In a nutshell, this is what went down in the Canadian Football League during the past week:
Commissioner Randy Ambrosie and the Lords of Rouge Football told Chad Kelly to go stand in the corner for being an oinker, and the Toronto Argos told Commish Randy and the Lords to go to hell.
Well, okay, Michael Clemons likely didn’t use those exact words, because Pinball is the gosh-darndest, cute-as-a-buttonest guy in the game. You just want to pinch his cheeks. So, no, he wouldn’t say crap if his mouth was full of pigeon droppings. At least not for public consumption. That’s not his style. The man who generally manages the Argos is a charmer who wins you over with childlike enthusiasm and a smile that could make the dark side of the moon light up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
Except much, if not all, of that charm was whisked away last Thursday by a brisk breeze that, at times, muffled his words but failed to mute his message.
Make no mistake: In allowing his suspended starting quarterback to step onto the practice field for Day 2 of rookie camp, Pinball was telling the Lords of Rouge Football that they could take their nine-game banishment of Kelly and shove it where there ain’t no daylight.
I mean, this was just two days—count ’em, two!—after the CFL had excused Kelly from preseason play, plus the first nine skirmishes (minimum) of the Argos 2024 crusade. In the same directive, Kelly was instructed to spend quality time with people whose know-how is in the area of gender-based violence/abuse/harassment. And yet he was on the field, smiling and smirking and making nice with Argos wannabe QBs? It was business as usual.
“He’s allowed to be out here,” said Pinball, standing before a bevy of microphones on the wind-swept sidelines of Alumni Stadium at the University of Guelph. “The league has given him that permission and we will follow the league’s direction.”
Can you say “copout,” kids?
Seriously, just because the Lords of Rouge Football suspend Kelly yet are daft enough to permit the toxic nogoodnik to act as if he’s a choirboy who didn’t sexually harass and torment a female co-worker, it doesn’t mean the Argos should play monkey see, monkey do.
The Argos know Kelly said and did the abhorrent things he denies saying and doing, and surely they have their own moral compass, one that should have told them to kick Kelly to the curb or, at the least, keep him out of sight and out of mind until he’s up to speed on acceptable behavior in mixed company.
But no. Instead, they flaunt it. They make a mockery of it.
“I don’t want to be flippant here,” said Pinball, being flippant, “but I don’t know how many workplaces you’ve been in where it doesn’t have an issue. These are two employees who had an issue and that happens.”
Good gawd, man, zip your lips before any more dumb assness spills out.
Granted, it’s true that one employee certainly had an issue. That would be the female conditioning coach who, in February, (a) filed suit against Kelly for his sexual advances last season, and (b) challenged the Argos for ignoring the QB’s oinker antics and putting her on the unemployment roll call.
(I suppose Kelly also has an issue—the inability to understand the word “no” when spoken by a female, which is the reason he’ll have a tete-a-tete or 10 with experts in the field of sexual impropriety if he wishes to fling a football in the three-downs game again.)
Anyway, Ambrosie and the Lords of Rouge Football recruited a squadron of Pigskin Pinkertons, their mission being to look under rocks and suss out evidence of wrongdoing. Lo and behold, it was determined that Kelly had been in violation of the CFL’s gender-based anti-violence dictates. Not even a reasonable doubt. “Unequivocally” is the word they used in confirming the Toronto QB’s guilt.
At no moment during Pinball’s 15-minute copout with news snoops did he disagree with the findings, nor the punishment, but he did mutter something about the existence of women in the Argos orbit, as if to say, “Hey, look at us! We’ve got females on staff! And we don’t even ask them to cook our meals or wash our socks! We are sooooooo not the 1950s!” (It reminded me of homophobes who, after spewing their anti-gay bile, say, “But I can’t be homophobic. I know gay people. I think there’s one of them in my family.”)
Pitiful, Pinball, just pitiful.
And, before we move on to another topic, I don’t want to hear anything about Kelly and second chances. He’s had more second chances than the Kardashians have had Botox treatments. He knows what the world looks like from the wrong side of jail bars, and Pinball and the Argos were aware of that before they unleashed him on the unsuspecting females in their workplace.
Bottom line: The Argos should have punted Kelly, pronto, thus allowing female employees to find comfort in the knowledge that they can perform their duties without some creep hitting on them.
Alas, the Argos are allowing the creep to loiter, and he’ll just use more stealth the next time he fancies a female who tells him “no.” They’ll then grant him his fifth, sixth or seventh second chance because the Lords of Rouge Football say they can, right Pinball?
I had to chuckle at the suggestion that folks in the Republic of Tranna might boycott the Argos due to their shoddy handling of L’Affaire Kelly. Sorry. Too late for that. The rabble in The ROT have been boycotting the Boatmen for the past 20 years.
I’m uncertain what Milt Stegall was attempting to prove by joining Winnipeg Blue Bombers newbies on Day 1 of their training exercises last week, but I suppose a 54-year-old man grabbing grass and growling with rookie football players 30 years his junior is less hazardous than a 58-year-old man (hello, Mike Tyson) climbing into a boxing ring with a guy 30 years younger. I mean, what’s the worst that could have happened to Stegall? An extra coating of RUB A535? Still, I don’t get it. “It’s because I have a big ego—let’s be honest, that’s it,” the Bombers legendary pass-catcher informed news snoops a couple of days prior to strapping on the pads for his frolic with the blue-and-gold freshmen. And that’s okay. I’ll take Turtle Man’s novelty act in Good Ol’ Hometown over the Pinball Clemons’ circus act in the Republic of Tranna any day.
On a happier note, Rick Bowness is out as head coach of the Winnipeg Jets, and I use the word “happier” because Bones vamoosed on his own terms and is free to spend his remaining days with his bride, Judy. I imagine Bones would have some tabloid-worthy stories to tell after 40 years as a bench puppeteer, but if he has an inclination toward putting his National Hockey League reflections on paper he’ll likely feel obliged to self-censor. He’s too nice a guy to get down and dirty. All the best, Bones.
Is it just me, or did anyone else take note that the last two men hired as bench puppeteer of the Jets—Bones and Paul Maurice—quit on them? I’m not sure what that means, if anything at all, but it strikes me as interesting.
I note that Maurice continues to sell snake oil as head coach of the Florida Panthers. This was part of his sound bite after his guy, Matthew Tkachuk, and David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins threw down the other night. “Chuckie’s a hundred point guy all day long.” Well, no, he isn’t. Tkachuk has been a 100-point player twice in eight seasons and had just 88 in the past crusade.
On the subject of NHL bench bosses, the Toronto Maple Leafs are on the hunt to replace the defrocked Sheldon Keefe, and here’s a ghastly take from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: “The Maple Leafs’ first phone call should be to Joel Quenneville. The second call should be to Gary Bettman, asking the commissioner what it would take to bring Quenneville back to the National Hockey League. Bringing him back will be greeted with some screaming—but everything these days is greeted with some kind of screaming. He’s been out long enough.” I’m uncertain which experts in the field of sexual abuse Simmons spoke with to determine that Quenneville has been in exile “long enough,” but the last thing men’s hockey needs is the return of a member of the Chicago Silent 7, the ol’ boys who chose to shield a sexual predator, Brad Aldrich, rather than support the victim, Kyle Beach. They kept the sex assault of Beach on the hush-hush for more than a decade, so perhaps that’s how long Quenneville, the Chicago Blackhawks head coach at the time, should remain in exile. But, hey, I’m not an expert on sexual abuse and I haven’t spoken with any, so I’m just spitballing here.
Mitch Marner says the Leafs are “kind of gods” in the Republic of Tranna. No, Mitch. When the rabble in The ROT watch you flit about the freeze and they shriek “Oh, my god!” it’s because you and your playmates have performed another face plant in the opening salvo of the Stanley Cup tournament, not because you walk on water.
Truth is, I hear Marner. I mean, when I was a sprig and we were force-fed Maple Leafs games on Hockey Night in Canada most Saturdays, I looked at the players who appeared on our black-and-white TV screen as god-like creatures. Even when I saw them in their sports jackets and narrow neck ties one September morning in the lobby of Victoria Memorial Arena, they still held the bearing of deity. But the Leafs long ago ceased being god-like for one basic reason—I’m not 12 freaking years old anymore!
That first close encounter of the Maple Leafs kind for me was a bit unusual. I had just stepped off the freeze after a Pee Wee practice at Vic Memorial, and there stood my favorite god-like Leaf, Dickie Duff, to the right of Frank Mahovich. I didn’t have a pen or paper, but I approached Duff with a level of reverence normally reserved for our parish priest, and I asked for his autograph. He turned to the Big M, who reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pen, handing it to Duff. My hockey hero signed his name on the inside of my leather hockey helmet, then returned the pen to a smiling Mahovlich. It never occurred to me to ask the Big M for his autograph. I simply thanked “Mr. Duff,” stared at his signature (it was very legible) and walked away. I’ve often wondered if that snub from a 12-year-old urchin was the reason the Big M suffered his mental breakdowns.
And, finally, I close this morning with a salute to, and fond memories of, a departed friend, Brian Smiley, who fought the good fight against cancer until last weekend. I worked with Smiles at two newspapers, the Calgary Sun and Winnipeg Sun, and I’m here to tell you he could track down, and tell, a good story. I didn’t know what to make of Smiles when he came on board at the Sun in Calgary. He peered at the world through a set of squinty eyes, and there was a hint of “don’t mess with me” in his carriage. I quickly came to the inescapable notion that he was a fun and funny guy. We spent more than one night in Alberta cowboy bars, and I was always confident that Smiles had my back should a chucking of knuckles develop. There would have been 69 candles on his birthday cake come August, and I say that’s too soon for him to go. Damn cancer. My best to his bride, Linda, and their boys, Lane and Blake, and grandson Theo. I share their sorrow.
The River City Renegade 
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