Philadelphia Eagles

Let’s talk about a little of this and a little of that

Tweets that won’t make it to Twitter…

American fighter planes are shooting down UFOs like it’s a game at the county carnival. Three shots for two bits! They took one out over Alaska and another in our air space in the past week. Geez, why can’t they just capture one of the things and ask someone on board what everyone wants to know: Which planet is Connor McDavid from?

Aaron Rodgers plans to go on a four-day, four-night darkness retreat, whereby he’ll sit in a room as dark as the inside of a cow and do nothing more than gaze at his navel between bowel movements. Rodgers vows that once he emerges from his hideaway, Green Bay Packers fans will no longer be in the dark (pun intended) about his future—either he’ll still be QB of the Pack or he’ll be in a New York state of mind and join the Jets in Gotham. Don’t believe a word of it. He’s going into hiding because the voice from his tin foil hat told him “the aliens are coming, the aliens are coming!”

It’s about our Canadian female futbol players going on strike: Much ado about nil. For now. Stay tuned, because we haven’t heard the last of this soccer squawk, and I hope the women get what they want, and deserve.

This just in: According to an Angus Reid poll, only in our three Prairie provinces do Canadians prefer Rouge Football over the American game. Well, duh. I could have saved ol’ Angus the time and money on his survey of 1,515 adult Canuckleheads. I mean, anyone who knows pork rinds from pizza can tell you that the Canadian Football League is a happening in Manitoba, Alberta and on the Flattest of Lands, but it’s meh, with gusts up to “I really don’t give a damn,” in the rest of the country. Question is, what can CFL commish Randy Ambrosie and the Lords of Rouge Football do about it? Not much, if anything. After all, one-third of CFL outfits are based in Ontario, where only 31 per cent of the populace prefers the three-downs game over four downs, a field the size of a cocktail napkin, and the fair catch. But, hey, enjoy today’s Super Bowl skirmish between the K.C. Chiefs and Philly Eagles. I’m sure the commercials will be boffo. Ditto Rihanna.

Top prop bets for Rihanna’s halftime show today:
1) Rihanna forgets lyrics. +10000.
2) Janet Jackson joins Rihanna on stage. +100000.
3) There’s a wardrobe malfunction and we see nipple. Pick ’em.

Andrew Harris will be back for one final fling with the Grey Cup champion Toronto Argos, then the great running back will bid adieu to Rouge Football and take charge of football operations for Vancouver Island Raiders of the B.C. Football Conference. You’d think moving from the Republic of Tranna to tiny Nanaimo would be a huge culture shock. But, in this case, no. Harris will go from playing professional football in front of friends and family to coaching Junior football in front of friends and family.

John Candy, the late, great funny guy and one-time co-bankroll of the Argos, attempted to lure Joe Montana out of San Francisco to play quarterback for the Boatmen at the front end of the 1990s. The plan was to use the legendary 49ers QB to put the Argos and CFL on the map. Trouble was, Joe Cool couldn’t find Canada on the map.

Just wondering: What part of pregnancy do the deep-thinkers with Curling Canada not understand? Seriously, did they all skip Birds & Bees 101 in high school? Pregnant is pregnant, whether a woman plays on a top-seeded team or one of the bottom-feeder outfits at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, beginning Friday in Kamloops. Oh, sure, it’s terrific that a pregnant Selena Njegovan was finally given the okie-dokie to join in the fun (off the ice) with her gal pals on the Kaitlyn Lawes team, but Curling Canada took more backward steps than Ginger Rogers before doing the right thing.

So, LeBron James has passed my all-time fave hoopster, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and now sits atop the list of leading point-producers in NBA history. Sorry, but I won’t be impressed until I see LeBron sitting in the cockpit of a jumbo jet in a remake of Airplane!.

On the subject of Hollywood and hoops, I note they’re giving us a redo of the classic film White Men Can’t Jump? There’s a new title, though: White Men Still Can’t Jump but Steve Nash Would Like a Second Opinion.

A couple of weeks ago, sports editor Jason Bell of the Drab Slab was tooting the horn about his paper’s unparalleled curling coverage. “I venture to say,” he ventured to say, “no media outlet in Canada makes it a priority to cover local curling like we do.” So why was there nothing about the Manitoba men’s championship on the sports pages after Day One of the rock fest in Neepawa?

Mad Mike McIntyre submits that curler Jennifer Jones just might be the greatest athlete ever produced in Manitoba. Yup, better than all the hockey players, Olympians, football stars, etc. Interesting. Might even be accurate. Except for this: The Drab Slab sports columnist doesn’t have the chops to make that call. He doesn’t cover curling. He doesn’t write about curling. I wonder if he’s ever talked to one of our elite curlers. So how can he measure Jones, a curler, against the rest of the jock field? He can’t.

Mad Mike also says Clara Hughes and Cindy Klassen are tied “for the title of Canada’s all-time most-decorated Olympian,” with six Games trinkets. Uh…no. Penny Olesksiak has seven swimming medals, and lickety-split skater Charles Hamelin and sprinter Andre De Grasse also have collected six Oly trinkets each. It’s not difficult to take two minutes to Google this information.

Duval County, Fla., has banned books about baseball legends Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente from elementary schools, because the two tomes—Henry Aaron’s Dream and Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates—mention racism and segregation. Apparently, politicos expect young kids in Florida to live in the real world, just as long as they don’t learn what it’s like to live in the real world until they’re in high school.

Is J.T. Miller of the Vancouver Canucks as surly as he seems? I swear, the guy smiles about as often as it snows in Lotus Land.

Gotta say this: I was so disappointed when many among the rabble scurried to social media last Sunday and chose to disrespect Bonnie Raitt after she won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, Just Like That. They were saying they’d never heard of her. One scoffed at Grammy voters for handing trinkets to “random people.” Good grief. The woman is a music legend. How is it possible that she’s escaped their notice? Shame, shame. Just Like That is a fabulous song. A story song told without bells and whistles, smoke or fireworks, and without 20 bumping, grinding background dancers grabbing at their crotches. It’s a woman, her voice and an acoustic guitar. And it’s beautiful. Bonnie Raitt is beautiful.

And, finally, nothing on TV today makes me laugh out loud like the Kayak commercial featuring the really lousy sketch artist. Gets me giggling every time. It’s the funniest ad since the “your girlfriend looks like Mom” eggs bit.

Let’s talk about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers D letting one get away…the Quiet Dickenson…Sportsnet snubbing the CFL…Carli Lloyd getting her kicks…Ponytail Puck vs. men?…ruffled feathers in E-Town…and poverty and the Pacific Ocean

A holiday Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and happy September, even if it means the frost soon shall be on your pumpkin…

Never mind that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers had built-in excuses in advance of the muckabout at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday afternoon—no Matt Nichols, no Andrew Harris.

All that really matters is that the large lads in blue-gold-and-white linen returned home from Pile O’ Bones with tire marks on their chests—again—and I’d say losing 14 of the last 15 holiday weekend visits to the Flattest of Lands qualifies as road kill. So maybe it’s time people stopped calling this thing the Labor Day Classic and bill it as the Road Kill Classic. Or the annual Gang Green Gives Winnipeg FC A Wedgie And A Swirly Classic.

Oh, sure, it was close. They tipped a canoe. Burned a barn.

But don’t talk to me about the Bombers deserving a better fate, not when the guys on the D-side of the ball lost the plot when it mattered most.

I mean, Richie Hall’s defensive dozen made greenhorn quarterback Cody Fajardo look like a greenhorn quarterback much of the afternoon, then watched as Corn Dog Cody directed his Saskatchewan Roughriders down the field like a puffed-up, strutting halftime marching band. He, along with running back William Powell, smoothly navigated the Gang Green offence across the Mosaic terrain, whereupon Brett Lauther delivered the final and decisive points in a smash-mouth skirmish that, until then, had mostly moved to the cadence of two gnarly defences.

I suppose that D-dominance was predictable, given that the two QBs had a combined total of 14 Canadian Football League starts going in.

Still, it appeared that Chris Streveler, subbing for Nichols, had squeezed enough juice out of Winnipeg FC’s anemic offence to get ‘er done. It should have been game, set and bring on the Banjo Bowl when the Riders offence assembled for their final thrust, trailing 17-16 with three minutes and 18 ticks on the clock and the ball on their five-yard stripe.

What ensued went entirely against the grain, with the stingy Winnipeg D suddenly becoming as submissive as a house pet. Eleven plays, 87 yards, one 26-yard Lauther field goal, and a 19-17 W for a home side that has strung together half a dozen victories.

There was nothing classic about that 3:18 of football, unless you wear a watermelon on your head.

Should we look for more of the same when the large lads gather for a redux next Saturday, this time at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry? Well, I don’t think we should expect the Winnipeg D to cough up a hairball the size of a small horse again, but Nichols will still be in the repair shop and Harris in detention, so I suggest it’ll be on the D to rule the day.

For 60 minutes, not just 56:42.

Why don’t I hear the name Craig Dickenson included in chatter about the top sideline steward this season? Is it because, unlike his brother Dave, the Gang Green rookie head coach doesn’t have a non-stop, 24/7 squawk box? Seems to me that the Quiet Dickenson deserves to be in the discussion.

What’s the deal with the CFL giving three teams a bye on this Labor Day weekend? Shouldn’t the Montreal Larks and Bytown RedBlacks be included in the fun? As for the also-inactive B.C. Lions, they don’t have a natural rivalry and, frankly, the 12,000 people in Lotus Land who actually know the Leos exist probably prefer to sit on a patio sipping their latté or having a toke rather than watch Mike O’Reilly be roughed up like a Gitmo prisoner one more time.

Speaking of indifference, can anyone at Sportsnet explain why they basically ignore the CFL? I realize that Rouge Football is a TSN property, but sports news is sports news is sports news. Call up the CFL on the Sportsnet website and you’ll find three videos: One from July, one from February and one from December 2018. That’s disgraceful.

As a folo to an item in my Sunday smorgas-bored, in which I insisted Edmonton is a better CFL market than Winnipeg, I feel obliged to point out that not since 1973 have the Bombers out-performed the Eskimos at the box office, never mind on the field. This will make it 46 successive seasons with a higher head count in E-Town, and you simply can’t argue with that. Good Ol’ Hometown is a boffo market but, as much as it pains me to say it, both E-Town and Saskatchewan are better.

So, Carli Lloyd hoofed a 55-yard field goal at a Philadelphia Eagles/Baltimore Ravens training exercise, and there’s been breathless natter about the U.S. women’s fitba star booting balls in the National Football League. Uh, not so fast says old friend Troy Westwood. “Carli Lloyd could not beat out the best competing for the job and kick in the #NFL. No chance,” he tweets. Is it because she’s a she? Or because she lacks the skill? Ol’ Lefty declined to explain why Carli would be in over her head, and I can see how someone would view his blunt analysis as sexist. Well, that ain’t Westwood. I submit that Ol’ Lefty was speaking purely from his vantage point as a former place-kicker with the Bombers, so you might want to holster any PC outrage.

Longtime NFL boot meister Adam Venatieri is among the many to weigh in on Carli’s right leg: “For you to go out and hit a ball without a rush and a snap and a hold and no get-off time and stuff, it’s different than doing live stuff. But I saw it, it was pretty impressive how far she kicked the ball.” I guess there’s only one way to know for sure: Give that girl a tryout.

Except there’s this: On the day in question, video evidence showed Lloyd whomping that 55-yarder, but we didn’t see two misses at shorter distances and at 57 yards. By her own accounting, Lloyd was 2-for-5 in pristine conditions. No pads, no defence, no urgency, and a five-yard runup to the ball. NFL kickers who go 2-for-5 also go to the unemployment queue.

Commentary on Lloyd’s kick ranged from enthusiastic to supportive to dismissive to absolute drivel. Not surprisingly, the latter was supplied by Nancy Armour of USA Today. Armour writes, “Lloyd absolutely deserves a chance with an NFL team.” Based on what? One kick? “There is little doubt Lloyd could be an NFL placekicker.” Well, actually, there’s considerable doubt. “The heckles and jeers of ignorant and misogynistic NFL fans aren’t going to faze Lloyd.” So, if Lloyd were to get booed off the field after going 2-for-5, it’s not because she’s lousy at her job, it’s because all those loutish, beer-swilling men are empty-headed oinkers? I see. Armour’s gob-smackingly uninformed piece suggests she landed her columnist gig as part of a PR stunt or she won it in a raffle. (Yes, it’s that bad, and so is she.)

On the subject of female athletes, Ponytail Puck will be coming to a neighborhood rink near you this autumn if you live in the Republic of Tranna, Hudson, N.H., Chicago, Boston and San Jose, and the ForTheGame200 boycotting players also have barnstorming plans for other locales. They’re calling it the Dream Gap Tour, and I say good for them. Stay visible. Don’t let the rabble forget about you. But here’s what scares me: There’ll be regional training centres hither and yon, two of them in The ROT, and Jayna Hefford tells The Athletic “(They could play) against men’s teams…” Whoa. Stop it right there. Jayna, head of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, might want to rethink that part of the scheme. Our Olympic distaff team is tooth-and-toenail to beat Midget boys in exhibition skirmishes, and those results are usually kept on the QT. But skating against, and possibly losing to, a bunch of beer-leaguers is a marketing grenade waiting to go ka-boom. That wouldn’t be ignored and the argument that the women “deserve” a living wage would be totally lost, if it hasn’t been already.

Why are people calling Arthur Ashe Stadium in Gotham the “biggest court” in tennis when we all know it’s Centre Court Wimbledon? In literal terms, sure, Ashe can accommodate a flock of 23,771 observers and that dwarfs the main stage at SW19 (14,979), but in stature you’ll find the “biggest court” in tennis is a lawn and it’s at the All-England Club.

I don’t get it. Why is Denis Shapovalov losing at the U.S. Open a bigger story than Bianca Andreescu winning at the U.S. Open? It shouldn’t be, of course, but Shapo’s loss to Gael Monfils was the lead story on TSN at 3 in the a.m. on Sunday and that’s just wrong.

The Minnesota Twins swatted six home runs on Saturday and lost. How do you do that?

Definition of Ruffled Feathers: See Puljujarvi, Jesse. Many among the rabble in River City believe a “fractured” dressing room undid the Winnipeg Jets last spring, in part because head coach Paul Maurice mentioned something about “ruffled feathers” in his season-over natter with news snoops, but mainly due to the narrative the Drab Slab has been spreading for five months. Now along comes Puljujarvi in E-Town to show us what ruffled feathers actually look like. Not only has the Finnish forward bailed on the Oilers, choosing to stay home and play with Oulun Karpat of the Liiga, he’ll only return to the National Hockey League if given a new postal code. Those, kids, are ruffled feathers.

Murat Ates of The Athletic has taken a deep dive into the Jets (it’s an excellent late-summer perspective), and he briefly touches on the “ruffled feathers” issue. “Let me state this clearly: I have been asked about ‘the room’ all summer and my position is the same as it’s always been; if I ever learn anything that I can fairly and accurately attribute, I’ll write that,” he scribbles. “Until then, not only do I allow for discord as a healthy component of a team’s dynamics, I expect it—Winnipeg was a bottom-third NHL team in the second half of 2018-19. That should piss people off.” So, he hasn’t sniffed out a smoking gun. No one at the Winnipeg Sun has sniffed out a smoking gun. No one at the Drab Slab has sniffed out a smoking gun. No on-air pundits have produced a smoking gun. Ergo, there is no smoking gun.

And, finally, it was 20 years tomorrow when I put Good Ol’ Hometown in the rear-view mirror and arrived in Victoria with little money, no job and no prospects for work. Since then, I’ve been an apartment block manager, a golf club maintenance/office/desktop publishing guru, an editor, a cleaner at a pub, a golf pro shop call centre/graphics guru, an antique/vintage furniture salesperson, a cleaner at a downtown eatery, a cleaner/cover girl/Jill of all trades at a gay nightclub, and I live in poverty. So why am I smiling? Because I can step outside today, take a 20-minute stroll and dip my toes into the Pacific Ocean while gazing at the Olympic Mountains and maybe observe some bald eagles or orcas. And I can do it 12 months of the year. Na, na, na, na, na.

About the Winnipeg Free Press not giving a damn and the Winnipeg Sun being overrun by Postmedia outriders…flag football…Jim Barker’s lid…tell us what you really think, Kate…CFL power rankings…Mario’s pricey biffies…peeing in a bottle…and a chill in Winnipeg’s hottest summer

Three soft-boiled eggs on whole wheat toast and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…

I cut my teeth in the rag trade by standing on the lumpy, pock-marked sidelines of local football fields, covering the Sisler Spartans, Churchill Bulldogs, Elmwood Eskimos and other outfits in the Winnipeg High School Football League.

If not at high school grid, I was courtside watching the best local tennis players do their thing on the clay courts of the Winnipeg Canoe Club or Winnipeg Lawn Tennis Club.

Major Junior/Junior/Senior hockey, kids curling, high school track and field, badminton, junior golf, bowling, figure skating, fastball, gymnastics, Junior baseball, hoops, amateur boxing…you name it, I was there to write about it. And if I wasn’t on site, I was on the Winnipeg Tribune sports desk, doing rewrites or laying out the pages that would prominently feature the games that local people played for no pay.

People continue to play those games today, but the sports sections of the two daily rags in River City have abandoned them. Almost entirely. And that is, indeed, sad and most unfortunate.

I mean, why am I reading about Miguel Angel Jiminez leading the Senior British Open golf tournament and a tie atop the ladies’ Scottish Open leaderboard in the Winnipeg Free Press instead of, say, the Manitoba Junior Baseball League playoffs, which are down to the short strokes and will feature two local outfits, the St. James A’s and Elmwood Giants, in the final?

Why does the Winnipeg Sun devote two full pages to a guy from Vancouver, Adam Zaruba, who’s in the training camp of the Philadelphia Eagles, two full pages to UFC blood-spilling in Calgary, and another two full pages to the Tranna-centric musings of Steve Simmons instead of the MJBL final four?

I know the reason behind the Sun’s dismissal of all local sports outfits that aren’t named Jets, Blue Bombers, Moose or Goldeyes, and I addressed it in January 2016, after parent company Postmedia adopted a centralized sports desk for its member papers:

“Some invisible head sitting behind some invisible desk in some remote outpost of the land now will decide what Winnipeg sports fans want to read. How this serves Pegtown provides serious pause for ponder. I mean, shouldn’t a sports editor be able to reach out and feel the pulse of the people? It’s easy enough to recognize that the Winnipeg Jets and Winnipeg Blue Bombers are the big dogs in town and, thus, generate the most talk. But what of lesser players such as the Manitoba Moose, the Winnipeg Goldeyes, the University of Manitoba Bisons, Junior hockey, local tennis, golf, curling, figure skating, etc.? My concern is that they shall be lost in the shuffle.”

The Moose and Goldeyes haven’t been ignored, but the others? Bupkus.

From July 15 until this very morning, the Sun printed 313 stories in 16 sports sections, and the professional-amateur split reads like a Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals scoreline—308-5. That’s a paltry 1.6 per cent of all copy devoted to amateur sports coverage, which has been sacrificed for Postmedia piffle from hither and yon, articles that have scant or zero significance to the River City rabble. Seriously. Steve Simmons taking issue with Kyle Lowry’s silence is something I want or need to read about in a Winnipeg newspaper?

It’s only marginally better at the Freep, where sports columnist Paul Wiecek wrote this at the start of the month: “A confluence of events over the Canada Day long weekend got me thinking about how we as Canadians so dramatically undervalue the contributions our amateur athletes make to this country, while simultaneously just as dramatically overvalue the contributions of our professional athletes.”

That particular column was more a gripe piece about greedy play-for-pay athletes, but the Drab Slab toy department and Wiecek then proved how little they value amateurs. From June 30 until this morning, they ran 614 articles and here’s the pro-amateur split: 558-56, or 9.1 per cent for amateurs. In that same time frame, Wiecek scribbled a dozen essays, 100 per cent aimed at pro athletes and pro sports (hmmm, 12 columns in 31 days…nice work if you can get it).

Like I said, I understand why the Sun has bottomed out on local amateur coverage. It’s marching to a national drummer. But the Freep has no excuse. It’s an independent paper with a sports section that doesn’t have any less space today than it did in the 1970s, and there’s no less staff. Which means there can only be one reason—they just don’t give a damn.

Speaking of pro sports, I must say, there was some gawdawful officiating on display during the Bombers-Tranna Argonauts skirmish on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, and it greatly benefited the home side. Winnipeg FC still would have beaten the Boatmen sans the generous flag-tossing, but, had the phantom infractions not been called, it might have made for a more compelling match.

The Bombers had a head count of 27,116 on Friday, their largest gathering of this Canadian Football League crusade, but Winnipeg FC is still 2,040 behind last-season’s three-game pace. That’s a dip of at least $57,000 in ticket revenue.

Rod Smith, Jim Barker, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall

I like Jim Barker’s input as one of the newbies among TSN’s cast of characters on CFL coverage, but he’s got to do something about his lid. If Barker’s grey-and-black locks aren’t flopping over his right eye, they’re sticking out at the back like he’s got bed head. Very distracting. As for that other newby, Davis Sanchez, if I want to listen to a man butcher the English language I’ll take Chris Walby any day. Bluto has better stories and he’s a lot funnier.

Listening to Kate Beirness of TSN glorify Johnny Manziel before and after the Edmonton Eskimos-Montreal Alouettes grass-grabber on Thursday night, I couldn’t help but wonder this: What does she really think about a guy who beat up his (former) girlfriend? What does she say about the Als quarterback once the camera is turned off? Is she being forced to promote him as the CFL’s shiny, new object?

I’ll say this for Paul Wiecek, he’s the only columnist in Canada who’s had the junk to write that Johnny Manziel’s doesn’t belong in the CFL due to his domestic violence history. If another scribe has spoken out, I missed it. So good on him.

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (6-0): Who’ll stop these guys?
2. Winnipeg (4-3): Feasting on Tranna.
3. Edmonton (4-2): All those penalties (17) won’t cut it against a top-level foe.
4. Saskatchewan (3-3): Has anyone figured out what Chris Jones is trying to do?
5. Ottawa (4-2): Not going to win many games kicking seven field goals.
6. B.C. (2-3): Not convinced Travis Lulay is the answer at QB.
7. Hamilton (2-4): Going…going…gone?
8. Toronto (1-5): Time to try another quarterback.
9. Montreal (1-5): Still awful in either official language.

I note that hockey legend Mario Lemieux is selling his shack in Mont-Tremblant, Que., for a mere $21,999,066 million. It has eight bedrooms and nine washrooms. That’s $2,444,340.66 per biffy, for those of you keeping score at home.

On the subject of bathrooms, tennis great Serena Williams is whinging about men in lab coats continually knocking on her door and demanding that she pee in a bottle. Apparently, the doping sleuths have visited her five times this year. So what’s the big deal? I’ve had to pee in a bottle six times in the past 10 months, and I’m not even a world-ranked tennis player.

Shouldn’t the promotion of Gina Kingsbury to general manager of Canada’s national women’s hockey team warrant more than an ‘oh, by the way’ blurb in the media? It was bottom-of-the back-pages news in the Free Press, and 10 pages deep into the Sun sports section.

And, finally, the silence since a National Hockey League arbitrator awarded Jacob Trouba a $5.5 million contract has been deafening. Nothing from Winnipeg Jets ownership/management. Nothing from the Trouba camp. Kind of puts a chill into Winnipeg’s hottest summer in 30 years.

About guts, glory and a civil rights icon peddling pickup trucks…warm-and-fuzzy Olympic Games…a fool at Fox News…fools at Postmedia…telling it like it is on NBC…a gay skip for the Brier…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…

Guts, glory…and Martin Luther King Jr.?

That was my main takeaway from the Super Bowl last Sabbath—the disturbing reality of Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice telling me to run out and purchase a Dodge Ram pickup truck. I mean, when I think of Martin Luther King Jr., I think “I have a dream,” not heavy pay loads with guts and glory. But there was the great civil rights icon/turned huckster, peddling pickups.

Given that this often is a copy-cat world, I suppose we ought to brace ourselves for the voices of other dead icons that rise from the other side and serve as product shills in the future. For example…

JFK: “Ask not what your Chevy Silverado pickup can do for you, ask what you can do for your Chevy Silverado pickup.”

Buddha: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment—and, at this present moment, nothing would go better at your Super Bowl party than a family bucket of finger-lickin’ good KFC and a case of cold Bud Light.”

Jesus Christ: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me—and trust in Trojan Bareskin lubricated condoms.”

Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world—so imagine yourself encircling the world on a Royal Caribbean International cruise.”

Winston Churchill: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, it’s also what it takes to sit down and listen—and when E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.”

Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind—so visit your nearest Pearle Vision location for your prescription lenses and frames.”

Eleanor Roosevelt: “A woman is like a tea bag, you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water—and there’s nothing like a cup of Red Rose tea to soothe the soul after a challenging day at the office, even offices that aren’t oval shaped.”

Amelia Earhart: “Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others—and, girls, when I became the first female pilot to make a solo flight across the Atlantic, I had my Stayfree Ultra Thin Overnight panty liners—with wings, of course—to get me through the turbulent times.”

Andy Warhol: “In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes—and when your 15 minutes of fame arrives, you don’t want to show the world your worst side. Use Clearasil to chase away those pesky blackheads and zits.”

Abraham Lincoln: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—but, ladies, if you find your man isn’t equal to the task, have him try Viagra!”

Super Bowl LII Takeaway II: I heard three players and one coach with the Philadelphia Eagles give “all thanks” to God and/or Jesus Christ scant seconds after besting the New England Patriots for the first Super Bowl title in franchise history. And here’s what I was thinking at the time: “If I’m an Eagles fans, I’m not thanking God or Jesus for the win, I’m asking them, “Where the hell have you two dudes been hiding for the last 51 years?”

Left to right: South Korean President Moon Jae-in, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, North Korea’s nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam, and Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

I must say, there are so many warm-and-fuzzy stories coming out of the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, I can’t watch them without my Teddy bear. Exhibit A would be the debut of the Korean women’s hockey side, which featured a trio of North Koreans in the lineup. I haven’t root, root, rooted so hard for a team to score since 1972. Alas, Korea got the collar, losing 8-zip to Switzerland. But the image of South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s leading lady, Kim Yo-jong, sitting three seats apart—plus more than 200 choreographed North Korean cheerleaders—was poweful stuff.

Either Cassie Campbell-Pascall thinks we’re dense or she’s guilty of extremely bad timing. As the Swiss were putting the finished touches to their victory over Korea, the CBC talking head began prattling on about “parity” in women’s hockey. “If the Koreans can keep it at eight, it shows you just how far the game has come,” she said. “I know it’s an 8-0 game, but it’s not the 15-0 scores, the 18-0 scores that you used to see against these types of teams playing in their first Olympics.” C’mon, Cassie, don’t talk to us like we don’t know a puck from pasta. We’re Canadians. We live on Planet Puckhead. I’ve watched two games thus far: Swiss 8-Korea 0; Canada 5-Russia 0. Shots on goal: Swiss 52-Korea 8; Canada 42-Russia 18. That’s parity like a bag of hockey pucks is a plate of pasta.

The Olympic Games aren’t even a week old and we already have a winner in the Complete Ass Clown event. Congratulations to John Moody, executive editor/executive vice president and spewer of vile commentary at Fox News, aka the Faux News Network.

Moody, displaying an astonishing level of ignorance as to the devotion, sacrifice, skill and qualifying process required to become an Olympic athlete, believes Uncle Sam’s reps in PyeongChang, South Korea, are a tad too dark, too gay and too inclusive. Thus, he’s cloaked the United States Olympic Committee in complete contempt, accusing it of operating a make-work-for minorities program masquerading as a sports organization that employs a quota system. You know, gather up any blacks, Asians and gays who can strap a skate, ski or snowboard to their feet and let ’em play! Talent and medal totals be damned!

“Unless it’s changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger.’ It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to ‘Darker, Gayer, Different.’ If your goal is to win medals, that won’t work,” Moody wrote in an appalling, vicious, hostile op-ed piece.

“A USOC official was quoted this week expressing pride (what else?) about taking the most diverse U.S. squad ever to the Winter Olympics. That was followed by a, frankly, embarrassing laundry list of how many African-Americans, Asians and openly gay athletes are on this year’s U.S. team. No sport that we are aware of awards points—or medals—for skin color or sexual orientation.

“For the current USOC, a dream team should look more like the general population. So, while uncomfortable, the question probably needs to be asked: were our Olympians selected because they’re the best at what they do, or because they’re the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from Column A, B and C?”

A list of African-American, Asian and gay athletes as an example of diversity is embarrassing? If Moody ever quits his day job, I’m guessing they’ll find room for him at the Trump White House.

Second Complete Ass Clown of the Olympics Award goes to (who else?) Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna, who, 38 years into his career, remains too thick to understand the difference between a mean-spirited cheap shot and fair comment. The most recent example of this is his gratuitous broadside at mixed doubles curling. “Mixed curling, which is a fine event on Wednesday nights for husbands and wives at the Club, makes its Olympic debut this morning: and it just feels wrong to me,” he tweets. So he’s telling us that our Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris are faux Olympians. That they don’t belong with the real Olympians. Well, I have an idea. Let’s leave Lawes and Morris in PyeongChang to hopefully collect a curling gold medal and enjoy the experience, and Postmedia can haul Grandpa Simmons’s butt back home. His need to skewer well-intentioned athletes and their endeavours is seemingly addictive, incurable and speaks to a very significant character deficit. It’s a terrible look for a sports columnist with a national profile.

Tough start for the male fancy skaters in the team competition in South Korea. I swear, I haven’t seen that many men fall without being touched since the last Italian soccer game I watched. Tough crowd, too. Especially in the NBC broadcast booth, where former fancy skaters Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski held court. After Nathan Chen completed a flaw-filled performance, Weir went for the jugular, describing the American teen’s spin-stumble-and-ad lib routine as “a disaster. That was the worst short program I’ve ever seen from Nathan Chen.”

By way of comparison, CBC’s Brenda Irving, Carol Lane and Kurt Browning put on the kid’s gloves after our guy, Patrick Chan, hit the deck twice. “Unfortunately for Canadian fans,” said Irving, “not vintage Patrick today.” Browning mentioned Chan’s bravery for returning to a different “landscape” in figure skating and added, “I feel for him right now, tremendously, because I know his heart’s pretty broken.” Lane, meanwhile, served up apologies about a coaching change. How positively Canadian of her.

John Moody and Fox News won’t like this—John Epping is going to the Brier next month (March 3-11) in Regina. And he’ll be skipping a team. Not only that, he’s gay. Openly gay. Must be part of some hidden agenda whereby Curling Canada has a “laundry list” that includes a gay quota. Seriously, it’s nice to see Epping finally get the better of nemesis Glenn Howard, who, until last weekend, had used the Peterborough skip as his personal pinata in Ontario for the past decade. Good guy Epping thus becomes the first openly gay man to skip at the Canadian men’s curling championship.

Scotties champs (left to right) Dawn McEwen, Shannon Birchard, Jennifer Jones and Jill Officer.

Once upon a time, Winnipeg newspapers covered curling like no other sheets in the country. It was wall-to-wall. Couldn’t get enough “hurry hard” on the sports pages. Now? You can’t even find curling on the menu of the Sun website. As if that isn’t bad enough, the tabloid was MIA for the recent Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Penticton, allowing Melissa Martin of the Winnipeg Free Press to cover the Canadian women’s championship uncontested (she nailed it, of course). It didn’t matter that the field included three—count ’em, three—River City outfits (six-time champ Jennifer Jones, runner-up Kerri Einarson, Team Canada’s Michelle Englot). Some suit at Postmedia decided that the Winnipeg Sun would best be served at a Winnipeg-centric event by a guy (Murray McCormick) from Regina. Sigh.

Given the revelations and developments at the White House last week, does anyone out there still think a woman-beater like Johnny Manziel ought to be making a living in the Canadian Football League? If so, ask yourself this question: “What would my reaction be if my daughter brought Manziel home for dinner?”

Shhhhh…this is a press box…please don’t disturb the writers who are eating popcorn

Most people, I dare say, have not spent an afternoon or an evening in a press box, observing the little girls’ and boys’ games that big girls and boys play for great gobs of money or international acclaim.

So allow me to tell you a little something about the press box.

The press box, as I remember it, is generally occupied by gruff, hard-bitten, beer-swilling, middle-age wretches who failed miserably at sports and are now settling that score by writing nasty things about those who didn’t fail miserably at sports. And those are the female journalists. The men are unspeakable.

Again, as I recall, your basic male jock journo is white, middle-to-vintage in age, thinning on top, a confirmed heterosexual, unkempt, unfit (I’m being very kind when I say that), he’s dressed like he ought to be retired in Florida (with his pants hiked up to his arm pits), he’s usually seen filling his face with free popcorn or hot dogs (with the obligatory mustard drippings on his wrinkled golf shirt), and it’s not uncommon for him to be recovering from a hangover when he arrives at the rink or stadium for a night-time assignment.

There is nothing high brow about the male jock journo when observed in his natural habitat. As much as wry wit can be found in abundance in the press box, it is also a cesspool of irreverent, caustic, biting and ruthless humor. Adult humor. It would be rated R. You’d probably allow your 10-year-old daughter or son into a peep show before exposing her or him to three hours in a press box.

Seriously. If the scribes were to scribble what was said in the press box, they’d be sued, arrested or shot on sight. Yup, it’s that raunchy and raw.

Perhaps that’s changed. After all, I haven’t sat in a press box perch in almost 20 years.

I doubt it, though.

I mean, a football beat writer with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeff McLane, was ordered out of the press box during an Eagles game on Sunday because he was a loud-talker. Seriously, the guy got punted for being a loud-talker.

Now, I realize that the so-called City of Brotherly Love has a rep for being less than a warm-and-fuzzy locale. It was said long ago that the citizenry of Philly go to the airport just to boo bad landings. But come on. They kick a guy out of the press box for being a loud-talker? That’s like telling Santa he can’t go on his annual gift run because he’s fat and jolly. Santa is supposed to be fat and jolly. He has to be fat and jolly. And a male sports scribe has to be loud.

Well, okay, I suppose a case could be made that a male jock journo need not be loud. But trust me, he is. It’s in his press box DNA. So is being obnoxious.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what went down between McLane and the Eagles public relations staff on the Sabbath. I wasn’t there. But I’m quite certain that there was more at play than the Inquirer reporter being a loud-talker. There had to be.

Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press has addressed the larger issue of professional sports teams attempting to control the message by eliminating the naysayers and those in the Fourth Estate who dare ask the difficult, uncomfortable and challenging questions, and I don’t think he’s far off the mark. Actually, he’s likely spot on.

The question I ask is this: Does anyone really care if the press box is full or empty?

Not likely. Among the rabble, there is little sympathy for the devil and, quite frankly, I’m not sure that the girls and boys on the beat should care if they’re sitting in the press box or not. I mean, is the free popcorn really that good? If it is and that means writing fluff, will the last jock journo to leave the press box please remember to turn out the lights?

What does a press pass for the Winnipeg Jets actually get a news scavenger these days? Access? I suppose that depends on your definition of access. To the Jets, access is making a player available to say “we just have to keep our feet moving and play the right way.” Then some PR flunky arrives to rescue him from the indignity of a post-game interrogation. To the jock journo, that isn’t access. It’s a waste of time.

The most interesting insight in Wiecek’s excellent piece was confirmation of something many of us already knew or suspected—the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, is a control freak of the highest rank. The way the Freep sports columnist tells it, the Jets’ co-bankroll is known for his in-game temper tantrums and, for fear a scribe might alert the rabble the next time he holds his breath and stomps his little feet, the Puck Pontiff banished the print posse to the press box outback. They’re now in a different area code and time zone than His Hockey Holiness’s bunker. Ballsy move by Wiecek, especially given that the Drab Slab is the official newspaper of the Jets. Whatever access he already didn’t have, he’ll have even less. Not that he should care.

John Ferguson didn’t worry about crap like that back in the day. His atomic explosions as Jets general manager are as legendary as his fists during his playing days as one of the toughest hombres in National Hockey League history. At worst, he would wince if we wrote about him dumping a bucket of ice on the Buffalo Sabres’ bench or kicking/punching holes in the walls of his bunker on press row, but he usually greeted us with an embarrassed wink and a grin.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit. She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

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