With the Super Bowl just a few weeks away, the NFL has already entered the free-agent phase of its business calendar. But this free agency is not some superstar player looking for a big pay day with another team. This free agency is the movement of NFL franchises— even longstanding franchises dating back half a century— to a market that is seemingly greener.

For a tournament that didn’t have an under-23 team, I suppose the World Junior Hockey Championships were alright. I mean, those close games and dramatic finishes are nice if you like that sort of thing, but without Team Europe as your drawing card, it’s hard to make these 18/ 19-year-olds look interesting. 

The Chicago Cubs. The Cleveland Cavaliers. Leicester City. We called them all here at IDLM in 2016. Okay, it was after they’d won, but still… so let’s set some sports resolutions for 2017. 

The year 2016 was not a great year for aging pop musicians, Democrats or the newspaper business. It was, however, a year for the shaggy dog, the longshot and the raggedy-pants rabble who walk the sporting earth.

It’s time once again for Auston City Limits, our horse-race analysis of the 2016-17 contest for the NHL’s Calder Trophy, symbolic of the rookie of the year. We’re calling it Auston, of course, in honour of the Toronto Maple Leafs wunderkind Auston Matthews, the kid from the desert who sharpened his skills in Switzerland.

There is a joke that goes a little like this: How many Torontonians does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. They just hold the bulb while the world turns around them. Yes, Toronto has a God thing. They act like they were the first to recognize opposable thumbs. What’s theirs is theirs. What's yours is theirs too. But even for those who chafe beneath the unholy yoke of the TIFF city, you had to like what you saw on Saturday night in the MLS Final at BMO Field.

Tiger Woods is back. And it’s safe to watch the PGA Tour again. At his own tournament this weekend in the Bahamas, the Hero Challenge, Woods showed enough traces of the greatest golfer ever with a sizzling 65 in Round Two and a respectable fifteenth-place finish overall. This after missing almost two full Tour seasons.

Toronto made a significant contribution to Canadian football during this year’s stirring Grey Cup Festival. Okay, it was the only contribution southern Ontarians made this year to the Grey Cup (beside the acres of empty seats that were papered over for Sunday’s game).

The election was fixed. 

No, this is not a test of the Donald Trump Emergency Warning System. We are referring to the heist perpetrated in full view last week on Detroit Tigers star Justin Verlander. Verlander, who fashioned a 16-9 record and had the lowest ERA (3.04)  for the Tigers, was denied the America League Cy Young Award by a voting scam perpetrated by two voters who failed to put Verlander in their top five selections for the award.

Back when he was the King of the NBA, Michael Jordan was constantly being sought by political groups to support black and liberal causes. Jordan always demurred. When pressed on his silence, Jordan said simply, “Republicans buy running shoes, too.” A man with a stake in the running-shoe millions through is Air Jordans understood the nature of bipartisanship in a very practical manner.

A couple of years ago, Canadian author and social behaviour wonk Malcom Gladwell famously remarked that, in 25 years, no one will play football. (He also said no one would eat red meat, but for the moment let’s focus on the dire prediction for the NFL.) In the weeks after making the remark, Gladwell expanded his hypothesis to say that the NFL is living in the past and has no connection to the society it inhabits.

This attention grabber seemed a little far-fetched when Gladwell spoke. The NFL has lapped the field in popularity among team sports and rakes in over six billion dollars a year from TV networks anxious to broadcast the games. If ever there were a lock cinch for security it’s the NFL shield and its attendant communication, marketing and gambling tendrils. 

Auston Matthews, the rookie star of the Toronto Maple Leafs, has been the talk of the NHL this young season. The first draft pick overall last June in the 2016 amateur draft, he’s shown that the hype about him was justified. For the woebegone Leafs, that is significant. 

What’s also significant was the way Matthews got Toronto. The American product did not play in the Canadian Hockey League, the top tier of junior hockey. He did not play in the NCAA for an American college. He instead chose to play his final year before the draft against grown men, not fellow teenagers, in a professional league in Switzerland. 

Last season the IDLM editorial desk created the Loonie League of Canadian NHL clubs. The idea was to declare a Canadian champion from amongst the seven domestic team. We all know how that went: a big Ofer. As in, zero for seven squads getting into the playoffs. 

So we are going in a different direction for the 2016-17 season. We’re calling it Auston City Limits. As in Auston Matthews and the limits of this highly touted rookie class in the NHL. Judging by the major-market effect of Matthews in Toronto alone, this rookie crop could be one they will talk about for a generation. Certainly the NHL can always use an infusion of good news in the star department.

In the current American League Championship Series, it is the nickname that dare not speak its name. At least, not among some prominent members of the media.

Several notable sports announcers— including Toronto Blue Jays radio play-by-play man Jerry Howarth—- are refusing to use the team nickname of the Cleveland Indians as they cover the ALCS. According to figures such as Howarth and Bob Costas of NBC, the team name demeans native Americans. By extension, so do nicknames such as the Braves (Atlanta, MLB), Blackhawks (Chicago, NHL) and Redskins (Washington, NFL).

The King is dead. Long live the King.

The NHL begins the interregnum this week as Connor McDavid commences his takeover of the the NHL’s alpha dog from Sidney Crosby. Yes, Crosby is still a great player. Yes, Crosby led Canada to the World Cup title. Yes, he may yet lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to another Stanley Cup. 

But as anyone watching the World Cup knows, hockey lovers wanted McDavid and his NHL invention, Team Under-23, to win the tournament.