All told, the success rate of the 1979 NHL draft was a staggering one. A whopping 81.7 percent of the selections made that year ended up playing at least one NHL game. The highest rate in a year before that was only 58 percent. In spite of the drama of Wayne Gretzky’s skipping the whole draft process, 1979 still will go down as the most ridiculously stacked draft in NHL history to date.

It was an unsatisfying season at times, but it looks as though the NFL is going to be able to crown a champion at the Super Bowl in early February. Who knows, Tom Brady might win his seventh Super Bowl title, his first with Tampa Bay. Or Southern Ontario’s surrogate team, the Buffalo Bills could win their first title in five SB tries. The CFL wishes. The league that has been awarding the Grey Cup to its champion for 101 years never got out of the blocks last summer. Covid-19 security and financial woes derailed the playing of the 18-game schedule.

Bryson DeChambeau, winner of the U.S. Open, says he worked out so hard that he nearly blacked out on occasion: "There was times where I was seeing a tunnel and I had to stop… A lot of it has to do with pushing the limits of your body and going for long hours of swinging your golf club with a golf ball and trying to help up the ball speed.”

The current uproar over politicians travelling during the holidays— after urging voters not to do so— is yet another example of the “do as I say, not as I do” arrogance of Canada’s nomenklatura in the Lockdown panic. That noblesse oblige extends to forcing hockey players to remain in Canada during the regular season while they head to Hawaii and other warm climes.

Tumultuous doesn’t begin to describe 2020 here at I Don’t Like Mondays. The year began with what we thought was a big scandal— the Houston Astros cheating controversy— and ended with arguments over when athletes should get the “miracle” Covid-19 vaccine. In between the politics of fear ruled the day.

Why is this happening? Because the Covid-19 experience isn’t about Science anymore. It’s about politics, specifically identity politics. Using the pandemic to discredit enemies and buttress authority in the progressive culture. It’s about making sure all colours are accepted as long as they’re red.

He’s always been the product. He read the room and saw the need for celebrity. So he made himself one in the fashion of the big American flannel mouths like Mike Francesa, Chris Russo, Larry King etc. His tantrums and moods and sullen periods were all part of the act. Along the way he invented sports radio in Canada, taking it away from earnest hockey pucks talking trades to Marvin Miller discussing labour law during another MLB strike/ lockout.

Until Covid-19 struck early in 2020, the World Health Organization and just about every other research body looking at masks as a viable method to fight virus the past 40 years had come to one conclusion: they were of no tangible benefit., Then Covid-19 got out of control, and panicky politicians like the prime minister cast about for ways to calm the nation. And, in doing so, to cover their butts for getting everything wrong when the virus exploded.

No dates have been announced, but plans are said to be well underway for Rogers Centre to be replaced. If so, it will mark the end of one of the most celebrated episodes in sport and misspent money in the long history of Muddy York.

Remember how airport screening began with mildly intrusive searches and then escalated as shoe bombers made taking water aboard a plane into a federal crime? Remember being able to take a bottle of wine in your hand luggage? Good times. Project that rollout to the removal of civil liberties on speech and public behaviour brought on by Covid-19.

As the Tour stars now pause till January, how many who saw DeChambeau’s bombing run since June are not going to hit the supplements and the gym to stay in the game? If they demur, they could be like the players who saw an athletic, driven Tiger Woods arrive in the 1990s and missed the message to get fit, hit the range and lose the beer bellies.

What is clear is it’s highly unlikely we’ll see any resolution of the Covid-19 protocols before the Super Bowl in February. The league has married itself to the current PCR tests and hopes to simply have all 32 teams finish the 16-game schedule with no serious illness or deaths clouding play. Anything more— like full stands for the SB game— will be a bonus. Don’t hold your breath. That’s what masks are for.

How many people will support Trump/ dump Biden because of the rappers’ endorsements or the GOAT support? We will soon learn. But nothing about the vote is likely to repair the schism in North America between those who think for themselves and those who want— no, need— to do your thinking for you.

It’s time to lose our fear. Understand that there will be death. But, for god’s sake, open up society again. And that starts with the footballs stadiums, ball parks and hockey arenas. Let ‘em in.

With TV and digital ratings skewed by the gravity of the virus, #BLM and the election, it’s hard to get data on whether the public likes a baseball game without the hit-and-run or golf without medium distance shots. There’s little doubt that physics, physical training and video study are here to stay. But is it baseball? Is it golf anymore?

Jason Whitlock, the black iconoclast at Outkick media, calls James the Black Trump: “His descent into politics and full-on embrace of Black Lives Matter have devastated the game. He extinguished the TV-ratings torch he inherited from (Michael) Jordan. The league that had dreams of matching the NFL’s relevancy is now toxic, polarizing and reliant on rigged Twitter algorithms for traction.”

Sports fans can only hope their stars can live with some SARSCoV2 risk, because hyper-cautious league officials show no appetite for leading the way back to normalcy by using less frightening PCR tests.

Hands up everyone who feels that this surreal NHL postseason is like a Netflix series you saved till you had more time to watch. Hockey in August? Talk about binge-watching. But in a funny way it works.

Useful idiots in the NFL such as Detroit QB Matthew Stafford and his wife continue to defend honouring frauds foisted on them by #BLM and leftist radicals. In their blithe acceptance of Jacob Blake et al. they are insulting women victims of violence and families of police killed in action. They need to folllow the lead of Steeler Maurkice Pouncey who now admits he was had by #BLM.

Polling now shows a significantly drop in opinions of the sports industry. Its positive score in 2019 sat at 45 percent, but fell by a third to 30 percent in 2020. While 25 percent held a negative view of sports in 2019, that number shot up to 40 percent in 2020. Independents’ views had a steep drop from +26 last year to -10 this year. Republican approval tumbled from +11 in 2019 to -35 in 2020. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) dropped only a fraction in approval.