a player. That’s a fact.”

Martina Hingis (cocaine 2007 Wimbledon): “I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely 100 per cent innocent.” Notably, she promptly retired rather than fight lab findings and a two-year ban.

Manny Ramirez: “Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid.” After taking another medication that wasn’t a steroid, Ramirez failed another drug test and retired rather than be banished for 100 games.

Ryan Braun: “I truly believe in my heart, and would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point. I am the victim of a process that completely broke down and failed the way it was applied to me in this case.”

Vladimir Putin: “State-sponsored doping system has never been created in Russia, it is simply not possible, and we will do everything we can to make sure such state-sponsored system of doping support never exists.”

That, kids, is the reason people are hesitant, or flat-out refuse, to believe Harris. They’ve heard all the nose-growing excuses before.

And, unlike Randy Carlyle, his isn’t Body by Pillsbury.

So, when Louis-Phillipe Bourassa was banished for being a drug cheat, Bombers safety Jeff Hecht pounced, calling out the Bytown RedBlacks long snapper on Twitter with this post: “Sometimes you just have to work hard instead of being lazy and buying an edge.” It followed, therefore, that he’d deliver the same public tsk-tsking to Harris. But no. “To think that I would treat my teammate the same as I would somebody else, I think, is kind of naive from some people, because I’m a team-first guy,” he said in a chin-wag with Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun. He then told Teddy Football that “I think lying is the tool of the coward, so I’m not going to hide my stance on anything.” Except, of course, he’ll hide his stance on Andrew Harris, thank you very much. Hypocrisy, thy name is Jeff Hecht.

The Bombers are without Matt Nichols, Andrew Harris and Chris Matthews today on the Flattest of Lands, so why do I think they have a snowball’s chance of beating Gang Green? Because they aren’t without Willie Jefferson and the D.

I like most of what young Jeff Hamilton does in the Drab Slab. Grade A reporter. Good writer. On top of the beat. Alas, young Jeff is off the mark when he suggests Saskatchewan and River City are the “two best markets in the CFL.” That’s only half accurate. The main measuring stick for any CFL market is the box office and, yes, Gang Green has developed a most rabid fan base. But Winnipeg? Not so much. Edmonton has been, and is, a better market. Even with this year’s sharp downturn in bodies at Commonwealth Stadium, the Eskimos are attracting 3,335 more than the Bombers per game. More to the point, if the Eskimos don’t nudge their head count up a couple thousand, this will be the first time—the only time!—this century that their average attendance falls below 30,000. Winnipeg FC has averaged 30,000 once. Repeat: Once. That was in 2013, the year Football Follies Field in Fort Garry opened for business and became a destination for curiosity seekers. So, sorry to say, Jeff, Good Ol’ Hometown is a better market than E-Town like Bob Dylan is a better singer than Sinatra.

There are, of course, other methods of measuring a CFL market, one of them being media coverage. That, of course, is subjective. But I submit that no one in our vast land does it better than the girls and boys on the Bombers beat in Pegtown, and I can already hear the squawks of protest from news snoops in E-Town and on the Flattest of Lands. Well, let ’em squawk. They’re wrong.

River City is the only true two-newspaper town in Western Canada, thus Winnipeg FC gets double the print coverage from competing rags. The operative word is “competing.” Standard cookie-cutter, scrum-collected quotes aside, what you read in the Drab Slab won’t be what you read in the Sun, and the Andrew Harris situation is an excellent example of the difference. Paul Friesen’s take in the Sun had a harsh, but fair, tone, while Hamilton delivered a more personal, reined-in essay. Both pieces worked for me in their own way. And that’s something you don’t get in points west, because Postmedia eliminated newspaper competition in other Prairie provinces. In terms of CFL coverage, the E-Town Sun is the E-Town Journal; the Calgary Sun is the Calgary Herald; the Vancity Sun is the Vancity Province; and you’ll read the same Riders copy in both the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. They’re kin. Kissing cousins, if you will. That’s not the way it should be, but that’s what you get when Postmedia is still pinching pennies long after our copper coin went out of circulation.

So, Sportsnet (thankfully) has pulled the plug on resident meathead Nick Kypreos, and we can only hope he’s replaced by someone who isn’t stuck in the 1970s, when clubbing an opponent over the head with a piece of lumber was an oft-used gambit in winning hockey games. Kypreos spent two decades using his Sportsnet pulpit to deliver a “to hell with turning the other cheek” sermon, promoting back-alley bullying to the point of advising skilled players like Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews to adopt rat-like stickwork and fisticuffs as tactics in dealing with the National Hockey League weasel element. That dinosaur logic is now left to blowhard Donald S. Cherry and the bellicose Brian Burke, although Burkie often delivers juicy insight when he isn’t talking about truculence.

I hope the last person to leave Sportsnet’s stable of shinny voices remembers to turn out the lights. Gone are Kypreos, Doug MacLean and John Shannon, which leaves who to natter with Jeff Marek on Hockey Central At Noon? Muppet head Colby Armstrong and Gord Stellick (meh)? Anthony Stewart and Mike Zigomanis (spare us)? The return of Damien Cox (shudder)? I’m not a Shannon fan, because there’s more than a whiff of arrogance to his delivery and he can be annoyingly interruptive, but he certainly knows where a lot of bodies are buried. I suspect he won’t be in the unemployment queue for long.

Murray, Lou, Mary, Ted, Sue Ann, Georgette, Rhoda and Phyllis in the WJM newsroom.

And, finally, Mary is gone, Ted is gone, Georgette is gone, and now Rhoda is gone. Thank goodness for reruns so I can still watch The Mary Tyler Moore show every afternoon and keep them and the WJM newsroom in my life. Love that show. Love the characters. I actually have a framed pic of Mary Tyler Moore beside my flatscreen TV, a gift from dear friends Jeff and Paul, who know I still want to be Mary Richards when I grow up and have a friend like Rhoda Morgenstern.

Let’s talk about the CFL’s QB carnage…“remarkably ugly” football…Argos no laughing matter…Popp’s big hairy deal…news snoops in a snit…Miss Manners’ son Stevie…old broadcasters and friends…and green leaves and jujubes at Carnarvon Park…

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and if I want to eat plants I’ll have a salad, not a plant masquerading as a hamburger…

If that was a Grey Cup preview Friday night at Timbits Field in the Hammer, I might opt for a Steve McQueen or Duke Wayne marathon on the final Sunday in November.

Shabby? Like an old hobo’s hair.

Alas, that’s what we get when there’s a neophyte quarterback on one side and a veteran quarterback playing like the neophyte’s understudy on the other.

The Hamilton Tabbies certainly were the superior outfit in the short time Jeremiah Masoli was behind centre during their 23-15 W, but a wonky left knee forced the all-star QB to excuse himself and the Tiger-Cats spent the remainder of the evening in safety-first mode, with tenderfoot Dane Evans barking signals into one of TSN’s live mics. He was meh at best.

If only the game itself had reached that level.

This was (supposedly) the Canadian Football League marquee match, with a pair of first-place outfits grabbing artificial grass and growling. The visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers arrived in the Hammer sans an L on their registry. A perfect 5-nada. The Tabbies had just one hiccup in five assignments. So, ya, it walked and talked like a Grey Cup dress rehearsal.

Then they kicked off and the large lads forgot how to play.

Correction: Matt Nichols forgot how to play.

I keep hearing that football is the ultimate team game, but the Bombers’ first stumble of this crusade is mostly down to QB Nichols, who kept throwing passes he had no business throwing, and three of them landed in the eager and welcoming arms of guys dressed in black and gold.

Had a quarterback more accomplished than Dane Evans been available to make Winnipeg FC pay for Nichols’ (also the kick returners) sins, we might be talking about a rout of biblical levels.

Sadly, Evans’ presence and Masoli’s absence is part of the CFL’s increasingly bleak big-picture story.

Forget that Masoli has the worst QB body since Danny McManus. (Seriously. He looks like Fred Flintstone in shoulder pads.) He gets the job done. He’s elite. But he’s the sixth starter to go down for the count this summer, joining Bo Levi Mitchell, Zach Collaros, Antonio Pipken, Dominique Davis and James Franklin in the repair shop. And it’s only due to extreme good fortune that someone hasn’t put a toe tag on Mike Reilly’s season.

Commissioner Randy Ambrosie spent much of the past winter and spring blah, blah, blahing about a new vision that he likes to call CFL 2.0. What I didn’t know is that CFL 2.0 meant every team would be starting its QB 2.0 before Labour Day.

I mean, by the time the playoffs commence, the body count will be so high that we might be watching Andrew Sheer and Justin Trudeau fling the football in the West Division final instead of Nichols and Trevor Harris.

Can anything be done to halt the QB carnage?

Well, quarterbacks are now treated like pricey porcelain figurines, with better protection than Queen Liz. Hostile defenders breath on them at their own peril, and Commish Randy underscored the CFL’s keep-QBs-vertical agenda by ordering Simoni Lawrence to take a two-game respite for the unlawful hit that sent Collaros to a dark room.

Unfortunately, threats of vacations without pay couldn’t have prevented the Masoli owie. It was the result of a freakish play, whereby his left knee caved in during his attempt to escape large, angry men with a different agenda.

So on came neophyte Evans and, with the inept Nichols far off his game, it made for rather dreary theatre with four picks, seven turnovers and not a single play from scrimmage exceeding 27 yards.

I hate to say this because the CFL is my favorite pro sports league, but it’s becoming almost unwatchable.

It doesn’t help, of course, that TSN insists on trying to doll up its broadcasts with that annoying split screen, the voices of natterbugs in the booth competing with live-mic’d players/officials, and cameras that appear to be located in a distant area code. Live mics are boffo for curling and golf, and even baseball, but not so much during a football telecast.

Here’s truth in broadcasting: During the first half of the Calgary Stampeders-Bytown RougeNoir frolic on Thursday night, TSN natterbug Duane Forde described it as “remarkably ugly.” That is remarkably honest. Also remarkably refreshing.

Neither of the two skirmishes on the Thursday menu will be included in CFL promo material. On the entertainment scale, they were somewhere between an Adam Sandler movie and the ear-blitzing screeching of a Yoko Ono concert. I mean, three teams—Tranna Argonauts, Calgary and Bytown—had a combined total of one touchdown. In 148 plays from scrimmage. The Argos couldn’t even scrounge up a measly rouge vs. the Eskimos in E-Town. You know how difficult it is to get blanked in the CFL? O.J. Simpson will have an easier time getting through the Pearly Gates. But the bottomless Boatmen managed it. Uh-glee. I suffered through both jousts and, yes, I’d like to have those six hours of my life back, if you don’t mind.

Many of us who dwell in the colonies aren’t opposed to crude jokes and rude laughter when outfits from the Republic of Tranna perform face plants, but there’s nothing funny about the oarless Scullers being oh-fer-2019. The Argos are the boil on the CFL’s butt. On and off the field. Their freshly completed (mis)adventure on the Prairies was a ghastly bit of business, and you know losing three games and being outscored 100-37 won’t win them new admirers. Mind you, they’re still mourning the loss of Kawhi Leonard in The ROT, so it’s unlikely that anyone there noticed. That, too, is sad.

In the department of ‘what have you done for us lately,’ I present Jim Popp, GM of the Boatmen. Once considered a gridiron guru in three-down circles, it’s become apparent that Popp has a fabulous head of hair and not much else. He failed to find a replacement for Anthony Calvillo in Montreal (the Larks have been paying for it ever since) and he hasn’t found a replacement for Ricky Ray in The ROT. No QB, no hope, no job for Popp if he doesn’t do something about it.

Prior to the Bombers’ departure to our eastern precincts last week, it was noted that neither Beastmo Bighill or Chris Matthews was made available for chin-wags post-practice on Monday. Not surprisingly, there was harrumphing among news snoops. “This is the CFL,” Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna squawked on Twitter. “Every player should be available to media every day. Doing the opposite is small-time, small-town backwards thinking.” Hmmm. You mean like Kawhi Leonard and the Tranna Jurassics? He spoke less often than a street mime during his one-and-done pit stop in The ROT, yet somehow those pesky jock journos managed to get the job done without Kawhi’s daily pearls of wisdom. Is every player on every team in the National Hockey League available every day? Nope. Problem is, some news snoops have a misguided sense of entitlement and still believe athletes/coaches are at their every beck and call. Doesn’t work that way, kids. Not anymore. So boo freaking hoo. Find someone else to talk to.

The outrageously arrogant Simmons didn’t limit his pompous tsk-tsking to the CFL last week. No sir. He slid into full Grandpa Simpson, fist-shaking mode after Kawhi Leonard was introduced as a member of the L.A. Clippers. “Four people Kawhi had to thank and didn’t,” he tweeted from the fetal position. “1) Masai (Ujiri) 2) Larry Tanenbaum 3) Alex (load management) McKechnie 4) Nick Nurse. He did thank restaurants for giving him free food, though.” Why, shame on Kawhi. I mean, such nerve. How dare he wag his tongue without first conferring with Miss Manners’ son Stevie. I hope all the nominees for Emmy Awards in September realize they must clear their acceptance/thank you speeches through Stevie before approaching the microphone.

Others on the hoops beat in The ROT resisted any urge to play the jilted lover role, offering less of an emotional take on Leonard’s first utterings as a Clipper:
Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star: “(Kawhi) did it right.”
Leo Rautins, TSN: “(Kawhi was) very thoughtful in his words.”
Tim Micallef, Sportsnet: “I don’t care about any of that stuff. I really don’t. I understand the fans do. I really don’t care about it.”

So nice to see Brian Williams on TSN’s coverage of the Prince of Wales Stakes last Tuesday. Brian is a lovely man and an exceptional broadcaster. Not many talkers on TV are more polished and, hey, he’s one of us. Which is to say, he drew his first breath in Good Ol’ Hometown.

I hear they had a big adios bash last week for three Globe and Mail sports scribes, including Dave Shoalts. I worked with Shoaltsy in Calgary and I can report that he’s one of the truly good guys in a business full of good guys. He’s also a funny man. Enjoy the rocking chair, Shoaltsy.

A big hi-de-ho to old friend Peter Young. Pete’s ticker gave him a spot of grief not so long ago, but I see the old broadcaster is back on social media and taking aim at Bob Cameron.

And, finally, ever since I heard that 12-year-old Michelle Liu had qualified to play with the grown-ups at the CP Women’s Open golf tournament next month in Aurora, Ont., I’ve been trying to remember what I was doing in the summer of 1963, when I was her age. I believe I was building sand castles at Willows Beach in Oak Bay (Victoria). No. Wait. Now I remember. They wouldn’t allow me to play with the 14-year-olds in a baseball tourney at Carnarvon Park (arrived too late for registration), so I sold programs instead and made $5 one day and $3 the next. That bought a kid a lot of green leaves and jujubes back in the day.

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