There was a time when everybody was working for Grey Cup weekend

The Grey Cup has gone uptown.

The biggest change to Grey Cup week has been lost on the thinned-out media horde in Montreal. TSN having the game has meant the loss of those last-night Grey Cup classics that the CBC used to air for three-down devotees.

Those broadcasts were a rip, more as a museum piece than for the actual games. Look! The Alouettes coach is smoking a cigarette on the sideline. There's federal sports minister Iona Campagnolo in the stands, bundled up in a fur coat. You would never see that today -- a national TV audience actually being expected to know who was Canada's federal sports minister, never mind the fur coat or the coach ... (takes drag on cigarette) "watch the tight end!" (exhales).

It was pure Canadiana, almost compelling in its lameness, but back then, we owned it. It was also unique to us and anything but America-lite that the Grey Cup reflects nowadays. CFL commissioner Mark Cohon or TSN president Phil King have no time for such nostalgia. It's too bad, really. They could cover it off with one simple act -- hire Loverboy as the halftime entertainment.

Alas, Theory of a Deadman will be playing at halftime of Sunday's Alouettes-Stampeders clash. Going in reverse chronological order, the halftime entertainment the past three years has been Lenny Kravitz, Nelly Furtado and The Black-Eyed Peas. No disrespect, but my Canadian Football League does not include the wherewithal to land A-list entertainment. You're supposed to end up watching Colin James or the pre-Styx Lawrence Gowan, alternating between thumbs in ears and fingers down throat, saying to yourself "Why do I support this league again?"

It indulged the most Canadian of traits, the right to eternal self-flagellation. (Thank god Canadian Interuniversity Sport, by its inaction, gets this.)

The first preference for the halftime show should go to a band that is well past it. These eyes will never forget the sight of a middle-aged Burton Cummings banging on the piano in a pair of fingerless gloves while The Guess Who performed in minus-25C temperatures during the 2000 championship game in Calgary. Failing that, it should be a group which has simply hung on long enough to have become imbued with something that miguided souls confer respectability. That must be why Loverboy is being honoured at next year's Junos.

It's not like this would be lacking in synergy. Loverboy has an album to promote in its own right and goodness knows, since the CFL's audience does skew more toward the middle-aged, there might be a certain sadistic appeal in seeing that time and fevers have robbed Mike Reno of the ability to squeeze into a pair of red leather pants (but at least he could once).



At the very least, this simple act of charity (toward fans, not Mike Reno) would remind us that the CFL hasn't lost its -- well, not soul, it's highly dubious to claim Canada has ever had that -- but has not totally shed its old skin. It is neither here nor there that rock and roll "has been sliding towards extinction since 1980, when Loverboy released its first album," as some wiseacre wrote a few years ago while doubling as his paper's music reviewer.

Point being, Loverboy rocks, in their way. Commissioner Cohon can tout the CFL's financial stability, its improved TV ratings, the increased scoring this season and its firm grasp of its market share as it deals with the NFL's inexorable advance on Southern Ontario all he wants. The CFL is in, as much as it goes against the grain to actually praise a Canadian institution, is in a pretty good place, enough to start talking about going back to Ottawa.

Strangely enough, that is almost odd and off-putting to someone who came in an age when the league was rough around the edges, not slick and corporate. The CFL was sometimes almost entertaining when the entire lot of it seemed to have one foot on a banana peel and the other kicking the latest commissioner in the arse on his way out the door.

Those days are thankfully gone, but don't deserve to be dropped entirely as the league moves onward and upward (OK, maybe they do). Commissioner Cohon, do the right thing and give Mike Reno a call, first thing today.

Related:
No panic for CFL during economic uncertainty; There's a quiet confidence here that certainly hasn't been a hallmark of all Grey Cups (Stephen Brunt, globesports.com)
Expect the unexpected when Grey Cup game is in Montreal (John MacKinnon, Canwest News Service)

Snark break ... it just doesn't matter!

• Some us learned long ago that a person worthwhile can put emotion into words without a pop-culture reference every so often. Bill Simmons took the Tom Brady injury in less than heroic fashion.

  "Getting final word on the Brady injury felt like being an actor on a cop show and identifying a murder victim at the morgue: Yep, that's it. That's the 2008 Pats season. You can pull the sheet back over it. Thanks."

  Please, it's sports -- it's the toy department. Everyone, present company very included, has been known to fulminate and do the inanimate-object kicking routine after a beloved team loses, but it just doesn't matter. It's no sign of character to go around in a mope after a loss, well, at least 99% of the time.
  
  
  Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life
  
  It's sports. It lives in your mind, in your gut, it shapes your general view of the world, but it really is only a game.
• Rick Mercer on the difference between the U.S. and Canadian elections: "(John) McCain suffered at the hands of a hostile enemy bent on breaking his body and soul and he survived and triumphed. Stephen Harper, the story goes, suffered from onset adolescent asthma and so was often picked last for team sports. This helps explain his dislike for all people in general."
• There is a bit of disappointment in the UK that a crowd of only 7,500 turned out to see their national basketball team play last Saturday. It boggles the mind to think what Canada Basketball would have to do in this country to get that size a crowd out to see our senior men's national team.

Stuff that's kinda important

• The Hockey News has an item on the newest Kingston Frontenac, Ethan Werek, with the all-important qualifier: "... no matter what you think of ... Kingston GM-coach Larry Mavety as a developer of talent, it’s great for Werek that he bucked the hockey establishment for more than a year..." Translated: His Royal Mavness isn't junior hockey answer's to Isaac Newton because Werek decicded to report -- he's the branch that was holding the apple.
• Remember Darnellia Russell, the American point guard who was slated to play basketball at Lakehead University?
  
  Would that there could have been a happier ending, but Russell has opted to return home, explaining she couldn't bear being apart from her two daughters. In the press release, Russell said "I am really sorry for letting everyone down," but no one should have to apologize if they got homesick from being in Thunder Bay.
• Small world ... Concordia safety Bryan Charleau, who earned Quebec conference defensive player of the week in his first career start vs. Bishop's last Friday, was a standout high school player at Simcoe Composite School during a certain someone's confusing stint as sports editor of the Reformer.

Snark break ... Thinking as Cleary as morning fog in St. John's

• Have you heard the latest Newfie joke? The province's largest newspaper picked the 10 greatest athletes in Newfoundland & Labrador history -- and the Detroit Red Wings' Dan Cleary didn't crack the top five.
  
  Cleary, of the Detroit Red Wings and Harbour Grace, N.L., did just become the first Newfoundlander to get his name engraved on the Stanley Cup, but that was like two months ago. The rockheads also didn't have a single female on the list, which is a bit impolitic. Suffice to say, the commenters on The Telegram's website have let 'em have it.
  
  It's times like this that make it clear what it is about Newfoundland that made it a spawning grounde for the original This Hour Has 22 Minutes Cast -- Mary Walsh, Cathy Jones, Greg Thomey and the curly-haired fella who wasn't as funny.
  
  It's also clear why they left the place.
• Phrase of the day: "Hot buttery garbage."
• Speaking of which, Matt Leinart, might go down as the first quarterback in the NFL history who was actually washed up when he was still in college.
  
  (At least Leinart, this half-decade's Cade McNown, never claimed he was abstinent and then started dating a Playboy playmate.)
• Michael Strahan cannot return to the New York Giants. Him on the Giants and Brett Favre on the Jets? The Meadowlands isn't built well-enough to contain that much self-satisfaction.
• Lastly, with the Democrats gathering in Denver, keep in mind that there's already someone in Colorado who can be a uniter:
  
  

Stuff you might have missed:

• One good read on this Monday morning: While Adrian Peterson gets ready for a second year of KATN for the Vikings, the best linebacker from his high school graduating class, Willie Williams, isn't even sure if he will be able to play for a Division 2 school in West Virginia.
• Former Lynx Andy Tracy figured in a win in his first major-league action since 2004 -- he drew a walk that set up the Philadelphia Phillies' tying run in the ninth inning. They won in 11. (It was against the Dodgers, whose hitting is so bad they need to take five balls just to get a walk.

TWO MINUTES FOR BEING JAGOVS

It takes being a little bit judgmental and holier-than-thou to take great delight in that randy right winger, Sean Avery, being outed as a john in the pristine pages of the New York Daily News. Fortunately, that's most of us.

Honestly, though, it cannot stand that the Daily News has a madam's black book and the only client whose name gets in the story is the Canadian hockey player, not all these "wealthy, successful professionals" who are probably part of financial wheeling-dealings every week where enough money changes hands to buy guys such as Sean Avery and Neate Sager several times over. That's garbage. The again, it's the New York Daily News, whose masthead might as well read "Warning: May contain journalism-like substance."

(There's no sense it getting into whether prostitution should be legalized. That's a non-starter. The only way there would ever be political will to do it is if a couple of the more clean-cut, white-hat hockey players -- if there's a god, Mike Fisher of the Senators is next -- got pinched. Of course, if prostitution was legalized, then Maxim magazine goes out of business within three months. Without Maxim, Sean Avery wouldn't have any idea about what to look for in a girl. There's the invisible hand of Adam Smith right there.)

The only story here is that a hockey player likes sex. Some scoop. Respectable hockey blogs won't even touch it with a 10-foot composite stick.

Poor Avery has just enough of that sheltered small-town jock naivety in him that he actually talked to those trolls, instead of turning off his cellphone. The fact he did only proves that if you don't like Sean Avery, you're legally dead.

It's either that or this conforms an earlier theory that Avery's whole shtick, whether or not he is even conscious of it, is intended to push people's thresholds the grand comic tradition of Andy Kaufman or Lenny Bruce. If that's the case, then Avery burned himself in order to pull off an even bigger burn on those tabloid twerps and all their enablers in the legitimate media who follow up on this claptrap.

Attaboy, Avery.

Related:
Sean Avery in hooker's little black block (N.Y. Daily News)
Client Number 16: Avery and Spitzer Connected By More Than New York (Deadspin)