About a special Sunday for Tiger Woods and golf…superlatives rule the day on air and in print…Jeff Hamilton telling it like it is…fans stay away in droves for CFL games…and power rankings

Musings on a Monday morning with no frost on the pumpkin…

Yes, now that you mention it, Tiger Woods’ day at the East Lake Golf Club was a gripping, compelling bit of business.

The golf itself was substandard. After a birdie on No. 1 to basically seal the deal and deny the occasion of any leaderboard drama, Woods finished with a very pedestrian one-above par 71, good enough for a two-swing victory over an elite yet restricted Tour Championship field of 30 golfers, the majority of whom declined to provide any pushback and melted under his still-mighty sway.

You know, just like the old days, when Woods would show up wearing a red shirt on Sunday and everyone else played for second-place green.

This was different simply because we knew the back story and wondered if the old fella had another win in him.

Justin Rose

Woods already had been there and done that 79 times on the Professional Golf Association Tour by the time he and his raunchy, swarming mob arrived at the 18th green at East Lake GC, but not since 2013. His life had become a mish-mash of back surgeries, front-page scandal, and fodder for every late-night, talk-TV comic looking for a cheap laugh. His golf game was non-existent.

The doubters (guilty as charged) expected him to crumble on Sunday. Instead it was Rory McIlroy who buckled. And Justin Rose who flailed.

Woods was back in the victor’s circle, and the scene at the 18th was astonishing. It was a magical sporting moment.

Slammin’ Sammy

The talking heads on NBC tripped over each other searching for superlatives to define the moment. Historic was an oft-heard word, even though there was nothing historic about the occasion. An 80th PGA win is a milestone, to be sure, but Sam Snead had 82, so history is found on Slammin’ Sammy’s scorecard.

After the fact, wordsmith’s attempted to catalog Woods’ success, and it has been an exercise in excess for some. Examples:

Jay Busbee of Yahoo Sports: “So let’s go ahead and call this what it is: the greatest comeback in sports history.”

(I don’t know. Being stabbed between the shoulder blades with a nine-inch boning knife during a tennis match, disappearing for two years and living in absolute fear, then returning to win a Grand Slam title might trump it.)

Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail: “If he can close the circle and win a fifth Masters, it would be a bigger deal than the first time around. It might be the biggest thing ever.”

(Yes, that moon landing thing in 1969 can’t possibly compare to winning a golf tournament.)

John Ziegler of Mediaite: “This wasn’t just a win for golf, but for humanity, both of which are in dire need of victories. For if a person, fueled by nothing but pure pride and a desire to show his kids that their dad really was once something really special, can defeat all of his mental and physical demons to come all the way back from the depths from which Woods has emerged, there really might be hope of the rest of us dregs of humanity.”

(We’re dregs because we can’t win a golf tournament? Oh, the humanity!)

If I might be allowed to apply a coating of perspective to Woods winning the Tour Championship, it was one man’s triumph over health issues and personal demons. His stick-to-itness is admirable. Many of his wounds—the ones you cannot repair with a band-aid—were self-inflicted, and that’s what made his Sunday story so compelling. It grabbed us because we can relate to human frailties. We’ve all been there and done that. And it’s comforting to see someone come out the other side in one piece. It does not, however, change the world as we know it.

Chris Streveler

Okay, enough of Tiger Woods. Kudos to Jeff Hamilton of the Winnipeg Free Press for telling it like it is about Johnny Manziel. Hamilton writes this of the Montreal Alouettes quarterback:

“It doesn’t help that Manziel needs to resurrect his football career behind such a leaky offensive line, but it’s the same group that Antonio Pipken (sic) had when he combined for 545 passing yards in wins over Toronto and Ottawa. In fact, if Manziel was anybody else, there’s a good chance he’d be out of a job by now.”

Spot on. And the numbers support Hamilton’s analysis.

Four QBs thrust into the No. 1 role for the first time this Canadian Football League season have started three or more games—Manziel, Pipkin, Chris Streveler and McLeod Bethel-Thompson. Only one of them has yet to toss a touchdown pass. Manziel. Only one of them has yet to win a game. Manziel. Only one of them has yet to total 500 yards in passing. Manziel. Here are the comparison of the QBs after their first three starts:

Now, if only the gab guys in TSN’s Cult of Johnny would clue in and realize how shameful their doting on Johnny Rotten, a very ordinary QB, has been.

B.C. Place Stadium

Three terrifically entertaining skirmishes in the CFL on Saturday, and the head counts at two of them were dreadful—14,479 for the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Argonauts in the Republic of Tranna, and 18,794 for double-OT doozy between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and B.C. Lions in Lotus Land. I live on the West Coast. I hear very little chatter about the Leos or the CFL, but plenty about the National Football League. And I don’t get it. Give me a three-down game over four-down football any day.

Did head coach June Jones cost the Tiger-Cats a win in B.C. when he chose to punt the football rather than attempt a 45-yard field goal in the final minute? Absolutely.

The CFL West Division team that earns the crossover playoff spot will have to beat both the Ticats and Bytown RedBlacks on the road in eight days. Good luck with that. Ain’t going to happen.

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (10-2): Bye week, no harm done.
2. Saskatchewan (8-5): Offence showed some signs of life.
3. Ottawa (8-5): Jekyll and Hyde of the CFL.
4. Edmonton (7-6): Oh woe is the D.
5. Hamilton (6-7): Dumb coaching did them in.
6. B.C. (6-6): Thought they were done a month ago.
7. Winnipeg (6-7): Awaiting word on key injuries.
8. Toronto (3-9): No one cares in TO, so why should we?
9. Montreal (3-10): Awful in both official languages.

And, finally, if you’re looking for a good yarn, check out Dave Feschuk’s piece on former National Hockey League/World Hockey Association goaltender Al Smith in the Toronto Star. It’s excellent.

About racism, Winnipeg and Evander Kane…Puck Finn and the Great One…the Jets and the Nashville Model…the odds on Tiger…eyes on the Raptors…a girl in goal…Tebow time is over…and other things on my mind

I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

See? Evander Kane was right all along.

He wasn’t the problem.

Blame the Buffalo cops, who slapped the cuffs on Evander Kane.

It was all those ungrateful, green-with-envy restaurant workers and (especially) those nasty racists in Winnipeg. And it was those young, gold-digging women in Buffalo who kept calling the cops and accusing him of sexual assault. And it was those same cops who clapped the cuffs on him—in broad daylight on a downtown Buffalo street, no less—and hauled his sorry butt to the hoosegow. They were white, ergo racist.

That’s why Kane never blossomed into the National Hockey League mega-star that so many of the faithful expected (hoped?) him to become.

Well just look at our old friend now.

Kane has landed in a city, San Jose, where (apparently) there isn’t someone wearing a white bedsheet and a KKK hood hiding behind every lamp post. The citizenry is, according to Paul Gackle of the San Jose Mercury News, recognized for “ethnic diversity and lefty politics.” Also significant: “Less than 30 per cent of its population is white.”

And—as if on cue—presto! Kane has his first NHL hat trick. Four goals in one game, in fact. Five in nine.

“It’s great that San Jose is so diverse,” the former Winnipeg Jets/Buffalo Sabres and freshly minted Sharks winger told Gackle just last week. “I’ve heard nothing but positive things.”

Donald Williams Jr. leaving the courthouse with his mother.

I guess Kane missed the memo about Donald Williams Jr.

He was a 17-year-old black freshman and the victim of a chilling campaign of racism at San Jose State University. Three white dorm roommates terrorized Williams Jr., dropping N-bombs, calling him “fraction,” posting pictures of Adolph Hitler, flaunting the Confederate flag and, most alarming, they clamped a U-shaped bicycle lock around his neck and told him they lost the key. That went on for three months. The white boys insisted it was a college prank and, alarmingly, a jury agreed, finding the roommates guilty of misdemeanor battery but clearing one on a hate-crime charge and failing to reach a verdict on the other two. Oh, did I fail to mention that it was an all-white jury?

I don’t recall anything like that happening at the University of Winnipeg or University of Manitoba.

Ironically, the Williams Jr. torment occurred in 2013, about the same time Kane was telling The Hockey News that much of the criticism directed his way in Winnipeg was “because I’m black, and I’m not afraid to say that. I do think that’s true. Absolutely.”

Indeed, Gackle writes about “the racial issues that Kane confronted with the Jets,” but he leans heavily on race and goes light on substance. That is to say, not once does he provide anecdotal evidence in his Mercury News article to support his supposition. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Kane has never supplied one morsel of detailed testimony to confirm that racism was at the root of his trouble in River City. At best, he’s muttered about the horrors of “social media and that sort of stuff.”

That from a guy who once tweeted that Chris Bosh “looked like a fairy” during a National Basketball Association playoff game. Before delivering a mea culpa for that anti-gay slur, Kane scoffed at anyone who took offence, advising them that his comment was “real talk.” So, ya, he knows all about the sewage that pours out of people hiding behind a computer keyboard. He’s contributed to it.

Look, I don’t doubt Kane has experienced racism and/or bigotry on social media. What minority hasn’t? Try being a female jock journalist. Or gay? Or transgender.

None of this is to suggest racism doesn’t exist in Winnipeg. We all know it does. Bigotry too. I just think it’s time that Evander Kane stopped playing the race card and just played hockey.

San Jose State University students protest ruling in Donald Williams Jr. case.

The headline on Gackle’s article in the Mercury News was pure click bait: “Racism, Winnipeg and why the Sharks are a good fit for Evander Kane.” But, then, that’s what a headline is supposed to do. As for the writer, Gackle pointed out that racism isn’t “just a Winnipeg thing,” but he still wasn’t about to let the facts get in the way of his slanted story. He eagerly painted River City as a bedrock of racism and, at the same time, presented San Jose as lily white in soul, if not skin color, yet he not only ignored the aforementioned Donald Williams Jr. case, he also made no mention of a September 2016 circumstance, whereby swastikas and anti-semitic language were discovered in two resident halls at San Jose State University. That led to another investigation of a hate crime. Had Gackle included those two incidents, he had no story.

Wayne Gretzky

Speaking of scribes and facts, Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press is dealing in inaccuracies when he writes this about Jets sophomore sensation Patrik Laine: “So what does (a contract) extension look like for a 19-year-old who has 41 goals in his second season in the NHL and has already scored more often at this point in his career than Wayne Gretzky?” Fact check: To date, Puck Finn has lit the lamp 79 times. He has 132 points. Gretzky, meanwhile, had 106 (51, 55) goals and 301 (137, 164) points in his first two NHL crusades. Thus, Laine needs 27 goals and 169 points in the Jets final 10 games to equal Gretzky’s totals. Just the facts, ma’am…just the facts. It’s not hard to look ’em up.

Mark Chipman: Following the Nashville blueprint.

Wiecek also makes the strong case that the Jets are modeled after the Chicago Blackhawks, but didn’t Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman make it clear from the outset that his franchise was using the Nashville Predators’ blueprint? Well, yes…yes he did. “That may sound strange to people in Winnipeg, that Nashville’s a team we’ve looked carefully at,” the Jets co-bankroll told news snoops in the spring of 2012. “They’ve done it methodically, they’ve done it by developing their players and they’ve done it with a consistency in management and philosophy…I think but for a couple of bounces that team could have a Stanley Cup banner hanging under their rafters.” As it turns out, Nashville South and Nashville North (in the hockey sense) soon might be arguing over Central Division bragging rights in the second round of the Stanley Cup tournament.

Tiger Woods

So, people are watching golf again now that Tiger Woods can get out of bed without taking a mulligan, and Las Vegas bookies are mightily impressed. So much so that LV SuperBook had Tiger listed last Wednesday as the 8-1 favorite to win next month’s Masters tournament. It’s a fool’s bet. As well as Woods performed in the recent Valspar Championship and in the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Sunday, he won’t win an event that includes Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson. That’s where my money would go.

Bond…James Bond

I’m advised that last Friday’s joust between National Basketball Association titans, the Tranna Raptors and Houston Rockets, was watched, in whole or in part, by 1.7 million Canadians. Never before have that many eyeballs been glued to Tranna’s hoopsters for a regular-season game. “The excitement for the Raptors is clearly building right across the country,” gushed Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet. I suppose we’ll have to take his word for it, but I’d like to see a regional breakdown of viewer numbers before I’m convinced that anyone west of Mississauga and east of the Ontario-Quebec boundary is watching the Raptors. Personally, I’ve never seen five minutes of a Raptors game. Mind you, I’ve never seen an episode of Star Trek or a James Bond movie, either, so perhaps I’ll add all three to my bucket list. If I had a bucket list, that is.

Stephanie Labbe

Canadian women’s national team keeper Stephanie Labbe is attempting to crack the roster of the Calgary Foothills, a men’s under-23 outfit in soccer’s Premier Development League. “I’m not a female soccer player, I’m just a soccer player,” she says. Unfortunately, even in 2018, that’s not how others will look at it. I mean, a rainbow trout can shout “I’m not a rainbow trout, I’m just a trout,” but fishers are still going to see a rainbow trout. The important thing—and all that really matters—is that management and Labbe’s fellow players treat her as “just a soccer player.” Bonne chance to her.

Tim Tebow

Is the Tim Tebow carnival sideshow on or off? “I think one day he will play in the major leagues. That’s my guess,” New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said of the football-to-baseball experiment. He added that Tebow graduating to his club’s Major League Baseball roster has become a “modest expectation.” Tebow then went 1-for-18 (.056) with 11 whiffs during seven Grapefruit League games with the Amazins. No word on whether the expectation has been downgraded from “modest” to “it ain’t never gonna happen,” but I saw the former Heisman Trophy winner twice this spring and it seems to me he’s a guy with a future as a college football broadcaster, not in Mets outfield.

Jill Officer and Jennifer Jones

Canada’s reps at the world women’s curling championship are Jennifer Jones and her gal pals from the St. Vital Club in River City, and neither local newspaper has feet on the ground in North Bay. I’ve come to expect that from the Winnipeg Sun, which was truant at this year’s Brier and Scotties Tournament of Hearts, but I’m surprised that the Freep would give the worlds a pass. Especially since this is last call for the legendary hall of fame tandem of Jones and longtime second Jill Officer, who steps away from the team as a full-time curler at season’s end.

Euclid Cummings

And, finally, this week’s Steve-ism from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: “Don’t like the fact the CFL voids contracts after players are charged with a crime. Being charged is one thing. Being convicted is another. CFL shouldn’t play judge and jury here with people’s lives.” So, Euclid Cummings is facing two counts of sexual assault, one count of assault and one count of uttering a threat to cause death or bodily harm, and Simmons believes the Canadian Football League is wrong for telling the B.C. Lions that the defensive lineman is persona non grata. I suppose we ought not be surprised. Simmons, after all, also believes Johnny Manziel, who beat up his former girl friend more than once, would be a swell addition to the CFL. Perhaps he’d like the three-down league to make room for Ray Rice as well.