Bleeding Tricolour: Gaels receivers Ioannides, Valberg sign CFL contracts

Four members of the Queen's Golden Gaels offence have signed pro contracts for next season.

The word out of Kingston is two-time all-Canadian Scott Valberg and fellow receiver Chris Ioannides have signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and B.C. Lions as free agents, respectively. Two members of the offensive line which protected quarterback Dan Brannagan so well, left guard Vince DeCivita and right tackle Jon Koidis, have signed to play in a league in Switzerland, beginning in January.

There should be more to come abut this from both Queen's and the Kingston media in the next couple days.

The Vanier Cup was nice, but it makes it even more special to hear coach Pat Sheahan's players have earned opportunities to play more football. Speaking as a grad, there is happiness that that DeCivita, Ioannides, Koidis and Valberg get to play a little more football. Being able to point out graduates who have moved on to the next level should also be a recruiting chip.

A decade ago, Queen's CFL representation consisted of Jock Climie and Brad Elberg — two players in the entire league. Now almost every team in the league has at least one ex-Gael.

Defensive end-linebacker Shomari Williams is projected as a first-round pick in the 2010 CFL draft. I am no expert on these matters, but slotback Devan Sheahan has the size and speed to likely warrant a look. Outside linebackers Alex Daprato and Chris Smith were each fourth-year players this past season, so they are draft-eligible. Both are pretty heady players who play a kind a hybrid linebacker-DB position.

Also, as observers such as the FAN 590's Mike Hogan have noted, if someone doesn't try to find a spot for cornerback-kick returner Jimmy Allin, then there's nothing real in the world anymore.

It's a nice payoff for Valberg, who appealed successfully to get a season of eligibility back so he could play this season. He ended up leading CIS in receiving for the second season in a row and also caught the touchdown passes which put Queen's ahead for good in both the Yates Cup vs. Western and the Vanier Cup against Calgary.

Ioannides — it's hard to forget the passage from a Mike Koreen column in the Kingston Whig-Standard about him being slumped, despondent, against the goal post after the 2008 playoff loss vs. Ottawa — made several catches which were just as huge in the grand scheme. He caught a pass with 3.3 seconds left to set up the winning field goal in the wild 52-49 win over Guelph in the season opener. He also caught a third-down pass on the game-winning drive in the Oct. 17 win over Western.

Both receivers played a lot of special teams this past season, which should help them in their bids to crack a CFL roster next season.

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

B.C. Lions - Saskatchewan Roughriders live blog

It's a crucial battle for playoff positioning in the CFL West Division, as the 8-6-1 Saskatchewan Roughriders take on the 8-7 B.C. Lions. Game time is 5:30 p.m. Eastern/2:30 p.m. Pacific. Join me in the live blog below!

CFL live blog: B.C. Lions - Winnipeg Blue Bombers

wWe interrupt your regularly scheduled Sunday for a spur-of-the-moment CFL live blog! The 7-7 B.C. Lions are on the road against the 6-8 Winnipeg Blue Bombers in a game that could have huge playoff implications. Come join in the action starting at 5 p.m. Eastern/2 p.m. Pacific.

Friday Night Football: Lions-Eskimos live blog!

I'll be live-blogging tonight's CFL clash between the B.C. Lions and the Edmonton Eskimos here and at Sporting Madness. It should be a good one with plenty of playoff implications, given the logjam in the West Division. Come join me after the jump at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Pacific!

B.C. Lions - Montreal Alouettes live blog

For those who like football of the three-down variety, I'll be live-blogging today's B.C. Lions - Montreal Alouettes CFL match. The game is on TSN in Canada; American viewers can check out the U.S. broadcast schedule and Internet coverage options at the league homepage. Preview is here. Come join in!

Michael Lewis' book gets Bullockized, and that's OK

There probably is an essay to be had about how Hollywood killed the football movie.

In the here and now, today's take-home is there are two ways to try to adapt a Michael Lewis book that's ostensibly about sports. Try to hit a film geek home run and risk having it get stuck in development hell such as with the Moneyball movie, or switching to football metaphors, run it up the middle by turning into a Sandra Bullock movie.

Honestly, now that the trailer for The Blind Side is out, it's reminiscent of when Peter Griffin completely sabotaged a production of The King and I and Lois admits, "Anyone who can get that from that deserves credit." In short, holy doodle:



The Blind Side is due in theatres in November.

It has the same director as The Rookie, the Disneyfied based-on-a-true-story baseball movie where Dennis Quaid played Jim Morris, the high school science teacher who made a comeback in his mid-30s and actually pitched for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Lewis' 2006 The Blind Side, which touched on pretty much everything about contemporary America such as race, jock culture, Christian materialism and the growing gap between rich and poor. It was all done by relating how Michael Oher, who is African American, was taken in by a rich, white family headed by a power couple, Leigh Ann and Sean Tuohy.

The naturally dark-haired, dark-eyed Bullock plays blond, blue-eyed Leigh Ann Tuohy, since they have an uncanny resemblance.

Lewis' choice to ae it a biography of the NFL's emphasis on the left tackle position was more of an entry point to draw in the thinking sports fan, so-called, whose ego needs to believe that they have a social conscience. It was a remarkable story long before Oher matured into a first-round NFL draft choice.

Lewis' books are always a kind of theatre of the mind.

It would be a fair stretch to say the same about a Sandra Bullock vehicle. She is on a personal Hollywood no-fly list — as in if he/she is in it, it doesn't fly — that includes but is not limited to Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Nicolas Cage, Reese Witherspoon, Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl and Tom Cruise. They're all wonderful, talented people whose movies should be avoided for the same reason you stopped eating McDonald's, part because of the caloric content but more due to the lack of surprises.

All the trailer is missing is a scene where Sandra/Leigh Ann breaks the fourth wall and demands the Oscar nom.

Meantime, this is probably a topic for Bill Simmons and the other officially approved icons of irreverence, but this might be a nail in the coffin for the football movie. You can probably pinpoint it to Washington's Remember The Titans. Maybe it started with Cruise in Jerry Maguire, but the mould changed. Every football movie now has to follow the same template. Cast a bankable star, put her/him into a situation that needs fixing, have the a-ha! moment where the players all decide to buy in and bend to authority, make sure it ends on an upbeat message, and stir. A couple who just wants a night out and something they will not hate too much, they will go see a movie which has Sandra Bullock and football.

Of course, making it more about a coach or mentor figure means it can't be about the player, which is a shame. The role of a lifetime in a football movie, playing Jim Brown in a biopic, is going begging for some young African American actor.

Instead, take it away, Every Day Should Be Saturday ...

"We’ve got another white-woman-saves-poor-aimless-black-people story on our hands. You could, if you were so inclined, condense The Blind Side down to that very cursory description, and to some extent film adaptations can only ever be stripped-down, USA Today versions of the books on which they’re based, but still, The Blind Side was so much deeper and more complex than that. We could’ve gotten at least an attempt at translating that complexity to the screen, but instead it looks like what we’re going to get is a lot more along the lines of Sandra Bullock being, in the words of Jack Donaghy, 'Michelle Pfeiffer to your angry black kid who learns that poetry is just another way to rap.' "

Of course, left unsaid is that the welfare state just doesn't work, while faith-based charity does.

Meantime, you can't just have a movie where a bunch of wild 'n' crazy guys decide they want to win because while winning isn't everything, it's better than what comes next, like in Varsity Blues. True, that was was just a rip-off of All The Right Moves (smart kid with an ambivalent streak dying to be out of high school and out his small town, forever). At least those two movies had the teenaged protagonist self-defining by standing up to authority, plus there were some gratuitous exposed breasts. If it between Denzel Washington shouting slogans and James Van Der Beek telling off Jon Voight with his Texas accent fading in and out like an AM radio signal, it's the latter, every time.

Point being, don't hold your breath waiting for a good football movie. As good friend and Greg Hughes has pointed out in conversation, the economic crisis in the U.S. probably means we are headed for the most dismal age in American filmmaking since the early 1980s, at least among major studios. Complex fare is too chancy, especially with a sports movie, so a serious treatise of sports gets Bullockized.

The upshot is if it gives Michael Lewis the financial freedom to, oh, write a book about the financial implosion of the National Hockey League or whatever captures his fancy, so be it.

Meantime, maybe the idiot is the one who expected anything otherwise or sets himself up to be "completely disgusted" (Mr. Irrelevant) instead of just accepting What Is. Many people will go see this movie without even knowing about the book. C'est la vie. Maybe it is better to be that guy instead of the one watching North Dallas Forty alone again.

Related:
Memphis, we have a problem (Hey Jenny Slater)
‘The Blind Side’ Looks Awful (Chris Mottram, Mr. Irrelevant)
The Blind Side gets its trailer (Chris Littman, First Cuts)

Don McPherson, proof the good guys will win (and why you should respect the WNBA)

Be the change you want to see.

That is one thought that has spun out the the story about ESPN's Erin Andrews (you're sick of hearing about it). One can believe fully completely what happened to Ms. Andrews was simply indicative of a sick nut and a criminal act, but treat it as a jumping-off point to express hope some of the sexism in sports perpetuated on the web won't last forever. That's not the same as blaming people for what happened.

It is germane that Don McPherson (pictured) has been in the news while all this is going on. McPherson, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame last week, has found a post-football calling as a spokesman against domestic violence. Writing a post about him would have been a bit of a stretch for this site (and to be crystal-clear, no one is trying to draw a parallel between what happened to Andrews and domestic violence). Thankfully, this country's ace football reporter, Dave Naylor, not only wrote a post about McPherson's work but re-posted a 2004 article he did on the former Syracuse QB:

"McPherson has always had a strong interest and awareness of social issues. Part of that came out of his experience as an African American quarterback at a time when the position was mostly open to whites. And part of it came from the uneasiness he felt in the role of a star athlete, everything from the special treatment he received to the impressions the public had about how star athletes were supposed to act.

"When he retired in 1994, he had difficulty moving on with his life and began exploring the reasons why, eventually focusing on the issues of masculinity as they applied to athletics and society in general."

"What came out of it was a career as one of America’s most prominent spokespersons on the issue of domestic violence and the ways in which men deal with the pressures and expectations related to masculinity. Don has spoken to U.S. Congress, been on Oprah Winfrey and crossed North America speaking to audiences of all sorts.

"And with the profile of a retired football player, he is able to reach new audiences with these kinds of talks. He is also the founder and former executive director of the Sports Leadership Institute at Adelphi University on Long Island."

McPherson is not the first person nor the last player who was ambivalent about certain aspects of pro football. It was a big theme in North Dallas Forty. There was a quarterback around the same age as McPherson named Timm Rosenbach, who walked away from the NFL in the early 1990s because "he began to 'despise,' as he said, the dehumanizing aspects of football that 'can turn you into an animal.' " (Ira Berkow, The New York Times, Oct. 3, 1993.) One of McPherson's teammates at Syracuse, defensive end-turned-author Tim Green, also wrote a book called The Dark Side of the Game.

That is relatable. Everyone is ambivalent about certain things in their professions. Typically, one just learns to go along to get along.

There is a lesson in reading about McPherson's work. Here is a person who is trying to engage people and make it clear individual acts of idiocy (and a man striking a woman is idiotic) don't happen in a vacuum. Oftentimes, it is a reflection of a society which will look the other way about such behaviour. As Naylor related in 2004, the gist of McPherson's message includes:

"The good guys must meet the challenge. Male silence is unacceptable.

"All men have women in their lives they care about. Yet male language often casts them as lesser beings. Telling a boy that 'you throw like a girl' insults both him and girls. The impression can last a lifetime."

Eradicating domestic violence, of course, is way more important than changing how women are represented in sports media. However, the "silence is unacceptable" part should strike a note with anyone who has ever wanted to change anything about her/his profession.

As you can guess, on this end that would entail how the sports media in North America depicts women. This is coming from a male feminist, but one who is also a What Is guy.

There was little arguing when Bruce Arthur wrote in The National Post, "This is an industry of men, writing and talking about the exploits of men. Women's sports don't sell, not really, unless sex appeal is involved. Outside of women's tennis — where Anna Kournikova was the biggest thing in the sport, and not for her play — women are largely destined to be cheerleaders, or sideline reporters, or ignored."

Arthur, who's a fine writer, was just stating What Is. It's a minor point to note Women's Professional Soccer has had a successful launch or that the WNBA might add another stand-alone franchise (one that doesn't share an arena with the NBA) and that its has increased sponsorships and stayed lean and mean, much like the CFL, another niche league (an entire WNBA team's payroll is less than $1 million for an 11-player roster). If you believe betting action signifies a groundswell of support for a sport, it's noteworthy that Covers.com, a sports betting site, offers advice on WNBA games, which is proof the league is getting more respect or that gamblers will bet on anything.

It's not clear how one brings about change. On a personal level, while writing features for Sun Media on high school and university-aged athletes the past two years, there has always been an effort to give the young females and males equal space. Write a feature about a girl from the west end one week, then try to find a boy from the east end the next. Similarly, on cisblog.ca, Rob Pettapiece came up with the idea of eschewing the label women's basketball on posts and just using basketball.

Those are small moves, but maybe it's better than directly challenging people. Local actions have universal repercussions, right?

In a sense, the person who violated Erin Andrews was a grotesque. That's a literary term for a reprehensible being who points out a society's hypocrisies. No one is to blame for what happened save for the perpetrator ). Perhaps wanting to believe it ends with the perpetrator is because people don't want to challenge their beliefs. And that is fine. You're not required to use sports for introspection.

However, to some extent, it does "lay bare the Internet culture ... that preaches everything is designed for entertainment." (Chris Zelkovich, Sports Media Watch.) We also know that in Arthur's "industry of men," many conversations take place about women that leave people "mortified," in Jeff Pearlman's phrasing. Perhaps that has to change, little by little.

Maybe if you're a guy, you don't see why you should have to care. Think of Don McPherson, though, who saw something he couldn't abide and has spoken up. There's someone being the change he wants to see. It's probably not easy.

(McPherson's work had come to attention before Naylor wrote about him, but it seemed like a stretch for this site. McPherson played at Syracuse, but that 1987 season was ahead of my time and I am an Orange basketball fan who never paid much attention to the football team even when Donovan McNabb was leading them to the Orange Bowl. You know that was a long time ago.)

Update: Oddly enough, a few hours after this post went up, Ben York wrote a piece for Dime magazine, "Why You Need To Pay Attention To The WNBA."

"The general knock against the WNBA (usually from people who haven’t spent a single minute watching it) is that it’s less fun or enjoyable to watch; the players are faster, better, and flashier in the NBA. To that I have to pull the 'true fan; card. Yes, there is probably more flash, showmanship, and dunking in the NBA … but does that really make it a better league to watch? On the contrary, too often it becomes solely about that and the basic foundations of the game are lost. Hey, I enjoy seeing an amazing dunk or athletic play as much as the next person, but I also love to see good, team basketball. If you’re honest with yourself, this has been lacking in the NBA collectively for years. However, the WNBA is built upon damn near perfect fundamentals and structured (but no less fun) team basketball. Plus, there is so much competition for minutes and a recurring roster spot that no player can afford to take a night off."

Related:
McPherson gets his due (Naylor's Sideline View, July 20)

Steve McNair: Slain NFL MVP bridged a generation of black quarterbacks

The media tends to overemphasize the importance of someone being the first or last of his kind.

Steve McNair, the former NFL MVP who was murdered Saturday in Nashville, would fill the middle chapters of a book about the progress of the black quarterback in pro football. He was important, as someone who was taken in the first 10 picks of the draft. McNair, who "won’t get inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but was one of the league’s toughest players," (Biloxi Sun-Herald, June 28), spanned a generation when black quarterbacks went from novelty to normative to being at risk of becoming a novelty once again. That is important.

(P.S. Interesting comments from the ex-boyfriend of the slain young woman, Sahel Kazemi.)

McNair came up the hard way, playing at Alcorn State in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, which Sports Illustrated described in 1994 as "small, underfunded and unable to lure recruits with big-time television, yet it has sent a steady stream of players, from Buck Buchanan to (Walter) Payton to Charlie Joiner to (Jerry) Rice, to the NFL."

In that sense, he was the last of his kind, reaching back to a bygone era when the big-time football schools were not open to blacks. One macabre irony of his death is that McNair had just opened a restaurant on Jefferson Street near Tennessee State University. That is the alma mater of one of his predecessors in the NFL, Joe Gilliam, who also died young. Gilliam's nickname was Jefferson Street Joe.

McNair was a few years ahead of the trend in major-college football toward the spread offence, which has spawned a new breed of star, the dual threat quarterback. (He was more of a drop-back, pro-style passer, but since people think in images, he probably would have got a shot in the spread.) Here one thinks of several exemplars who are both black and white, such as Tim Tebow at Florida, Vince Young when he played at Texas, Alex Smith at Utah, current Pittsburgh Steelers backup Dennis Dixon, who if not for a knee injury would have led the Oregon Ducks to the BCS title game in 2007 and, of course, Michael Vick. Scouting and recruiting networks even in the early 1990s were nothing compared to today. Someone would have discovered him in this day and age, when in 30 seconds you can find YouTube footage of a quarterback from the University of Montana who might be signing with the Saskatchewan Roughriders (Cole Bergquist, remember the name).

Less than 20 years ago, people still noticed when you turned on a NFL game on Sunday and saw a quarterback who was black. In January, when the NFL playoffs were on, a writer named David D. at The Smoking Section mused that it might seem passé to dwell on this issue with Barack Obama now in the White House. However, it still draws a lot of water, especially with how Young, Vick and Daunte Culpepper have struggled:

"Aside from perhaps the hockey goalie, the Black quarterback is one of the last frontiers of major sports. The fact that the quarterback is responsible for the cerebral field has historically made general managers and coaches hesitant to put the keys in the hands of an African-American who is characterized as merely a instinctual athlete good for running out of the pocket, with questionable accuracy and limited ability to think on his feet."

If you read the S.I. cover story from the fall of 1994, you can understand the banner McNair carried into the NFL.

"It also makes him, one hopes, the standard-bearer for a new generation of black NFL quarterbacks, the first who will enter the league without needing to break some shabby stereotype about their capacity to lead. Williams's triumph in the 1988 Super Bowl and Warren Moon's stellar consistency over the past decade forced this change, but there's one final step to go: There have to be "so many black quarterbacks that it no longer seems like a novelty," says Minnesota Viking defensive coordinator Tony Dungy, 'or a charismatic type, a Joe Montana who wins so many Super Bowls that the issue just fades away.'

" ... College football has spawned many winning black quarterbacks over the past three years — Colorado's Kordell Stewart, Nebraska's Tommie Frazier, Virginia Tech's Maurice De Shazo; even Ole Miss, of all places, started Lawrence Adams last year. And now here's McNair, out of the same conference that quietly produced Jerry Rice and Walter Payton, carrying superstar intangibles like leadership and grace under fire.

"Of course, people said Florida State's Charlie Ward possessed those characteristics. But once the 1993 Heisman Trophy winner refused to commit to the NFL over the NBA, his supposed deficiencies — too short and lack of a cannon arm — made him anathema. He wasn't drafted, and that created an intriguing divide: It was easy to conclude that Ward must not be good enough for the NFL, but a significant number of blacks felt, as Dungy put it, 'slapped.' Ward was taller than McMahon, with a stronger arm than Montana's, in a two-sport quandary similar to that faced by John Elway as a college senior. His snub confirmed the suspicion that the NFL still takes fewer chances on black quarterbacks than on white ones. 'If you're black,' Williams once said, 'you have to walk on water or be gone.'

"Ward never even got the chance to try for that miracle. 'I remember the day it happened,' says Los Angeles Raider tight end Jamie Williams, who is black and who last year wrote and produced a documentary film on the media's treatment of black quarterbacks. 'My wife looked at me, and her eyes were watering. I almost cried. The guy did it all in college, and he didn't get drafted. I was training with Jerry Rice and Ricky Watters, and they were like, "I can't believe that happened." It hit an emotional chord with black Americans. It gave everybody a sour taste.' "

The record should show McNair carried the standard pretty well, guiding the wild-card Tennessee Titans to within one yard of forcing overtime in the Super Bowl in 2000 and sharing MVP honours with Tom Brady Peyton Manning in 2003. Brady Manning deserved it hands-down, but the voters made a huge deal of McNair's toughness and leadership, which shows how attitudes have improved.

Meantime, talk about an awful, unnecessary death. No one deserves to leave this mortal coil at such a young age, 36 years old. Ultimately, in the short time he had, McNair made a lot of progress, for that he should be remembered no matter what.

Update: Mocking The Draft wrote a very nice tribute:

"Still today, McNair remains one of the greatest quarterback prospects of all time. He was not wasted potential like Ryan Leaf, Todd Marinovich or Vince Young. He was like John Elway and Steve Young – incredible athletes who went on to NFL glory. Much like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton, he was the rare star from the Southwesten Athletic Conference.

"It took 13 years for an NFL team to take a Division I-AA quarterback in the first round when Baltimore took Joe Flacco. It's only fitting that McNair's roster spot in Baltimore to be theoretically used by Flacco after his retirement in April 2008.

" ... What was even greater about McNair was that he seemingly broke that last quarterback color barrier. Doug Williams won the Super Bowl. Warren Moon sustained greatness for a whole career. McNair was the first to be a top draft pick. It's impossible not to think, then, McNair's success played a factor in Philadelphia's decision to take Donovan McNabb second overall in 1999."

Update II:Jeff Pearlman has some good stuff:

"McNair was genuine. Teammates loved him. I mean, really loved him. He was gritty and tough and hard-nosed. He played through pain and thrived at overcoming odds."

Related:
McNair defined the magic of the NFL Draft (Mocking The Draft)
Air McNair; Steve McNair is the best quarterback — black or white, big school or small — in college football (S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 26, 1994)

CFL: B.C. - Saskatchewan live blog

I'll be live-blogging the B.C. Lions - Saskatchewan Roughriders game tonight. It's the first one of the year for both teams, so it should be a good one. There are also several strong CIS connections, which I explore in my game preview over at The CIS Blog. Kickoff is at 9 p.m. Eastern, and the game will be televised on TSN. Come join me then for the live blog!

What would happen if....

Over the course of holiday season, some sports issues have clearly come to light that demand either a question or a response.


First off, did the Czechs feel like the folks Romans used to torture at the colosseum once the score reached 5-0?

How can the NHL justify watching the Phoenix Coyotes lose $35 million IN OPERATIONS ALONE, and not justify another Canadian Franchise? Unless they want to screw the player's union and keep the escrow money?

Why can't that franchise be in Toronto (perhaps somewhere in northern Toronto?), Kitchener-Waterloo or, perhaps Winnipeg?

How can the Baseball Hall of Fame voters justify excluding Tim Raines from the Hall of Fame, yet consider the 'roid ragers that will come up on the ballot in upcoming years?

Why does the Hockey Hall of Fame seemingly let anyone with 1,000 points and a handshake into its hallowed shrine, when Baseball has standards?

How can those standards exclude Tom Cheek from the media wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Why doesn't Bob Cole call curling games, a sport he once played at a high level, instead of hockey, a sport he can clearly not can't keep up with anymore?

How will Bob Cole cover Vancouver Canucks games once Sundin teams up with the Sedin twins?

(editor's note: Probably like this: "There he goes! Whoa Baby, look at him go. What a pass to the Sunnnnnnedin."

Why hasn't Martin Sheen ever played a baseball manager in a movie?

Why didn't Oren Koules stick to making bad horror flicks and mediocre TV shows? Was he expecting to catch lightning in a bottle and settled for aging free agents instead?

Could the B.C. Lions beat the Detroit Lions straight up?

How did the Boston Bruins grab a 10 point lead on the Montreal Canadiens when the Canadiens were the favourites?

Did Rickards deliberately try to find bartenders that look like Bob Gainey for their new ads?

Was Bob Gainey auditioning for a new job in said ads?

If that doesn't work, are Alexander Keith's commercials next? (Willllllllllllsssssssssooooooooooonnnnnn!)

Nashville isn't the NHL's canary in the economic coal mine. Detroit is.

When Stephen Harper caused a constitutional crisis to stay in power, citing the coaliton was undemocratic, did he realize that shutting down Parliament isn't exactly setting the best example?

It may seem to a purist that a dome stadium in Regina for the Saskatchewan Roughriders is a bad idea. But it's not like the fans there had much of a tradition with home playoff games....

Why the Saskadome is a good idea: no CFL stadium currently requires ear protection for games against Hamilton. Health Canada would have to mandate such a law if a dome is built in Regina. Either that, or fans would train in the off season by standing next to jet engines. And unlike the new stadium plans in Winnipeg (which are spiffy, but...) Regina could use the whole stadium year round for public recreation, which isn't such a bad idea in January.

To Paul Beeston: For the love of god, please stay as Jays' head honcho.

To J.P Riccardi: Pulling the pin on the development plan in Year 6 isn't a ringing endorsement. Probably best to redo the resume and hand them out at Wal-Mart. Who knows. That greeting doesn't look too hard, and you might find a decent reliever for your softball team.

The Canadian Football League will survive the NFL's arrival in Toronto ( in Western Canada), but the idea of the NFL coming to the Big Smoke is just as laughable as the Bills playing games at Epcot. Don't believe me? How many tickets did they REALLY sell at Rogers Centre? Not 54,000.

The Continental Cup is an idea that deserves to die, but should be replaced with another, more plausible idea. Games between teams from across the globe can be good for the sport. Skills competitions can work too. Ryder Cup format? Not so much.

Kevin Martin and Glenn Howard may be the present in curling. Winnipeg's Mike McEwen will be the future, not Brad Gushue.

Who in their right mind would pay $2,500, regular price, to watch a regular season baseball game?

Who wouldn't pay $2,500 to see North Carolina light up Duke at the Dean Dome?

How is it possible there's a professional mini-golf circuit? Is there some kind of skill getting past the windmill?

Happy New Year,

Keith the Curling Guy.