Losing that fake concern about drugs in sports, made easy

At first blush, it was like someone didn't see Run Ricky Run.

It was tough to stay reined in after reading Winnipeg Sun column pointing the CFL's new drug policy is toothless and PR-motivated. (Rob Pettapiece has tackled the CIS angle over at cisblog.ca.)

Seeing "illegal drugs" and having marijuana lumped in with steroids was almost cause to go off after a long three weeks of seeing much of the drive-by media cock up the Waterloo War-roids story.

Plus it poked fun at Ricky Williams. Who does that anymore? The Washington Times, which is obviously run by liberal guilt-ridden propper-uppers of permissiveness, describes him as "a guy who just wants to spread the love."

"With a policy like this, Ricky Williams might want to come back.

"Actually, the use of marijuana, the former Toronto running back's drug of choice, isn’t even covered in the CFL policy. Neither is cocaine.

"The message to players: if you find the NFL's policy on 'recreational' drugs too stifling, come on up! The Cannabis Football League has a job for you!

"Wouldn't team presidents and GMs, most of whom claim to be so eager to connect with their communities and their fans, particularly families, want to know if their players are abusing illegal drugs?"

A sober second thought is that is actually a great takedown of how old media pander to a 21st-century answer to reefer madness with steroids and PEDs, the shorthand term. As a whole, it talked a lot about the Waterloo debacle, but didn't listen or learn.

No one wants to chat about how CFL and CIS football players using steroids is just a sports-of-the-times thing. The reality a a newspaper column is a 600-word sprint makes it even harder to approach. One might as well go the other way and be satirical.

For the last time, what happened at Waterloo was no shock. Look around. Big Pharm has a hook into about everybody and nutritional supplements can be bought by any student, fact. That has almost been a fourth wall in much of the Waterloo coverage. Steroids bad ... over-the-counter stuff that might work like a steroid pretended away.

Of course, we can't have that conversation. It would force OMDs to confront their own bias and cease and desist from being governed by their hang-ups and need to judge a younger generation. They're not going to give that up, especially when falling back on shallow snark out of uber-defensiveness is available.

That means the above from Paul Friesen is brilliant, and that is said in full sincerity.

He pointed out how print journalism is so self-limiting when it comes to examining anything complex. It was hook-line-sinker on this end, to the point an e-mail had to be sent just to ask for explanation. On further review (a phrase that is apt after the Saskatchewan Roughriders' wild win over the Montreal Alouettes), it works on several levels.

It skewers our dated attitudes about how sports should uphold some notion of muscular Christianity instead of athletes outwitting and outplaying each other for our vicarious joy.

The same goes for how people get in a bunch about illegal drugs. Meantime, they pay no mind all the readily available legal ones that have created a trendy career for women who look a lot like the breadwinner at Mike Fisher's home.



Using Williams as an Athletes Behaving Badly straw man hits on an irony in sports fandom that we don't talk about much. Why does the marijuana-smoking Miami Dolphin have such a stickiness, while jocks who have committed heinous crimes that made life difficult for at least one other human being go straight down the memory hole?

Dollars-to-Doritos says if we walked into a bar showing a CFL game and asked people about Ricky Williams, all could ID him as a halfback who is a lover of the herb. How many could tell you about Trevis Smith, a Saskatchewan Roughriders linebacker whom in 2007 was sent to prison for knowingly exposing his sexual partners to the HIV virus?

That is effed-up that we remember Ricky and forgot Smith. You might halfway seriously wonder why we obsess more over what male athletes put in their bodies than what some have put in a woman's body against her will, excuse the crassness.

That last graf calls out that collective effed-upedness:

"Wouldn't team presidents and GMs, most of whom claim to be so eager to connect with their communities and their fans, particularly families, want to know if their players are abusing illegal drugs?"

Feigning concern about for "families" and using "illegal drugs" as an all-purpose blanket term are classics out of a career politician's handbook.

It shows concern without addressing the matter. As such, each has become a common media trope that could and should be retired faster than the Blue Jays' 3-4-5 hitters on most days.

Families?

A sports team may be family-friendly, but it's not a morality cop.

The Trevis Smith saga actually illustrates this very well. Family-friendly really just means a family of four can still afford to watch a competitive team play a game amid a raucous atmosphere. That's it. That is the connection the CFL (and CIS football) has to make.

The crowd in Regina at the Riders' CFL 54-51 overtime win over the Montreal Alouettes on Thursday is a proof.

The Riders are one of the most profitable teams in the CFL and the most passionately followed. Their fans, like all fans, have voted with their time and disposable income that their support begins and ends with the product.

Having a player convicted of a crime was embarrassing for the Roughriders organization in 2006. Then-GM Roy Shivers was fired while all this was before the courts, but it was for a variety of other reasons. Point being, it passed. However, abject behaviour by players, coaches, or team execs (see Eric Tillman) has little sway with rank-and-file sports fans. They can sort it out on their own and continuing living their lifes without any media moralizing.

That should make it clear we have little to no need to extend the nanny state to the performers in spectator sports. It's like some people want that in order to screen out contemporary life from creeping into their notion of the world of fun and games. Oh, not stupid reality again! It's the damned modernity which shapes the fun and games, pal.

Denying it makes you as a big a goof as Stephen Valeriote. He is a former Waterloo football player who tried to blame the adverse tests at his alma mater on almost all things CIS except the testees (and the two players who have been arrested and charged).

"So you ask yourself: ‘Why were so many players at UW on steroids?’ Was it because that the only way to compete with older, heavier, stronger players out east and out west was to bulk up?

"I don't like to criticize without offering a solution. In order to purify men’s university athletics, I suggest that they adopt the following rules:

"Ban ex-OHLers or Jr. A hockey players;

"One year in junior football or Quebec prep school equals one year of university eligibility."

Purify? Who believes anything is pure now? We find a peace within a state of compromise, so GTFOY, sir. Get. The. Fuck. Over. Yourself.

Far be it to point out CIS men's hockey has not had a positive doping test in almost forever. Never mind asking how the average age of football players at out-of-province schools could have influenced behaviour among players at Waterloo. The Warriors could only meet those teams in a national semifinal or Vanier Cup. (Hah!)

Since Valeriote is a school teacher, one can only presume he'll swallow it wholeheartedly the next time a student fails to turn in classwork and blames it on someone else.

Any culture of prohibition is a rearguard action. Legislating morality is a losing battle. The only line is when drug use is a symptom of a discipline problem that affects one's job performance. Stereotypes aside, it might not in all cases.

Whose job is it to instill the personal responsibility which keeps one on the straight and narrow? The people who look after you for the first 18 years of your life. Parents, the main part of the family unit.

Acknowledging that means baby boomers have to really look at how their four decades' of self-indulgence have trickled down to millennials.

Just thinking about that would make their collective lips numb. There's probably something you can take for that. Which brings us to:

Illegal drugs?

Using wacky-tabaccy-loving Williams as Mr. Bad Example, tongue in cheek, spoofs how careless some in the Canadian media are/were about in providing context on this matter.

Dogging Williams obviously doesn't hunt. His drug habit is far from the worst among NFL castoffs who have come to the CFL in the past 15 years. Remember Todd Marinovich? He was a former first-round flameout who told Esquire writer Mike Sager (no relation) that he shot heroin at halftime during his short-lived stint with the B.C. Lions in 1999.

"Todd retrieved a premade rig out of his locker and went to the bathroom to shoot up. Sitting on the toilet, half listening to the chalk talk, he slammed the heroin. As the team was leaving the locker room for the second half, he struggled with the screen in his glass crack pipe — he wasn't getting a good hit. Then the pipe broke, and he lacerated his left thumb. By the time he got out onto the field, his thumb wrapped in a towel, the game had already started. He took up the clipboard, his only duty. 'I didn't even know what play they were calling,' Todd says. 'Nobody looked at the shit I wrote down anyway.' "

Todd Marinovich did heroin at halftime. Do you need Norm Macdonald to repeat that for comic effect?

And that segues into the drive-by media's blind spot, that aforementioned fourth wall about nutritional supplements, a highly unregulated industry. The prevalence of prescription drugs in everyday life is barely mentioned, too.

People know. However, it gets in the way of keeping a column or story simple(istic).

Rob put it best:

"Now that we have a list of banned substances, and the use of any of them in CIS counts as a first strike with respect to the CFL's policy, an enterprising reporter could take Appendix D from this PDF, then go to the well-known supplement franchise with several locations in the country (some close to university campuses) and whose website lists product categories like 'anabolic agents' and 'pure creatine powders,' then find something with lots of levels of one of the banned substances in it, then ask how many of those products have been sold recently to young men. But I guess that's too esoteric a task."

Of course, that ain't gonna happen.

Who wants to read that drug use in Canadian university football might only be only marginally more prevalent than it is among males ages 15-34 who exercise regularly? That is not sensational or sexy.

It would also jeopardize the concept any athlete who has not tested positive for a banned substance is by deductive reasoning a clean athlete.

Perhaps someone is getting by on eating well and getting eight hours' sleep each night.

It would probably be more honest to just accept most high-level competitors have their little helpers. Every profession has something. Imagine a newspaper put out in a world without caffeine.

That would be much more honest about where we are as a society. That's all this is, a plea for a little more honesty, which means to stop scapegoating athletes, especially the ones in CIS who make an easy target.

The obliviousness to how all drugs reshape our lives is just tiresome. (As a friend put it: "Do you eat meat? Well, you took a steroid.") By the way, the aforementioned Eric Tillman, the former Roughriders GM who had to leave after he was convicted to sexually assaulting his family's 16-year-old babysitter? He attributed his actions to the effects of prescription medication. No irony there.

In closing, it is sickening the University of Waterloo used a criminal investigation of a couple players as a kneejerk excuse to whack its football team and throw 53 players under the bus.

One may only wonder if other Ontario universities are wondering why they couldn't be so lucky to have a gift-wrapped reason to not compete in CIS football, during an an era when the calibre of play is on a huge upswing. (So, so Canadian: it's getting tougher to win, so why try?) It is equally nauseating to see the same 53 players received the angel treatment, too.

Honesty replacing fact-plus-fiction and truth-minus-facts (Chuck Klosterman's characterizations of most news stories) would involve the media not seeing everything as so cut-and-dried.

Specifically, is it that wrong to think the CFL not testing for cocaine and marijuana is barely worth a mention, since neither is the issue?

One, not testing for it might reflect a quaint view there is still some right to privacy left in the world. Two, it might be an admission it is hypocrisy to bust players for that when there would be no pro football worth watching if not for stronger legal drugs used during training and recovery periods. (Those are taxed drugs, so the government doesn't fret about them as much.)

The CFL, by its actions, essentially said:

"Look, we realize people decided we were expected to come up with a doping policy like all the big boy-pants wearing leagues, even though we always have been and always will be an independent minor league with oddball rules. So this is the best we can do. It's not going to catch everybody, but it'll help us sleep at night. Now go work out your moral and ethical dilemmas on your own instead of expecting to find answers to them between the lines of a football field."

The world where a sports commissioner could say that is the world I one day to want to live in.

In not so many words, the CFL kind of did address fans and media as if they were adults. Fans are so there. The media not so much.

That "Cannabis Football League" crack, even if it's sarcastic, is reminiscent of the exact kinds of remark that kill in a newsrooms that are bastions of old-media hubris. It does not reflect trying to challenge one's own set of assumptions, let alone so-called conventional wisdom. It just reinforces it.

Old media got old for reasons beyond technology, people. That's why there's not a snowball's chance in hell it can discuss such a topic seriously.

Bring back the Jets: Taking the high road!

One prevailing thought whenever Bring Back the Jets talk flares up is that Winnipeg is a "warehouse town."

No offence — that phrase was furnished by a Westerner who was born in the 'Peg, honest — but a piece from canadianbusiness.com hit upon that point. The high road to take is when/if the NHL faces up to economic reality, then Winnipeg becomes more than workable.

"(T)he league would have to dramatically contract, which is a possibility considering how many American teams are in financial trouble. 'The NHL has to shrink,' says (Rob) Warren (executive director of the Winnipeg-based Asper Centre for Entrepreneurship). "A source of mine in the league has said that anything south of New York you want to get out of because those aren't good hockey markets. You might find a pocket here or there, but places like Carolina and Florida, those are not traditional hockey markets."

"If the NHL becomes smaller, player salaries will come down, and then Winnipeg might be able to afford a team. Author Jim Silver explains that salaries 'aren't consistent with anything in the real world' and that while players should be well paid, they don't need $1 million a year.

"Warren adds that while contraction won't stop the superstars from getting the big bucks, everyone else's salaries will come down. Then it will be less expensive to purchase, and run, a franchise. 'And, when that happens, Winnipeg becomes a much better prospect for NHL hockey.' "

It is important to keep the horse and cart in the correct order, now that it is open season and on struggling Sun Belt hockey teams.

Most of you know, even if the media does not properly acknowledge it when they're covering those Make It Seven rallies, that raw attendance totals are not a good tell-all baseline. Average ticket price has to be factored in (which is part of why the Phoenix Coyotes with their $9 tickets are beyond saying). Secondary ticketing (which can get pretty greasy) also counts. Is there a resale demand when people or corporations who have tickets opt not to use them? Last, but by no means least, in the NHL you have to sell the luxury boxes, which brings it back to Winnipeg being a warehouse town. It is not a town of big spenders, not that there's anything wrong with that. As the writer from canadianbusiness.com put it:

"The only way the Winnipeg Jets will succeed is if they sell all 50 of their corporate boxes, and at a much higher price than they do now. Currently, a suite at the MTS Centre, for Manitoba Moose games, costs between $43,500 to $67,500. At Rexall Place, where the Oilers play, boxes run from $49,200 to $410,000 a year, while luxury suites at the Air Canada Centre cost $500,000. In order to make money, arena owner True North Entertainment would likely have to significantly increase its annual corporate box costs. The problem, however, is that it might not find any buyers.

"Warren says that so far, no one that he knows is willing to purchase a suite at NHL prices. 'I haven't seen the corporate community step up,' he says.

"Warren knows because he's already asked. 'I spoke to one senior executive with a Winnipeg-based insurance firm point blank whether his company would buy a luxury box. He said no. Another fellow in town, Doug Harvey from Maxim Truck & Trailer — he's a huge hockey fan — also said no. Unless you get a guy like Harvey on board it's tough in this market to make those revenue targets.

" 'It's the cost,' he adds. 'They just don't see the benefit. They don't run enough clients in from out of town to make it worthwhile.' "

It is something to keep in mind, since Winnipeg talk flared up two weeks ago in connection with the Atlanta Thrashers (Scott Burnside at ESPN.com said June 8 the Thrashers are unlikely to relocate, but that does not mean Winnipeg is not in the game). As much as we would all like to Make It Eight for chauvinistic and patriotic reasons, you got to keep your eyes peeled to the economics. That's not a business guy talking, that's a sports guy talking (sad but true, maybe).

Related:
Sports: The return of the Jets?; Winnipeggers would love to have NHL hockey back in their city, but it's going to take more than nostalgia to fuel a successful franchise (Bryan Borzykowski, canadianbusiness.com)

One 'skate' to drop amid the obfuscation from Balsillie and Bettman

There is more than one way to thin-slice what someone says in a court filing. As soon as the word of what Gary Bettman said in court filings hit the newswires yesterday, one knee-jerk reaction was, "Here we go. Head-fake 'em with the talk about Winnipeg and the idiots go for it." Bettman didn't necessarily say he wanted the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Winnipeg; he just hates the idea less than them moving to Southern Ontario, since it would mean giving in to Jim Balsillie.

Now that the throat has been cleared of snarky phlegm, there is a historical precedent people should think about amid the legal hockey tape holding together the remnants of the Coyotes franchise. If applied, it could represent a win-win for both Emperor Gary and BlackBerry boy. Balsillie would get a hockey team. Bettman would have so much hand that it would be coming out of his gloves!

The precedent involves a U.S. city which just lost a major pro sports team — Seattle — and a team located in Southern Ontario.

Of course, this is just one ass-talker's personal theory, not to be taken literally. It derives from:

• A desire to see a second NHL team in Southern Ontario, although its catchment area is very vague;
• Animus/grudging admiration for Gary Bettman;
• A knowledge of the legal pinholes Jim Balsillie must pass through to enter the kingdom of hoser heaven, owning a NHL team.

As some of you know, the Seattle Mariners baseball team "were created as a result of a lawsuit." (Wikipedia.) The city had a team, the Seattle Pilots, which existed for only one season, 1969, before they were bought and relocated to Milwaukee. All three levels of government sued the American League for breach of contract and eventually, the league set things right by offering them an expansion franchise to begin play in 1977.

The Toronto Blue Jays also came into being during that round of expansion, since a baseball league requires an even number of teams. For those who don't remember or find this as dry as a great-uncle's funeral, shortly before that time Labatt's had almost succeeded in purchasing the San Francisco Giants and moving them to Toronto. An 11th-hour effort by business and political leaders in San Fran, including late Mayor George Moscone, kept the Giants from moving.

The thought of three levels of government, the city of Hamilton, the province of Ontario and the government of Canada, suing the NHL might be a little far-fetched, even if Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a professed hockey nut who's not above being litigious. We're probably too docile to take that step.

All three levels of government certainly have self-interest. The city council wants to revitalize the rapidly deteriorating downtown core in the Hammer. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government, as others have already noted, would like to take back some once solidly-red ridings in the 905 area code that have gone NDP in the biggest union town in Canada. Attaching a hockey team to any big federal-provincial infrastructure project, such as the expanded light-rail system Southern Ontario is begging for, would make it an easier sell. (As an aside, you do realize that by 2025, you're going to be nostalgic for the days when gas for your car was only $1.30 a litre?)

There is a scenario which could come into play as this winds it way through the court system. The NHL, as baseball did, could turn around and offer Balsillie an expansion team. It would be a face-save and a sop to Canadian patriotism, plus it is probably inevitable that the NHL will have to put a second team in the Toronto area, since it is one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in North America and the largest where hockey is a major sport (where it ranks in size is debatable, see the comments from Jason Cormier). Two of the larger three, New York and L.A., have more than one hockey team. Chicago also has a thriving AHL franchise.

It would allow both to get what they want. Balsillie gets a team, albeit an expansion outfit instead of the Coyotes, who are presently a good young team that's close to being a contender. He gets time to build an arena that is more accessible to fans in the Kitchener-Waterloo region and in Toronto. This addresses any concern about a team playing out of Copps Coliseum siphoning off ticket buyers from the Buffalo Sabres, who always seem to have one skate on the banana peel which is Western New York's economy:

"The Sabres are always in a very precarious financial position, given Buffalo's shrinking size and awful economy. The Sabres (company name Niagara Frontier Hockey, L.P.) depend on the roughly 15 percent of their business that comes from the Niagara Peninsula, all the way up the Golden Horseshoe to Hamilton. Never mind that after almost 40 years most of the Canadians who attend Sabres games do not root for Buffalo; the main thing is that they’re helping to fill the HSBC Arena."
— Jeff Z. Klein, The New York Times

Meantime, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly will still have "hand," to borrow George Costanza's term, in the relationship. It reduces the possibility of Bettman having to present the Stanley Cup to one of Balsillie's employees in the near future.

Bettman, et al., certainly want to expand the NHL from 30 to 32 teams, even during a recession.

The Hollywood producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, a noted "celebrity puckhead," (From The Rink) is apparently interested in owning a team in Las Vegas (David Shoalts, globesports.com). Please also keep in mind that another fish Bettman would like to fry is to provide a tenant for the Sprint Center in Kansas City, which is operated by L.A. Kings owner Phillip Anschutz's company.

It could become a three-minus-one: The NHL adds Kansas City, Las Vegas and thethe Golden Horseshoe Hammerheads, while subtracting Phoenix. It could also be four-minus-two, if the Sabres' situation in Western New York becomes untenable if the local economy continues to crater; relocation to a more western city such as Winnipeg or Seattle could be on the table. (Klein, a Sabres fan, makes a good point that people should stand up to defend "a true hockey city" such as Buffalo, but he lays on a little thick by pointing out that many hockey people make their home there. They moved to avoid paying Canadian taxes.)

No one knows how an Arizona bankruptcy court might mind. The best we get before Tuesday is an educated guess. However, people should at least be open to the scenario where Balsillie gets his team through expansion, although this would be a few years down the road, so try not take it too literally.

A 32-team NHL with four divisions even works out in terms of scheduling. Each team plays six games vs. each divisional foe (42 games), three vs. inter-divisional opponents (24 games) and one against each inter-conference team (16 games) to make up an 82-game schedule. For argument's sake, here are possible alignments that try to maintain existing rivalries:

• Adams Division: Boston, Buffalo, Florida, Tampa Bay, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton
  
  
• Patrick Division: Atlanta, Carolina, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, N.Y. Islanders, N.Y. Rangers, Washington
  
  
• Norris Division: Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City
  
  
• Smythe Division: Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver, Las Vegas
  

Obviously, the NHL would probably copy the NFL and divvy up 32 teams into eight divisions of four. But the fantasy has gone this far ...

Anyway, this is not a prediction on how it might shake out, but an acknowledgement of a possible compromise. Balsillie is not going to give up. Bettman, like one of those Southern expansion teams playing the neutral zone trap back in the '90s, could just be trying to prolong the inevitable.

It's better to look at this way than to jump to conclusions about what a paid liar like Bettman says in a court filing. Sure, he might prefer the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Winnipeg instead of Southern Ontario. Taken another way, that could be on par with a man saying he'd rather be kicked in the rear end than in the groin.

Going down with the ship

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. The DeRo contract situation at TFC has taken a lot of my attention...As information is drying up there, I anticipate having more time here...

You have to admit. There is something fitting about seeing Wayne Gretzky standing behind the bench of the dying Phoenix Coyotes. The Great One, after all, has always been front and centre with the NHL's sunbelt push. Not only with his trade in 1988, but also in later years when he would defend the league's plans. Spiritually, he never really returned to the north, even after he moved away from LA to St. Louis and the Rangers.

The Wayner has been gone for 20 years now. We aren't far removed from the day hen he will have lived in the US longer than in Canada. The footprint strategy is Gary Bettman's, but Gretzky has always been its highest profile face.

So now he stands, alone (seemingly) behind the Phoenix bench as reports swirl about the impending death of the franchise.

The numbers are staggering. They are $80-million US in debt and already tapping into league revenue set aside for 2009-10. There are now 18 people looking for work, as the Coyotes were forced to lay off 10 per cent of its front office.

Troubling still, the Coyotes apparently need the NHL's approval for any major player or financial transaction. This isn't quite the final days of the Expos yet, but it's getting damn close.

And there are likely more Phoenixs out there - Atlanta, Miami, Tampa and Nashville for sure. Who knows about Raleigh. Even more traditional markets have to be hurting.

Yet the band plays on. Bettman tells us that all is well and Gretzky is still standing there like the Louis Mountbatten of the NHL's Operation Sunbelt. The situation is hopeless, but the league just keeps pushing ahead anyway.

Of course no Canadian fan need to be reminded of where the Coyotes came from. That's just another painful coincidence of this mess for the Canuck puckhead. Maybe we could buy into the long-term plan when No. 99 was ripped from the heartland. Perhaps we might even try to understand when little Winnipeg lost its team. But, not when the endgame looks like this. It isn't what was promised. It isn't right.

Apparently the lease in Glendale is such that it can't be broken. So, it's foolish, really, to suggest the obvious. But, everyone is thinking it anyway.

The solution to Phoenix is staring us in the face. It's time for the team to come home. And if the world is fair, Gretzky will come with it.