Here’s some stuff I was going to write about this morning, but decided not to write about:
I was going to write about the original home game in Winnipeg Jets history, because somebody should.
The Jets and the World Hockey Association were, of course, an iffy bit of business from the get-go, and we wondered what kind of a buy-in there’d be for what many among the rabble considered a lark—a tier-two operation with National Hockey League hand-me-downs and minor league lifers filling rosters, and a life expectancy of about a week and a half.
The early returns weren’t encouraging, with the Jets basically skating in front of friends and family (1,000 and change) in pre-season rehearsals, which prompted this remark from old friend Vic Grant in the Winnipeg Tribune: “If there aren’t more than six thousand people in the stands Sunday then we know that Winnipeg is a penny ante sports town.”
Well, the turnstiles at the Ol’ Barn On Maroons Road on the night of Oct. 15, 1972, didn’t make anyone’s head spin, even though the going rate was a bargain basement $6 (plus 60 cents tax) for a chair in the Reds and $5 (plus 50 cents tax) up higher where noses begin to bleed. The Jets had 3,300 season ticket subscribers going in, and the walk-up crowd more than doubled that, for a final head count of 7,283 for the coming-out party.
The rabble left disappointed, with the Jets found lacking in a 5-2 loss to the Alberta Oilers, but it was the beginning of a seven-year stretch of oft-glorious WHA shinny in the Ol’ Barn.
Alas, 50 years later, the golden anniversary was ignored by local news snoops, so I’m not going to write about the Jets original home opener either. I guess it’s true what a wise man once said: Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
I was going to write about the present-day Jets, who were strutting their stuff in front of numerous unoccupied chairs at The Little Hockey House On The Prairie on Friday night.
Unsold seats always give rise to angst among owners and bean counters of any pro sports franchise, even if the Lords of True North Sports + Entertainment ought to be used to it by now. When did the Jets last put up the soldout sign? Before any of us put on a face mask and allowed medics to jab us in the arm with needles to ward off COVID.
Many still cite the pandemic as the cause of yet another non-sellout. Others point to ticket costs (a C-note to sit where noses begin to bleed), concession costs, parking costs, soaring cost of living, an uncaring and smug ownership, GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s Summer of Nothing, and players who’d rather earn their living elsewhere.
But I’m not going to write about unsold seats, because these Jets aren’t an iffy bit of business. They’re backed by a dude, David Thomson, whose pockets are deeper than Buddhist dharma.
I was going to write about Zach Collaros, because it seems to me that he’s the heir apparent to himself.
That is to say, as sure as there shall be frost on the pumpkin when the showcase event of Rouge Football—the Grey Cup game—arrives on the Flattest of Lands in late November, Zach will be there to accept the Most Outstanding Player Award for the second successive season.
Oh, yes, I believe his bona fides are sufficient to satisfy members of the Football Reporters of Canada that there’s not been a finer performer on our Frozen Tundra, even if Nathan Rourke had eyes popping and jaws dropping through the first half of the 2022 crusade. And the fact Collaros won’t fling another football until Oct. 28 shouldn’t matter either. I mean, it’s not like Mcleod Bethel-Thompson is apt to suddenly morph into the second coming of Doug Flutie between now and closing time. He’ll have (some) better passing numbers than the Winnipeg Blue Bombers QB, but Macbeth’s play has been as spotty as a Dalmation. He looks like Ricky Ray one game, then looks like he can’t tie his own boot laces the next.
Anybody else MOP worthy? Well, I’d say Ka’Deem Carey has done boffo work lugging the leather for the Calgary Stampeders, but I wouldn’t say he’s having a Mike Pringle season, and that’s what it would take for the exalted members of the FRC to take their eyes off Collaros.
The girls and boys on the beat, you see, are smitten with quarterbacks. They fancy QBs the way Homer Simpson fancies donuts and Duff beer, and the evidence is there for all to see: They’ve dished out the MOP trinket 68 times, and the scoreboard reads: QBs 40, All Other Positions 28.
So I’d say Zach will be off to Regina, and I don’t expect he’ll be flying solo.
Guaranteed that one of the guy’s he’s been playing catch with, Dalton Shoen, will go along for the ride and collect a bauble as the Canadian Football League’s top frosh.
And, assuming I’m reading the room correctly, a second straight MOP Award puts Collaros in rather lofty company, because only four other players (Dieter Brock, Doug Flutie, Anthony Calvillo and Jackie Parker) have been anointed in consecutive seasons, and it’s shouldn’t shock anyone that they’re all QBs.
But I’m not going to write about Zach Collaros this morning, because he booked off work Saturday night and couldn’t pad his stats in a 40-32 loss vs. the B.C. Leos.
I was going to write about The Simpsons lampooning the CFL yet again, because I think Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and the entire cast of characters are a hoot. They still make me laugh out loud, even when the yuks are at the expense of three-downs football.
But I’m not going to write about The Simpsons, because I think you should watch it yourself. Here’s a spoiler alert, though: A left-handed Doug Flutie makes a cameo appearance and Homer does Homer things. D’oh!
I was going to write about shoddy journalism because of a “D’oh!” headline in the Drab Slab. To wit: “Now the West is won.” In the accompanying article, we’re told this: “With the West Division crown already placed atop their heads, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers blah, blah, blah…”
Uh, no. That simply isn’t true.
The B.C. Leos or Calgary Stampeders still have something to say about bragging rights in the West Division, because there’s the matter of the final on Nov. 13 at The Football Field In Fort Garry, and I’m guessing that the Bombers, to a man, would tell the gang at the Freep and anyone else who’d care to listen that they haven’t won squat. The large lads in blue-and-gold livery have clinched top spot in the West, but that won’t buy them a cup of java at Tims.
Finishing first is a feather in the cap. It means you’ve earned a bye to the division final, and the advantage of home turf. But you haven’t “won” anything. And, no, I’m not picking nits or splitting hairs
Any editor with passable knowledge of Rouge Football in Good Ol’ Hometown would know the West Division champion is determined in the final, and the Bombers are a recent case in point. In 2019, the Saskatchewan Flatlanders topped the regular-season tables, but it got them diddly. Winnipeg FC, which finished third, won the West, then claimed the Grey Grail.
But I’m not going to write about shoddy journalism at the Drab Slab, because people who don’t know a rouge from a rickshaw edit sports copy these days. Besides, the squawk boxes on TSN are spewing the same false narrative, and they’re just as wrong.
I was going to write about lumbering Logan Stanley starting another National Hockey League crusade with the Winnipeg Jets and Ville Heinola being banished to the farm again.
As far as I can determine, Stanley’s sole skill is being tall. Heinola, meanwhile, is notable for his skating, passing and puck smarts, but he has the (apparent) bad manners to be untall. He isn’t kiddie ride at Disneyland short, but he’d have to stand on a beer keg to look Stanley eyeball-to-eyeball. Apparently, that’s good enough reason to convince Jets intelligentsia to keep the unskilled No. 1 draft pick over the skilled No. 1 draft pick.
But I’m not going to write about Logan Stanley, because if the the geniuses haven’t figured it out by now it’s a lost cause.
I was going to write about the “new” leadership group with the Jets—Rink Rat Scheifele, Josh Morrissey and Adam Lowry.
That’s “new” like the Edsel is hot off the assembly line in Detroit.
I mean, the Rink Rat and Morrissey each wore an ‘A’ last season. Now they’ve stitched one on Lowry’s jersey. Well, big whoop-de-do.
All they’ve done is confirm that whatever virus ran though the changing room in the past started and ended with the ‘C’ that’s been ripped off Blake Wheeler’s chest, but the defrocked captain has already vowed to carry on as if nothing has changed.
So I’m not going to write about the Jets “new” leadership, because it’s same old, same old.
I was going to write about the mob at Yankee Stadium booing Aaron Judge.
That would be the same Aaron Judge who swatted 62 dingers this Major League Baseball season, the same guy who finished a couple of base knocks shy of the Triple Crown, the same guy to whom his New York Yankees playmates hitched their wagon all season. Now he’s scuffling in the playoffs and the rabble let him know about it in the seventh inning of a 4-2 loss vs. Cleveland Guardians.
“It’s the Bronx, man,” mused Pinstripes skipper Aaron Boone.
“It happens,” said the big man himself. “It’s happened many times in my career here.”
That doesn’t make it right. Nobody goes to the Vatican to heckle the Pope. Nobody went to Churchill Downs to razz Secretariat. And you don’t go to Yankee Stadium to boo Aaron Judge, not this October.
But I’m not going to write about the Yankees faithful turning on their marquee player, because there’s just no explaining the bad manners of some people.
I was going to write about Troy Aikman and ask him to join us in the 21st century, because the former NFL QB and current gab guy on Monday Night Football stuck both feet in it last week with a lazy, 20th century sexist trope.
After Chris Jones of the K.C. Chiefs had been flagged for roughing the passer vs. the Las Vegas Raiders, Aikman was quick to tsk-tsk game officials for the suspect call and observed: “My hope is the competition committee looks at this in the next set of meetings and, you know, we take the dresses off.” Sigh.
Aikman later performed an emergency foot-in-mouthectomy, saying: “My comments were dumb, just shouldn’t have made them. Just dumb remarks on my part.” Well, yes, they were.
But I’m not going to write about Aikman’s sexist drivel, because he isn’t a lone wolf. Male jocks think of women as lesser-thans, so that’s what they say.
I was going to write about Dustin Johnson collecting more coin for 18 rounds of golf than Tiger Woods earned through 26 years of golf. True story. DJ’s take through six of eight events on the LIV Golf Series tour is a whopping $155,758,600 in 4½ months: $125 million signing bonus, $12,758,600 prize winnings, $18 million payout for claiming the individual season championship. Poor Tiger he’s had to scrape by on a mere $120,895,206 for the past quarter century on the PGA Tour.
But I’m not going to write about Johnson and his blood-stained Saudi money, because he’s got to do what’s best for his family, and I suppose some guys can never have enough jingle in their jeans when a rainy day arrives. And, hey, his bride Paulina might need some skimpy new outfits to wear at The Masters.
I was going to write about Steve Simmons, because he’s totally lost the plot re racism in hockey.
In his alphabet fart for Postmedia last Sunday, the Toronto Sun scribe wrote: “No one wants to say this because of the politically correct police and all, but those who coached Akim Aliu must cringe every time they see him in a news report or a commercial talking about what’s wrong with hockey. Like he would know. By my count, Aliu played for 23 teams in nine different leagues in 12 professional seasons and rarely finished any season with the same team he started with. If that was colour-related, how is it that Wayne Simmonds spent just about the same 12 seasons playing in the NHL?”
To parrot a phrase from PM Trudeau the Younger in his comments about the Hockey Canada scandal, it “boggles the mind” that Simmons suggests knowledge of racism cannot be gained by someone bouncing around hockey’s outback. It’s appallingly ignorant.
What dazzling insights will Simmons share with us next, that a gay athlete can only speak to homophobia in sports if she or he has participated in X number of Pride parades?
I don’t pretend to harbor first-person experience of being a Black person, but I read. A lot. It’s something Simmons might want to try, because multiple studies show that BIPOC communities, gays and women learn about, and experience, the horrors of marginalization in their youth. Some overcome the abuse and bullying to reach the highest level. Many quit sports.
But I’m not going to write about Simmons’ simpleton scribblings, because I think Nazem Kadri of the Calgary Flames said it best: “He’s a guy who’s a little dated in his writing.”
And, finally…
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