I was spinning hockey yarns with friends in the business recently, and the name Harold Ballard came up. The former owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs died 27 years ago, but the memories of his dyfunction are as sharp today as ever.
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Despite what the hype may say, Conor McGregor will find the footing slippery and margins narrow in his fight against Floyd Mayweather. But there is a way. It's a cinch! It's all about that clinch.
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When I first went to St. Andrews in Scotland to play the Old Course, I arrived late on a Saturday afternoon. Upon arriving I tried to book a round for the next morning. “Ye canna’”, my host told me. “Tha’ Ol’ Coorse is closed as a park for the bairn and their kin”.
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There’s a story— probably apocryphal— about the notoriously fastidious German golfer Bernhard Langer. According to the legend, Langer asked his caddy for a distance on a shot he was about to make.
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This time last year, Rogers had a big problem. In the first year of its massive new NHL deal not one Canadian team made the playoffs. Ofer seven. Ratings tanked, fans tuned out, and sponsors had to be massaged. Lots of people lost their jobs.
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When I was a kid, my baseball hero was Mickey Lolich, the MVP of the 1968 World Series for the Detroit Tigers. Lolich was something less than a fitness fanatic— he loved donuts— who’d learned to throw lefthanded when he broke his right shoulder as a child.
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Over a week ago, Jose Aldo saw his legendary streak as UFC Featherweight champion end, ushering in the reign of a new champion, Max Holloway. It appeared to the MMA world that Aldo was now a thing of the past. In truth, it was Aldo’s dominance of a past era is what brought about his demise.
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Like the Batman franchise, the Canadian Football League has had many faces and plenty of near-death experiences. Like the caped crusader, the CFL has familiar nemeses, predictable plot lines and a miraculous escape at the end of every story line.
So working up alarm for the CFL is a pointless experience. It was here when we were born, it will be here when we die. The faces and names change, but the dynamic remains.
That said, it’s going to be a hairy episode for three-down football in the 2017 season. Let’s do the mis en scene for CFL: The Dark League Rises.
1) The Toronto Argonauts held a preseason game the other night where attendance was outdrawn by several street mimes in Yorkville. There is no expectation that these numbers will grow significantly barring an undefeated season and Bruce Springsteen singing the national anthems. They remain
This, in spite of getting themselves into a new stadium with solid ownership from MLSE. It’s been said a million times so let’s make this the last: the Argos are the national advertising lynchpin for the league. While southern Ontario ratings on TSN remain as strong as the Argos’ attendance is weak, the numbers we’re looking at in 2017 are not good.
2) Having zapped Michael Orridge as commissioner this offseason, the league has yet to fill the post as the spokesperson for the CFL. One source told IDLM that it was like dealing with “kids” when he did business with the commissioner-less CFL. The job is thankless with this ownership group. Like working for nine Donald Trumps. But they need to get the right person this time.
I can think of several people who’d be perfect. But I like them too much to inflict the CFL Board of Governors on them.
3) With the retirement of Henry Burris, the CFL’s inventory of recognizable stars is down to Bo Levi Mitchell and the guy in Regina whose helmet explodes whenever the team scores. There was the usual emigration of names to the NFL over the winter, and they can’t return before midseason. Yes, it’s all about the crest on the helmet in the CFL. But a few stars, please?
4) The ongoing controversy over concussions in sport is doing football no favours. While soccer has also been tainted by the revelations about brain injuries in the sport, football has received the bulk of the negative stories. There still seems to be a steady supply of athletes still playing the sport in Canada, but there’s a decided pushback in the culture against football, rugby and hockey for their violence.
This culture clash also highlights the demographic gap facing the CFL. Its core audience is aging, and the league is nowhere with millenials. Being seen as a sport that destroys its participants has to be reversed if the CFL is to prosper among a younger audience.
5) The league has had a nice influx of new stadiums or upgrades of late. Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, Mosaic Stadium in Regina and Investors Group Field in Winnipeg are impressive new facilities. Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa have renovated facilities. Edmonton still has the Commonwealth Stadium for the 2018 Grey Cup Festival.
But the arena controversy in Calgary has left the Stampeders (owned by the Flames ownership group) stuck in the fossil known as McMahon Stadium— built in 1960. As a result of their decrepit home they have been passed over in the rotation for the Cup. It now appears that the city and Flames will build a hockey-only facility, leaving the Stamps in a bad place.
The hockey team has said it will simply walk away from Calgary if it can’t get a suitable new home. That’s not going to happen. And with 20,000 diehards for the Stamps, the CFL team sin’t hitting the highway either. But even in an oil downturn, corporate Calgary is a huge factor in the financial equation for the league. Getting the league’s best team into a respectable facility is urgent.
Those are just some of the problems of the league. They are serious and there appears little hope of an easy solution. But this is the CFL. A league that has faced the Riddler, the Joker and the Las Vegas Posse-- and survived. A league that starts the season with a gun at its head and Dirty Harry saying, “ So, are you feeling lucky, punk?”
It doesn’t scare easy. So long as TSN keeps underwriting the league in its adventures, financial security is assured. Hope for the best, expect the worst and remember to dress warmly or the Grey Cup game in November.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy.is the host of the podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on anticanetwork.com. He’s also a regular contributor three-times-a-week to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of seven books. His website is Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com)
Demetrious Johnson is on the offensive against the UFC. TJ DiIlashaw is not impressed. But why? We bore into the mind of the Bantamweight contender and look to unravel the wires.
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As Game One of the NBA Finals turned into a runaway last Thursday, ABC/ ESPN (owned by Disney Corp.) decided to liven things up with a teaching moment. The otherwise excellent reporter, Doris Burke, was summoned courtside to remind everyone that LeBron James’ home had allegedly been spray painted with the word n****r.
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Read MoreLooking for an NHL catch phrase to describe the third round of the playoffs? How about May Mayhem? Apparently the stick work of April is not enough. This month’s lawless behaviour permitted by the league is checking from behind into the boards. Games lately have been a festival of players being pitched face-first into danger by a cross check from behind.
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One week ago I was a Trubisky skeptic and a Chicago Bears fan. Today, I am still a Mitch Trubisky skeptic and a Chicago Bears fan.
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Among the thinnest books in history IDLM thinks we can safely add My Yuge Baseball Successes by Mark Shapiro. Were it not for the (now concluded) success of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the man who took over from Paul Beeston as the Toronto Blue Jays president in 2015 might currently be hot footing it out of town just ahead of an angry mob of fans in the Edwin Encarnacion jerseys.
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In sports, everything is subject to good timing. If the measure of champion is the measure of their opposition, that measurement depends on who they beat and when. So then, who had stiffer tests? Demetrious Johnson, Anderson Silva, or Georges St. Pierre?
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The emergence of dynamic young Canadian teams has been a refreshing aspect of this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs. The Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames are chock full of skilled, speedy phenoms, and these enthusiastic squads are giving fits to the favourites in this year’s spring season.
Read MoreIt is safe to go on with life. The Toronto Maple Leafs have made it to the NHL postseason in 2017. Hallelujah! After many years of futility, they’re back in the playoffs.
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