Damn Vikings: Gunslinger who won't go away

In the words of Déjà Voodoo, "I wanna miss you, but you never go away."

Favregeddon — thank you, Daily Norseman — seems l like it might could soon be on like the former republic of Azerbaijan. It's the ultimate fan dilemma. Vikings fans want a Super Bowl appearance in the worst way. Getting there with Brett Favre as the quarterback would be about the worst way, assuming a 40-year-old passer whose arm couldn't make it through last season is the answer to their intractable quarterback problem. Isn't it really kind of a give-up play, akin to calling a draw play on third-and-long, as Vikes coach Brad Childress is sometimes wont to do?

A not uncommon reaction among Vikings blogs is that most would give up quite a bit to not have to weigh in on the topic at all. The notion of the former Green Bay Packer in purple is that touchy a subject. In all honesty, speaking as a Vikings fan, it seemed best to be open-minded about this since early last August, even though Green goddamn Bay was never going to let Favre go to the Vikings as long as they could exercise control over where he played.

The kicker from a football standpoint is that the Vikings have done the least of any NFC North to address their quarterback situation (sorry for sounding like a NFL commentator), but it's not even clear how much Favre would help. He flat-out reeked over the final month of last season with the New York Jets. The ESPN.com report (and keep in mind the four-letter likes to make a lot out of very little sometimes) notes, "Favre has not been working out and declined to have surgery to repair the torn biceps tendon that plagued him the final month of last season."

The cynical response is the quarterback doesn't need that strong an arm in Childress' notoriously staid offence. How much of a gun does the QB need to dump it off to Adrian Peterson or Chester Taylor on a screen pass every time it's third down and 10?

That's for someone else to answer. It's best, on this end, to focus on whether you can cross the Rubicon, in the parlance of our time, on a player you have pure, flat-out loathed for the better part of two decades. If he can still play, fine, but if he's going to be the me-first Favre that sank the Packers and the New York Jets, no thanks. The odds of it being any other Favre are not good.

(It might be too early to take a sheepish victory lap for once opining, "Vikings fans are resigned to the deep-down suspicion that No. 4 is going to torment us until the end of time." That sentence was never written with the idea of Favre throwing touchdown passes to Vikings players instead of interceptions, which he has been known to do once in a while.)

Related:
Source, Favre, Vikes to discuss playing (ESPN.com)

How to save the newspaper ...

Something similiar to Mark Cuban's crazy idea to save the newspaper industry is being put into action, and it's topical with the San Fran Chronicle in trouble and the Rocky Mountain News having gone nips-up.

"NEW YORK (Reuters) – Cablevision Systems Corp plans to charge online readers of its Newsday newspaper, a move that would make it one of the first large U.S. papers to reverse a trend toward free Web readership.

The paper said in a statement late on Thursday that it is in the process of transforming the site into a locally focused cable service."

The debate really is about saving reporting as a profession, or at least as a vocation. Whether people get news from a dead tree-derived product which is dated within a day is secondary.

That might explain why there is some appeal to Cuban's notion that newspapers should be partnering up with Big Cable (a whole different can of worms). Presumably, in his model, a BellExpressVu subscribers in Canada, for a few cents a month, would get exclusive access to what on the Globe & Mail's website. It beats the hell out what seems to be prevailing in the newspaper industry of late, not that anyone reading this needs any reminder.

As Cuban puts it:

" ... newspapers ... should be knocking on the doors of cable and satellite providers offering their subscribers exclusive access to the online versions of their newspapers. That's right, the New York Times should be going to CableVision, Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, Directv, Verizon, ATT, Echostar et al, and offer to each that for 25 cents per month for those subscribers in the New York area, and for 5 cents per month for those outside the immediate NYC area, their subscribers will get exclusive access to the NY Times Online. Non-subscribers will get what Wall Street Journal non-subscribers get today, access to some content, but not the most timely or valuable content.

"If the Times can convince these operators that their subscribers will find value in exclusive access to the content, particularly if they can become part of their basic or near basic service, then all of a sudden, the NY Times and any other newspaper finds themselves with a recurring source of revenue that can turn into real money, while at the same time offering differentiated value for the video distributors.

"On a macro basis, I don't think its inconceivable that within a few years more than a material percentage of subscribers would support an additional $2 per month for unlimited access on all platforms, to all newspapers across the country. If it's 50pct (of the approximate 100 million U.S. cable subscribers) at $2, that's $100 million per month in new revenue for the industry. That's a billion dollars that matters. Plus advertising."

Yours truly has no special expertise in how this could all be matched up. Hear me out on account of livelihoods hanging in the balance, although frankly, many people working at newspapers will not be missed (and there's always one more than everyone thinks, Sager).

Cuban had mixed feedback, as you would expect with an idea which stands to work for the benefit of Big Cable. (Adrian Dater, the Denver Post and ESPN.com hockey writer who's suddenly got less competition on the Colorado Avalanche beat thanks to the Rocky Mountain News' demise, left a very positive comment, by the way. No scribe worth her/his notepad wants less competition. You want more. It means more people to lift the good stuff from.)

At least Cuban is talking about a new business model and how to get cash coming in. It beats the continual, numbing slash-and-burn which has been a huge downer for hundred of journos across Ontario over the past few months. It also beats the arterioschlerosis which has been taking place in the media in Canada, where embracing technology hasn't come with an accompanying attitude adjustment, namely that we don't have all the answers.

I never had any status to begin with, so it wasn't hard to give that up. I realized it was better to ask Pete Toms about anything in Ottawa that encompassed the economy, sports and municipal politics than open a newspaper or turn on a 6 p.m. newscast. Sorry, but Pete just knows it cold.

People still want to be informed and want to read quality stuff. The challenge is bringing in money so it's affordable to produce. It is better when someone is being compensated for their work. The most expensive thing in the world is cheap labour, or at least that's why my dad probably mused whenever he had me with him on a job site.

Having news content synched up with a cable company, provided there was still competition in the marketplace, has a lot of potential. Cuban noted the local paper's website needs to becomea kind of content aggregator, something a writer named Morgan Warstler pointed out recently (it was linked in Cuban's comments section).

"Here’s the plan:

1. Google will license all US newswires with (the Associated Press wire service's) explicit support (they'll help cajole the other newswires), and will alter Google News to display only the headlines, not the abstracts. They will do this for a song, but they will have NO rights to publish any of the articles.
2. Current syndication contracts will be abandoned by newspapers.
3. Readers and bloggers will now have via Google News ALL the headlines and a 'proxied local link' to all the stories.
4. Here’s the rub. Every single paper in America at their website will have (granted to them via Google's master license) every single article carried on the wires. (Ed.'s note: Which means the editors at your local former fishwrap aren't just cutting-and-pasting stuff from Reuters and The Canadian Press. Instead, they're helping make that local story sing.)
   

A localization proxy server will ensure that every link you click at Google News, or from your favorite blogger… you’ll read the article at your local paper's web site. Newspaper sites themselves will enforce this 'read local' policy by automatically re-directing non-local IPs back to the proxy."

Any talk about going hyperlocal segues right into sports coverage. A big reason this site has carved out its tiny little niche is that it is Canadian in focus without saturation hockey coverage, which is well beyond self-parody in this country. All hockey, all the time, works in the short run since it brings in the most eyeballs, which serves the needs of advertisers, but at some point it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Meantime, there are only so many people who want to hear about the high school basketball playoffs, the local CIS football team or the an analysis of Roy Halladay's last five starts, based on Pitch FX data. It is a bit chicken-and-egg. Do people not care or is the problem that not enough people are out there trying to make it interesting and easily relatable?

The university sports example is a convenient one, since it's a niche audience. Rogers Community in Ottawa does a good job with Gee-Gees football and the university basketball team, along with junior hockey's 67's, but it is labour intensive and they can only do so many games. They can also only show one game at a time. Webcasters such as Streaming Sports Network Canada have the advantage of being able to host numerous webcasts at once; three people and a camera at centre court or centre ice is all it takes to air a game. The equipment is getting better all the time.

Rogers has 2.3 million cable subscribers in Canada. Using Cuban's $2/month model, an extra toonie is $4.6 million a month, more than $50 million per year. That would represent a huge windfall in the fourth-largest market in the country. Imagine what could be done to make news and sports coverage more hyperlocal.

Imagine if all of that was synched up and available on a newspaper's website. The game report, the informed analysis, video of the post-game press conference, an archive of the broadcast. The colour commentator might end up writing the game story. It's multitasking. It's modern.

In the sports example, the emphasis would be on what the best journalism does, which is telling people what it was like, not just what happened. The by-the-numbers gamers with the vanilla coach and player quotes everyone has read 1,000 times before no longer serves this end. The gamer, as it's called in the newsroom, has been dying probably since about 1960, especially when there's Nate Silver to do the vivisection in real time and Kissing Suzy Kolber (or KurtenBlog) to do it in a humourous, jocular way. It beats reading about someone changing his daughter's diaper, that's for sure.

Understandably, there are questions questions about media concentration, checks and balances; that won't go away. This is about good storytelling and a younger generation, guys in their early 20s such as Bucholtz and Kinger, or people slightly older such as Duane who realize the old model is dead, having the chance to be rewarded for the ability to tell a story well, instead of being blocked by Boomer hubris.

Cuban's idea might be pie-in-the-sky. It is not perfect. But it beats accepting that we should all chase after the same nickel, which used to be a quarter.

Related:
Cablevision planning to shake up newspaper industry? (Neil Best, Newsday)

If you reference Jeff Foxworthy, you might be ...

It's a good week when FOX Sports' Joe Buck and ESPN.com's Bill Simmons have so clearly worn out their welcomes.

Simmons hasn't stopped mewling about taking the collar on his NFL playoff picks last week, going 0-for-4 on the divisional games. It earned him a Drew Magary denunciation on Deadspin () and a right good FJMing from Kissing Suzy Kolber.

BS: "Can you think of any two people who have less in common than James Brown and Pacman Jones?"
KSK: "Caligula and Judge Reinhold."

There is the element of "who cares? So they're big media stars and you're not," but it's worth sharing since some people be like-minded about both individuals in question. Magary also had a great point that people should maybe get past the, "I think (blank) are going to win," unless you're someone on the level of Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus and FiveThirtyEight fame. His rant would have done yours truly some good after 8-0 Queen's lost to 4-4 in Ottawa in the OUA football playoffs.

Simmons' act was fresh in the late '90s and in the 2000s, but it's become the sport media's analog to Will Ferrell's man-child act. It ticked the giggly in the late '90s and early 2000s, when people -- especially men who realized that you're not going to be young forever, but you can at least be immature -- just needed to disappear into, say, one of Ferrell's comic constructs and laugh like a hyena for 92 minutes. Eventually, you wonder when someone who's a NBA guy in his medium will stop making an ABA movie, to paraphrase one review of Ferrell's thin 2008 vehicle, Semi-Pro. It is often a similar deal with Simmons' references to 1980s pop culture, the Boston Celtics of that era, gambling, Grady Little and porn.

(Et tu, Sagert?)

As for Buck, there's nothing wrong in gnashing your teeth as he somnambulates through a telecast for the 1,001st time. Buck is a good traffic director, to borrow a term used by a TV person in one of Dan Jenkins' satiric novels. He works in television, where they take a break every seven minutes, reinforcing the message that nothing matters (not this is anything close to an original insight). As a Deadspin commenter noted, it is fun to re-imagine iconic sports moments, like the 1980 Miracle on Ice, as they would have been called by the late, great Jack Buck's issue:

Dave Silk clears the puck, it doesn't look like the Soviets will be able to regroup in time, and the U.S. advances to the gold medal game against Finland.

Again, it doesn't matter, but it's a good release. The larger point is that we are at the end of a decade, and in on the very small sports-fan scale, Buck and Simmons should be left behind in this one, where they belong.

(Buck and other play-by-play guys will be a topic of discussion today on Offsides, Kingston's most listened to hour-long sports show, 4 p.m. ET on CFRC 101.9 FM, cfrc.ca.)

Related:
Winless, but not witless ... (Bill Simmons, ESPN.com)
Always Be Covering: Unless Of Course You’re Too Busy Dissecting Teen Wolf (Kissing Suzy Kolber)
Kenny Albert Should Replace Joe Buck as Fox's No. 1 NFL Voice Before We Are All in a Coma (Stephen Kaus, Huffington Post)

A Clockwork Purple... Skol Vikings!

The upshot of the Minnesota Vikings not being able to sell out a home playoff game? Their defensive star, Jared Allen, used the word cashish during a video pitch to fans to sell out the stadium for Sunday's wild-card game vs. the Philadelphia Eagles. What kind of talk is that from a player on a team in mid-sized Midwestern city? You'd expect to hear the Dallas Cowboys borrow a word from the drug culture, but that would require them making the playoffs, apparently.

It is a little ironic to hear that from a player once suspended for a substance abuse by the NFL, which once cast out Ricky Williams for a year for smoking marijuana. This gets to the heart of a new self-imposed rule: No more ironic postings on the Vikes, although that will require the team to hold up its end of the bargain, if not Sunday, then next season, or the one after that, or the one after that ...

Not to get all metabloggy, but it's become a personal rule not to write too much about the Vikings as this site has evolved, lo, there past 2 1/2 years. The Vikes are where I draw the line at being an open book.

Cheering for them has involved too much screaming at the television, plus there is the inanimate-object kicking. Picture the contents of a nearly-full box of Triscuits flying into space after being drop-kicked, and that was during the 2006 season opener, which the Vikings actually won in typical teeth-gnashing fashion (it came down to field goal, as so often happens when Brad Childress is the coach).

A sports blog has to do more than say, "Here's what happening in sports and here's what I think about it," so it did not seem like there was much to add with regard to the Beloved Purple (acknowledging nod: Daily Norseman). There are any number of great Vikings blogs out there. Grant's Tomb has already socked away the distinction of being the best one originating out of Canada. Drew Magary of Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber fame is a Vikings fan. The territory is well-marked.

That's being said, it's impossible to bottle it up when it's your team, and they're in the playoffs. This is no doubt a sign of mild obsessive-compulsive disorder, but during the lead-up to Sunday's big game at the Metrodome, attention has not been focused on the breakdown between the two teams. How Childress' history with Eagles passer Donovan McNabb might bear on the proceedings, owner Zygi Wilf's push for a nearly $1-billion new stadium, Adrian Peterson's fumble problems, whether both parts of the Williams Wall will play, Tarvaris Jackson's readiness for the post-season and the concern that Childress, on game day is the worst manager this side of Michael Scott on The Office, have all been pushed out to the perimeter. Greater minds can chin-wag over those side issues.

This week has been all about plunking down in front of the computer, Clockwork Orange-style, and scouring YouTube for all the low points in Vikings history, as if that might cause the great spirit in the heavens to reach down and help influence the outcome.

You know the whole litany: Gary Anderson missing the field goal in 1999 that would have secured a Super Bowl trip. The 41-0 loss to the New York Giants in the NFC title game in early 2001, although if Football Outsiders had been more prominent back then, one would have seen that coming from 500 miles away. Being knocked out of the playoffs on the final play of the 2003 season, on a sideline catch that would not have counted under today's NFL rules.

It even includes the ones the predate yours truly cheering for the team, or even being born. Darrin Nelson dropping the pass on the goal line against Washington in 1988. Damned Drew Pearson getting away with a push-off to catch the Hail Mary in 1975.

Who knows what forces led yours truly to accept the Purple as a football saviour on NFL Sundays. To be totally fatalistic about it, it was probably an inevitability, going all the way back to the early days of nineteen seventy-seven, when I came into the world a mere five days before the Vikings to become the first team to lose four Super Bowls. For all I know, since I was so young at the time, it might have happened the day my parents brought their first-born son home from the hospital.

(Twenty-some years later, this would all be brought home, thanks to a Winnipeg TV station rerunning a 1977 Saturday Night Live hosted by the Hall of Fame quarterback, Fran Tarkenton, who once said: "I've won two hundred games, all little ones.")

It was fate. I initially supported the Philadelphia Eagles. They had Randall Cunningham. They had the same name and team colours as the high school I later attended. Their offensive line in that era included Mike Schad, who had gone to Queen's and was even from Belleville, a half-hour drive from the Sager homestead.

The early '90s Eagles were a gateway team before turning to harder drugs -- cheering for the Vikings. It probably was a contrarian move. Their archrivals have a lot to offer. The Chicago Bears won a Super Bowl in 1986, when a lot of sports fans my age were very impressionable. They boast the greatest player in NFL history, Walter Payton.

The Green Bay Packers have always been a great team to get behind -- a team owned by its community, plus there's the frozen tundra, the Lombardi legend and Brett Favre just having fun out there.

The Vikings, though, present more of intellectual challenge. They've also made the playoffs more often than either of other two team since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 (you could look it up). They will win the Super Bowl one of these seasons -- law of averages -- and the Vikings' fanbase, in the midwestern United States, on the Canadian Prairies and all points across the known world will have a blessedly Bill Simmons-free now-I-can-die-in-peace moment.

Who knows if the dream will come any closer to reality this Sunday. That's not for me to say. The belief is if that you make yourself bulletproof as a fan, wear that tortured history like a team jersey, Fate will smile upon us for a change, maybe.

The laughingstock Lions... but be careful

Two pieces of writing relating to the Detroit Lions asbatively posilutely must be shared on the eve of Christmas Eve.

Dan Wetzel at Yahoo! Sports went back-to-back on the Lions on Sunday and Monday. The second is the real honey peach, chastising NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for not getting involved when a member team franchise decides to field something less than a pro team.

Kissing Suzy Kolber has its take posted.

The best of Wetzel:

"... football in Detroit is dead until there’s a change at the top.

"Goodell is doing the league and its fans a disservice by allowing such mismanagement. The Lions do not have NFL-caliber players or NFL-caliber coaches. It isn’t an NFL organization.

"He needs to step in and if not move Ford out, then at least demand he accepts league assistance to help the franchise become legitimate.

"...If Goodell can get tough with players for off-field misbehavior, then why not an owner for prolonged on-field crimes against the sport?

As for KSK, it has to be read in its entirety.

This is where I fail. No doubt, given the opportunity and the forum, I'd just say something sarcastic about how being 0-15 cannot be any more ignominious than fumbling seven times in a home game with the division title on the line, when you play in a domed stadium.

It is still win and you're in for the Minnesota Vikings. They should be able to beat the New York Giants, who have nothing at stake Sunday, and the Chicago Bears might have trouble on the road with the Houston Texans. For pity's sake, the Bears could barely muster 200 yards' offence at home against a depleted defence last night, yet won thanks to out-and-out nincompoopery (two missed field goals and a fumbled point) and some curious turns of fate. It serves any Vikes fan right for putting any hopes on the Green Bay Packers.

Related:
Detroit debacle must be stopped (Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports)
You suck. Now start acting like it (Kissing Suzy Kolber)

Snark break ... once smitten, twice shy

First things first: R.I.P., Don Haskins ... is it OK to say it? -- most important college basketball coach ever.

• Go to the washroom, splash some cold water on your face and give yourself a blast if you feel the least bit empty over Tom Brady likely being out for the season.
  
  (Update, Sept. 9: Kissing Suzy Kolber has a typically outstanding parody.)
  
  But, your argument goes, even though I'm not a fan of the Patriots, I just love to watch them because of the way they taken offensive football to such a high level.
  
  Sure you do. That's about as likely as the possibility Gisele Bundchen was first smitten by the cool way Brady delivers a checkdown pass to Kevin Faulk when all of his wide receivers are covered, not his good looks, fame and money.
  
  Did the Brett Favre drama teach you nothing? The NFL is a full-contact soap opera, an industry built on personality, where everyone can have an opinion without having to know the intimate details or the background. It's like the original Facebook.
  
  Brady being out is bad for the Patriots, most likely bad for Randy Moss' stats and bad for the NFL's bottom line. It should not affect your overall football-watching experience and if it does, then you Stockholm Syndromed yourself, big-time. Shame on you.
  
  Point being, you shouldn't get hung up on personalities. Personality is what gets Gisele, while the stylists often end up sleeping alone.
  
  (The Patriots were past due on the karma account. It's as if they tempted fate by habitually listing Brady on the injury report when he wasn't hurt and by not having a credible backup -- not to mention the cheating and the beating Brady took toward the end of last season.
  
  That being said, anyone who cheered the sight of his injury should get a swift kick. Incidentally, you can count on Patriots fans playing the underdog card sooner rather than the later.)
• Is it worth pointing out that any number of contending MLB teams who reeling of late might might avoided that with Barry Bonds in the middle of their batting order? Looking at you, Tampa Bay Rays.
• Michael Cera is a funny kid.
• Emmitt Smith of Dancing With The Stars Dallas Cowboys fame can really be a putz sometimes.

(Jeff Pearlman's Boys Will Be Boys comes out in eight days.)

Snark break ... runnin' down your team

Posting on the NFL almost seems pointless, since Kissing Suzy Kolber has a monopoly on the humour end of the spectrum and Football Outsiders has that so-sober-and-rational-it's-annoying end nailed down.

Epic Carnival is previewing all 32 teams (yours truly wrote up the Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs, don't ask). Meantime,with all acknowledgement and apologies to Tom Petty, we're running down your team ...

Arizona Cardinals
Year 3 is usually when a team takes the training wheels off a quarterback, but that's been set back since Matt Leinart seems overly interested in girls three years removed from training bras.

(Leinart's ticked he actually has to earn something.)

Atlanta Falcons
Spotted in the personals: SWF (Some Woeful Franchise) seeks SWM to play quarterback. Must love dogs.

Baltimore Ravens
No one's saying the Ravens are limited on offence, but the play wristband for rookie quarterback Joe Flacco reads in its entirety, "Take a knee."

Toronto Buffalo Bills
Are standing between Brett Favre and the Jets making the playoffs, so we'll see if the power of mass prayer has any validity.

Carolina Panthers
They are fast running out of whatever holds Jake Delhomme together.

Chicago Bears
Bears GM Jerry Angelo was totally gonna address his team's needs at quarterback, offensive line and wide receiver in the off-season. Instead, he just hid under a big pile of coats and figured everything would be OK.

The Bears finished 32nd in yards allowed during pre-season while facing a star-studded lineup of quarterbacks: Brodie Croyle, Charlie Frye, J.T. O'Sullivan, and Brady Quinn (hat tip: Stampede Blue). Granted, each of them would be an improvement on the Bears' QBs.

Cincinnati Bengals
No one has changed his name or been arrested all week. It's not clear that the Bengals can keep up that pace.

Cleveland Browns
Judging by their recent fortunes, yes it would kill them to beat the Steelers, just once.

Dallas Cowboys
Best prop bet ever: The unloved, ignored Houston Texans make the playoffs. The Cowboys don't and Jerry Jones' head explodes.

Denver Broncos
The day after a nuclear holocaust, a rookie Denver running back will run for 125 yards in his first NFL start.

Detroit Lions
Lions president Matt Millen isn't completely useless. Embattled Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is using him as a bad example.

Green Bay Packers
Matt Flynn is a torn knee ligament away from starting. Can't wait!

Houston Texans:
Everyone should be on their bandwagon, because former Texans GM Charlie Casserly doesn't demand that every media item about him mention that he drafted Mario Williams, who's a defensive star, when everyone else said take Reggie Bush.

Indianapolis Colts
Who is this Lucas Oil fellow that their new stadium is named after?

Jacksonville Jaguars
When did Jacksonville start thinking it was big league?

Kansas City Chiefs
Contrary to what people are saying, Brodie Croyle is a franchise quarterback. Unfortunately for the Chiefs, that franchise is a Denny's.

Miami Dolphins
They're not as bad as they once were, but they're as bad once as they ever were -- and it always happens the week you bet on them.

New England Patriots
President Bush has had more exhausting schedules than the Patriots. Cue Gene Wojciechowski:

"New England's first five weeks of its schedule: Kansas City, at New York Jets, Miami, bye, at San Francisco. In order of toughness, I rank it, at Jets, at Niners, bye, Dolphins and Chiefs."

New Orleans Saints
Without centre Jeff Faine (gone to Tampa Bay), they have an offensive line that feigns interest in pass blocking.

New York Giants
True story: Eli Manning and his mother went antiquing this summer, whereupon they found Michael Strahan.

New York Jets
Brett Favre is there to beat the Dolphins, you dumbass.

Oakland Raiders
They wouldn't be in such a fix if Al Davis was still alive.

Philadelphia Eagles
Andy Reid is closing in on 100 career wins, all of them small victories.

Pittsburgh Steelers
Lucky for them they're in the AFC North.

St. Louis Rams
Just move back to Los Angeles already.

San Diego Chargers
They'll still be a trendy Super Bowl pick next season.

San Francisco 49ers
Their linebacker Patrick Willis is the best defensive player no one's ever heard of -- and having Mike Martz as Frisco's offensive co-ordinator will keep it that way.

Seattle Seahawks
In the latest sign of Hollwood's creative bankruptcy, the film Coma is being remade. Apparently in this version, the victims are shown tapes of the Seahawks' offence.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Between Michael Bennett, Earnest Graham, slightly-younger-than-carbon Warrick Dunn and a healthy Cadillac Williams, you might be able to find one mediocre running back in there.

Tennessee Titans
Vince Young's arm is less accurate than some talk radio claims about Barack Obama, yet he's still awesome.

Washington Redskins
You'll soon find out why they're spending so much time on their fantasy football league.



Quarterback Jason Campbell was smart not to draft himself, because he knows who he has for wide receivers.

Right, the Vikes

The Vikes are getting a lot of love, even with Bryant McKinnie gone from the left side of the offensive line, Adrian Peterson's favourite side, for the first four games due to his suspension.

More than one national outlet in the States has them playing in the NFC title game, or the Super Bowl. A lot depends on how much you believe in Tarvaris Jackson.

Snark break...

• Jerry Seinfeld is getting $10 million from Microsoft to be a pitchman for Vista. Michael Richards would have done it for free café lattes.
• The president of the Vancouver Canucks is a rumoured investor in a store that sells nothing but flip-flops. If anyone knows about flops ... nah, too obvious.
  
  (OK, obviously a NHL exec knows something about business, but Flip Flop Shops? Didn't stock in Crocks take a nosedive because people buy one pair and it lasts them for years?)


• NFL players' union boss Gene Upshaw, is dead at 63, but Kissing Suzy Kolber still managed to joke about it. (Seriously, it's a stunner for someone so accomplished.)
• The Syracuse football team wasn't the first ones to see the biopic about Orange great Ernie Davis. (Of course, does SU want the reminder of when they had a relevant football team?)
• IOC boss Jacques Rogge is a fine one to talk about Usain Bolt respecting the Olympic ideal.
• You're not the only one with a thing for Canada's bronze medal hurdler, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (although, seriously, obsessing and chewing over the Hottest Female Athletes is so 2005).
• Sir, obviously you need to experience the the Stoned Olympics: There's a note on Pro Football Talk that begins, "We just saw Jamaica’s Usain Bolt set the world record in the 200-meter dash. And the first thing that came to mind was this. How fast would he be if he hadn’t spent much of his life breathing second-hand marijuana smoke?"
  
  That's a little bit too far right there, the stereotype.
• Last but not least, look at this still from Zack & Miri Make A Porno and try not to smile.

The midnight ride of Paul Masotti: The NFL is coming

The Toronto Bills won't kill the Canadian Football League.

Only the CFL can kill the CFL. Appealing to patriotism won't save it when the NFL team in New England which bears that name produces much more watchable football and is on TV almost every week.

It's taken the better part of two years to find some middle ground about the NFL coming to Toronto. There's no appeal to joining the smarmy pro-NFL pundits who bathe in the moisture of Ted Rogers' and Phil Lind's soiled and blood-soaked officially licensed NFL team boxer shorts, since they're openly gleeful about ripping the heart out of Western New York by taking away the Bills. You know what, though? It's somehow less appealing to remain one of the Captain Canuck Chicken Littles who act like a NFL team north of the border is some great affront to that national identity, which we're still working on defining, 141 years out from Confederation. (It will be ready in time for Canada Day, really, honest.)

The nationalism arguments -- "Come on, it's Canadian! Come on!" -- go over like some of the CBC's latest prime-time series. The CFL doesn't need shallow nationalism. What it needs is to come up with a style of offensive play that doesn't look like NFL Lite, more scoring and more identifiably Canadian stars.

Those are the three biggest turnoffs about the CFL. Canadian football is crying out for a creative breakthrough, especially on offence. Many people under age 35 or so fell in love with the league in the 1980s and '90s when by all rights they should have become fans of the better promoted, more organized NFL. Why? In part, it was because the CFL had a kind of stylistic high ground.

In the '80s and '90s, the CFL was much higher-scoring than it is today. It was a great league for the kind of performer who was frozen out of the NFL, scrambling quarterbacks such as Doug Flutie, Tracy Ham or Damon Allen, or broken-field runners such as Henry (Gizmo) Williams or Michael (Pinball) Clemons. Canadians -- think Dave Sapunjis with the Calgary Stampeders, or current TSN analyst Jock Climie with the Argos and Montreal Alouettes, were visible part of the scoring explosion. Teams pushed the envelope on offence. Throw two incompletions and punt? Throw an interception? Don't worry about it, because you could get get the ball back 45 seconds later.

That seems absent from the current CFL -- although to be fair, this because the once-stodgy NFL and NCAA have co-opted some of the Canadian game's flashiness and have become much more innovative. Football goes in cycles, but in the CFL, it seems like the defence now has too much of an advantage. Teams have become enamoured of bringing in undersized, speedy defenders to help stop the pass, which is easier to do in a three-down game.

The reaction by offensive co-ordinators have countered this by going to a (shudder) ball-control game, going to a methodical, move-the-chains passing attack. In three-down football, this is like eating soup with a fork, since you can have a 10-play drive and still have to punt if there's a penalty or a dropped pass. It's no wonder the paradigm CFL contest seems to have become a 19-17 game decided by turnovers and which team's kicker is having a better day. In other words, it looks like a NFL game from 15 years ago -- NFL Lite.

There's no one reason for this, but at least one team, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, are taking a step in the right direction by trying to offer more entry-level coaching and front-office jobs to Canadians, meaning teams might not have to be so reliant on Americans with, in Dave Naylor's words, "a strong football background but minimal experience in the Canadian game."

Those arguments about nationalism will hold a lot more water once the league has more coaches and player-personnel people who cut their teeth on the CFL and appreciate how to use the larger field to their advantage. The "come on! It's Canadian" arguments fall flat when the coaches and GMs are Americans and so are most of the key offensive players, the quarterbacks and featured running backs.

Gradually reducing the import ratio down from about 18 Americans to 12-14 per team could also help make the game look distinct from the NFL. Cynics would suggest that it in the short run, it would reduce the talent level, which might make it easier to score more touchdowns. Actually, that's precisely the goal. Besides, the growth of minor football in Canada, the way it's taken off in Quebec and the increased number of players going to NCAA Division 1 schools suggests the raw talent will be there to support having more Canadian players. One consequence might be that teams, as they did in the '90s, will reserve the import slots more for playmakers on offence than shutdown defenders.

It might (stress, might) also force teams, at long last, to invest in Canadian quarterbacks who grew up aspiring to play in the CFL. It often seems like teams have to be vanilla on offence since they're dealing with American QBs who have trouble adjusting to the unique angles and geometry of the Canadian game. Someone who grew up playing Canadian football, even if they went to the NCAA, could have less of a learning curve than the NFL wannabes who will jump at the chance to go hold a clipboard for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Meantime, as greater minds have already said, the league and its partners in the media have to at least try to create more awareness about its Canadian players. There's a perception that the league doesn't have Canadian stars, but Jesse Lumsden is in Hamilton's backfield and Ben Cahoon is still going strong with the Alouettes, although they're barely known outside their own cities.

The point is, the CFL can't just expect people to continue caring just because it's a self-proclaimed Canadian institution. It's been competing quite well, given its means, against the NFL for about 40 years, since pro football became the dominant TV sport in the United States. The arrival of the Bills should inspire a shake-up and a push to define the league.

A branch-plant mentality is not going to save the CFL.

(Now, about the Bills: Anyone in Ontario who's a fan of the Buffalo Bills, like friend of the blog Darryl G. Smart, will be perfectly justified in disowning the Toronto Bills. A Kissing Suzy Kolber commenter had a helpful suggestion: "Bills fans should throw their united support behind the Browns. That way, you can the largest group of some of the most horribly tortured sports fans all together in one place."

How about that Bills Toronto Series corporate logo? The effort put into it really shows, really.)

Previous:
Feeling deflated after the Grey Cup (Nov. 27, 2007)

Inconvenient truths, while playing with House money

A couple hoops notes, because you care, you really do ...

• Please go read Sports On My Mind's take if you're interested in the fallout from jailbird-to-be ex-NBA ref's Tim Donaghy's charges against the league. SOMM's argument is that many media accounts are ignoring the obvious -- court documents show it was Donaghy who, through his legal counsel, contacted the feds in the U.S. in 2007, before he was the target of any investigation.
  
  It's convenient to believe this is just the case of someone's mouth being opened by the spectre of the hanging rope.
  
  NBA commish David Stern has played it that way since Donaghy is just a month away from being sentenced.
  
  The possibility this does go way deeper than Tim Donaghy -- is the historical analog to Donald Sergetti? -- is hard to get your mind wrapped around. As noted, serious hoops nuts probably aren't going to dissuaded from watching the NBA next season. It'll be a great parlour game trying to figure out if the game you're watching is on the level.
  
  Meantime, keep in mind that all the holier-than-thous who will soon be saying "See! This is why I don't watch the NBA!" are probably unshakeable in their belief that this could, never ever happen in the NFL. Never mind that there's much more money wagered on pro football and that the NFL still doesn't have full-time officials.
  
  (Kissing Suzy Kolber captured this in a parody earlier this week.)


• No doubt a few tinfoil-hatters noticed that in the wake of Donaghy's charges, the free-throw attempts were about even between the Celtics and Lakers last night. (L.A. took 29 free throws, Boston shot 28.) That helped make it possible for the visiting team to make an epic comeback -- and the home team to have an epic collapse.


• Here's hoping that the nickname Eddie House was given by his teammates with the Phoenix Suns two years ago, Edward Shooter Hands, gets wider circulation. House, who hit a couple big threes in in the fourth-quarter Celtics comeback, typifies that guy every basketball team has, the one who never met a shot he didn't like and remains convinced of his ability even when others are dubious. Back in 2004-05, House was cut by the expansion Charlotte Bobcats and told, "We don't think you're a NBA player" Now he's one win from a championship ring.
  
  (Jack McCallum's book on the Suns, 7 Seconds Or Less, is the source for the nickname and the quote.)
  
• Talk about your "blind pig, acorn" moments:

  "... the Celtics signing James Posey a couple days ago should be cause for concern among Raptors fans for this season. He gives the Celtics the glue guy they didn't have; Miami might not have won the title in 2006 without him; he can make some shots to help turn around a playoff game when nothing else is working.
  -- Aug. 28, 2007

  Posey had 19 points off the bench last night.

The Donaghy situation just might be a topic in a couple hours' time on Offsides, 4 p.m. Eastern on CFRC 101.9 FM in Kingston, cfrc.ca on the web. The podcast, has it been plugged enough already?