tennis

Let’s talk about empty seats in the Little Hockey House On The Prairie after COVID-19…what’s on my book shelf?…tee times…horrible takes on Ponytail Puck…a bull session with Chris Streveler in the Drab Slab…and other things on my mind

There’s been much natter about National Hockey League millionaires returning this summer to perform in front of empty seats in four select cities, none of which will be named Winnipeg (reportedly).

That’s a deep concern because the NHL is a gate-driven enterprise.

There is, however, a greater fret and threat looming. Try this: How many of those empty seats will remain unoccupied once the faithful have been given the okie-dokie to gather in groups and return to rinks hither and yon?

The Jets have made due with 15,000 and change at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie since 2011 and, once they’ve finished feeding at the public trough, it’s believed there’s black ink on the bottom line of the balance sheet. The profit is likely minimal, but we don’t know for certain because True North Sports+Entertainment has never been eager to open its books, even as it smugly expects the rabble to continue opening their wallets.

Unfortunately, the scourge that is COVID-19 has many thousands of workers also feeding from the public trough, and some of them won’t have a job at the far end of the pandemic.

It’s tough to part with thousands of dollars in support of the players’ millionaire lifestyles when you’re on pogey.

So let’s say the Jets lose 1,000 customers post-COVID-19 and can’t replace them. Is the NHL doable in Good Ol’ Hometown with just 14K in the pews? Well, when the Atlanta caravan rolled into River City in 2011, I seem to recall NHL commish Gary Bettman saying something about sellouts and SRO audiences being the absolute, no-margin-for-error requirement.

If so, 14,000 customers won’t cut it.

Oh, sure, the Jets boast of a robust wait list, so any available tickets would be scooped up faster than toilet paper at the start of the pandemic. But whoa Nellie. That was pre-COVID-19. The game has changed. It costs $100 (non-refundable) per annum to stay on that list, and $50 (non-refundable) to get on that list. Know anyone with a spare C-note or 50-dollar bill lying around these days, just in the hope of spending in excess of $1,000 to watch the millionaires frolic on the local freeze?

This isn’t meant to be a doomsday essay. It’s simply a cautionary note that once there’s a vaccine and the NHL arrives at its “new normal,” crowd concern might not be limited to warm-weather locales like Sunrise, Fla, and Glendale, Ariz. It might hit hard at the frost-bitten heart of the continent as well.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been catching up on my reading during the COVID-19 lockdown. So far, these have been my favorite books:

My Pants Were Always Lower Than My Score: The Sex Scandal That Sank Tiger Woods, In His Own Words.
If It’s Too Late for a Prenup, I’m Totally Screwed: The Tiger Woods Tell-All About Infidelity and Divorce (with special forward by Elin Nordegren).
I Bit Off More Than I Could Chew: Mike Tyson Recounts the Night He Made a Snack Out of Evander Holyfield’s Ear.
D’oh Canada! The Duping of a Dope: The Rise and Fall of Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics.
Deflated: Who Really Let the Air Out of Tom Brady’s Balls (with special forward by Gisele Bundchen)?
The Dead Speak Scrolls: Complete Transcripts of Everything Bill Belichick has Ever Said that the Media Understood (Total number of pages-2).
Serena Williams

I’ll Shove This %$#% Ball Down Your *%$#% Throat: Memoirs of Serena Williams at the U.S. Open.
Grey Cup and the Groupie: E! News Canada Takes A Deep Dive Into the Glen Suitor-Keith Urban Broadcast Booth Bromance (with special forward by Nicole Kidman).
You People: The Official Don Cherry Code of Conduct for Wannabe Canadians, where the former star of Coach’s Corner explains Milk & Honey & Poppies & EVERYTHINK LIKE THAT!
Still Searching In A White Ford Bronco After All These Years: O.J. Simpson Takes Us to Various Golf Courses In His Hunt for the Real Killers.

Speaking of golf, it looks like some courses across the land will be opening next month (a few in my neck of the woods never closed). I haven’t swung the sticks in more than 12 years, but I’ve been thinking about my ideal foursome were I ever to tee it up again. This is it: Moi, Alison Krauss, Babs Streisand and, of course, Jesus, because I figure that walk-on-water thing might come in handy given my skill level.

Oh drat. The Scripps National Spelling Bee in the U.S. has fallen victim to COVID-19, canceled for the first time since World War II. Such a shame. I was really looking forward to watching 10-year-old kids make me feel like a complete doofus again. Or is that spelled d-u-f-u-s? Or d-o-o-f-a-s? Or d-u-f-is? Or d-u-f-f-a-s? Geez, where’s a 10-year-old whiz kid when you really need one?

I note that Scotiabank Arena in the Republic of Tranna is now a kitchen, where they’re cooking 10,000 meals a day for front-line health workers, their families and the needy. Just wondering: How will the Tranna media make that feel-good story about Drake?

So, the National Women’s Hockey League has added an expansion franchise in the Republic of Tranna and, not surprisingly, at least one of the Dream Gappers (Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association) couldn’t resist the urge to take a cheap shot at the team to be named later. That would be Liz Knox, who attempted to paint NWHL execs as uncaring, tone-deaf oafs for conducting business during the pandemic. “It’s difficult to imagine expansion being at the forefront of many business strategies,” she snarked in a text message. Oh, for sure, Liz. No businesses should look ahead to the day COVID-19 is behind us. The NHL shouldn’t make plans to finish its season or begin the 2020-21 crusade. The National Football League shouldn’t have conducted its draft last week. And, hey, Roger Federer has no business talking about a marriage between the women’s and men’s pro tennis tours. All sports operations should just sit and twiddle their thumbs. What a pathetic take, but totally in line with the PWHPA hate-on for the NWHL, which refuses to get out of the Dream Gappers’ way.

Tim & Sid granted air time on Sportsnet to another Dream Gapper, Natalie Spooner, who informed the boys that the PWHPA will “keep fighting for what we deserve.” Part of what they claim they “deserve” is a living wage, but none of the Dream Gappers has ever explained how anyone can pay for it.

Second worst take on the NWHL franchise in The ROT came from (who else?) Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna.

“It has been officially announced that Toronto has been awarded an expansion team in the National Women’s Hockey League,” he scribbled without allowing his grey matter and fingers to connect. “What hasn’t been announced: the team’s name; the team’s logo; the team’s venue. And some of those things, if not all of them, can make an outsider rather skeptical and troubled about the future of this kind of endeavour. You don’t gain credibility by announcing a team with no name, no place to play, and no big-name players. When you have all that in place, then make the announcement. The press release referred to the expansion team as a ‘first class team of professionals.’ Time will answer that, but the new Toronto Whatevers are not off to a great start.”

Really? There’s no credibility without a team name, a team logo or big-name players? Like the NHL’s expansion franchise in Seattle? The one that was announced in December 2018 and, 16 months later, remains without a team name, a team logo or any players. Or like the NHL Las Vegas expansion franchise that was announced in June 2016 without a team name, a team logo or any players? Or like the Jets, who arrived in Winnipeg sans a team name or a team logo in 2011?

Or does that lack of “credibility” only apply to female shinny outfits with no name, no logo and no big-name players at startup?

Simmons is on record as saying Ponytail Puck is a “charade,” so he’d be wise to concentrate on Golden Boy Auston Matthews’ mustache, Phil Kessel’s hot dog stand and Drake’s clown act, and leave the women’s game to news snoops who actually care and know something about it.

This week in jock journalism…

Jason Bell of the Drab Slab wins the prize for best off-beat yarn, with his piece on a Charolais bull named after Chris Streveler, former Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback and party boy. Streveler the bull is 1,499 pounds of pure Western Manitoba beef on the hoof—about the same as the entire Bombers O-line—and the brute recently sold for a whopping $45,000 at the Nykoliation family auction. The way Jason tells the story, 50 bulls were sold that day for $335,000, or about the value of a Tier-II starting QB in the Canadian Football League…I monitored bylines in the Winnipeg Sun from last Sunday through Saturday, and here’s the scorecard: Postmedia bylines 32; Toronto bylines 21; Winnipeg bylines 15; lady rassler bylines (Natalya Neidhart) 1. I swear, if I ever win Lotto Max, I’ll offer Postmedia the $1 Cdn. that the tabloid is worth today and convert it back to a local newspaper with local stories and enough scribes to actually cover the city…The NFL’s remote draft received favorable reviews from Bombers play-by-play guy Knuckles Irving and Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab. Here’s Knuckles on Twitter: “Watching the NFL draft and once again it’s completely apparent that no sports entity in the world can deliver elaborately choreographed, brilliantly produced, dragged out, mind-numbing TV hype like the NFL. Man are they good at it. Gotta be impressed.” And here’s Mad Mike: “You’ve got to hand it to the National Football League. Real life handed the league a lemon—in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic—but they showed why they’re the world’s most popular and successful sports operation by turning it into glorious, refreshing lemonade.” I never watched one second of the production, so I’ll just have to take their word for it…Laura Armstrong of the Toronto Star misses sports and feels guilty about it. I don’t miss sports and feel guilty about it. Hmmm. I never thought of COVID-19 as a guilt trip, but apparently that’s what it is.

Jesse Stone and Thelma, one of his many female admirers.

And, finally, I went on a Jesse Stone movie binge last week. Watched all nine of the made-for-TV flicks. Jesse, played by Tom Selleck, is a scotch-swilling, non-smiling wreck of a cop so hung up on his ex-wife that he talks to her long distance every night. Between benders, sessions with his ex-wife’s shrink, and trying to figure out how to work a cellphone, Jesse always catches the bad guys in Paradise, Mass. He probably drinks too much caffeine, but Jesse’s coffee breath isn’t a turnoff to the ladies in Paradise. Apparently the woman who can resist his dimples has yet to be born. Jesse always gets the girl. And I do mean always. Tall, short, black, white, young, old…every woman falls prey to Jesse’s dimples and must dine or do lunch with him. Even a nun, Sister Mary John! It’s quite silly stuff, really. So why do I like it so much?

Let’s talk about female and gay power at the Super Bowl…sexism in the NBA and Russia…Matt Nichols’ next move…Kobe’s halo…news snoops in a snit…Looch a lamb in the slaughter…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and it’s Super Sunday, but you won’t find anything super here…

At some point today, we’ll see Katie Sowers on our flatscreens and another brick in the wall will come tumbling down.

Katie, you see, is female and gay, and females and gays aren’t supposed to be central players in the Super Bowl game, North America’s greatest gulp of sporting over-indulgence. Females, after all, know nothing about football (just ask any male lump sitting on a nearby bar stool or in a man cave) and gays are a distraction (ask Tony Dungy about that).

Except many of us know that simply isn’t true.

If Katie’s been a distraction down there in Miami, it’s only because she’s a she who does know football, and news snoops have sought her out for sound bites and anecdotal tidbits about the challenges of a societal double whammy—being female and a lesbian in an environment that registers 10.0 on the testosterone meter.

Never before has a woman attracted so much attention at the National Football League’s showcase event, at least not since Janet Jackson allowed Justin Timberlake to play peek-a-boo with her right breast. And, on that matter, many lumps on many bar stools no doubt will fix their eyeballs on today’s halftime proceedings, hoping for a re-enactment of Janet J’s wardrobe malfunction, only this time it would be pieces of either JLo’s or Shakira’s skimpy outfits falling off.

But I digress.

Sowers is in Miami this very day as one of the San Francisco 49ers’ offensive strategists attempting to plot ways of confounding and confusing the Kansas City Chiefs’ defensive 11 in Super Bowl LIV, and if you don’t care that she’s the first woman and lesbian to coach in the gridiron colossus, I suggest you’re among the 50 per cent of the population that isn’t female and 95 per cent of the population that isn’t gay.

This is huge. For women. For the LGBT collective. And it should be for society.

But we hear the same questions every time a gay athlete wiggles her or his way into the spotlight, don’t we? Like: Does anybody really need to know who’s lying beside them when the lights go out at night? If they want to be treated equal, why do they insist on making themselves out to be special just because they’re gay? Why can’t the gays just shut up about it already?

Well, it’s a big deal because too large a segment of society still makes the choice of bedmates and romantic partners a big deal. Gays can lose jobs because of it. They can be denied jobs because of it. They can be denied service because of it. They can be denied housing because of it. They are bullied and beaten up because of it.

Sowers knows all about that, because her alma mater, Goshen College in Indiana, once rejected her as a volunteer hoops coach simply because she prefers the company of women.

“There were prospective students’ parents that were concerned that if there was a lesbian coach, their daughter might catch the gay or whatever it might be, because people might think it’s contagious,” is how she remembers it.

What’s that you say? That was more than 10 years ago? Well, lend an ear to Steve Sanders, an associate professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law.

“What happened to Sowers could still happen, depending on the place and jurisdiction,” Sanders told the Indianapolis Star. “Many people are surprised that the legal protections from anti-gay and lesbian discrimination remain so spotty. If you’re gay or lesbian, you can get married one day and, at least in some jurisdictions, be fired from your job the next day.”

Goshen, a Christian school, recently delivered a mea culpa for its shoddy and shameful treatment of Sowers, but that doesn’t excuse the reality that gays continue to be marginalized today.

As do women in sports.

Or perhaps you didn’t catch Marcus Morris’ sexist spewings the other night after his New York Knicks had absorbed a good and proper paddywhacking from the Memphis Grizzlies. Morris didn’t appreciate Jae Crowder’s (perceived) theatrics on the Madison Square Garden hardwood, thus he told news snoops that the Memphis forward has “a lot of female tendencies” like “flopping and throwing his head back.”

Oh, yes, females be flopping and head tossing, Marcus.

Lest anyone misinterpret his remarks, Morris then described Crowder as “soft, very woman-like.” None of that was meant to be complimentary. It was meant to shame a foe as a lesser-than. A woman.

So, yes, Katie Sowers’ emergence as a Super Bowl coach is a “big deal.”

No doubt girls and women will see, or hear about, Sowers and ask themselves, “Why not me?” Ditto LGBT youth. It builds belief in self. Isn’t that something we should want for everyone?

It’s not just about generating dreams, though.

Sowers is breaking a barrier, but knocking down a door only matters if it opens up a mind. Maybe, just maybe, her presence will convince the anti-gay constituency and misogynistic lumps on bar stools, in man caves and in men’s pro sports that women and gays aren’t lesser-thans.

I doubt it, but we can always hope.

It’s never a surprise to hear sexist squawkings from male athletes, but it seems shamefully out of place in the National Basketball Association, which features 11 female assistant coaches, a female assistant general manager, and four female referees. Moreover, 13 Women’s NBA whistleblowers are female, and there are another 25 in the NBA G League. So Morris’ bleatings fly in the face of the NBA’s admirable and industry-leading diversity practices, and I’m sure commish Adam Silver was not amused.

At some point, it must have occurred to Morris that he has a mother, thus he offered a mea culpa which was as laughable as his comments were ill-advised. He claims to have spoken in “the heat of the moment,” except he went off on Crowder a full 15 minutes after the Knicks and Grizzlies had engaged in a game-ending rutting session. “I have the utmost respect for women and everything they mean to us,” he insisted in his apology. “I never intended for any women to feel as though in anyway I’m disrespecting them.” Right. And every time a jock coughs up a gay slur, he claims: “That isn’t who I am. I have gay friends.”

Stephanie Ready of The Bounce had perhaps the most interesting take on the Morris sound bites: “I personally take offence to that,” she told panelists Quentin Richardson and Caron Butler. “I personally am offended by the statement. I also happen to know that women are just inherently tougher than men, that’s the reason why we give birth and you guys don’t.” The boys squirmed and fought off any urge to debate the point.

Sexism is alive and well in Mother Russia, and Emily Kaplan of ESPN provides the evidence in an excellent article on the Kontinental Hockey Leauge-sponsored Women’s Hockey League. “(Rachel) Llanes was one of several women to demonstrate skills at the KHL All Star Game,” she writes, “but she was told she had to get her hair and makeup done before going on the ice. The KHL put out a promotional calendar for the WHL—which featured players posing naked, covered only by plants.” Sounds like a cosmetics marketing campaign for Cover Girl: Faceoffs and Fig Leaves.

Hey, come to think of it, if we ever get a Women’s National Hockey League franchise in the Republic of Tranna, we have the perfect team name—the Toronto Maple Fig Leafs.

Llanes, who plays for the sole Chinese-based outfit in Russia’s WHL, decided that fig leaves aren’t one size fits all and took a pass on becoming a calendar girl. “Part of being over here, you have to accept culture, even though there are some things you don’t agree with,” she told Kaplan. “The calendar, for example, I definitely don’t want to be in that. But it’s just the culture. Some things you can fight, some things you just go with. I’m playing hockey for a living. I don’t need to complain.”

You know that old bromide about an athlete can’t lose a job due to injury? Well, fuggedaboutit. Matt Nichols was laid low by a shoulder owie last August, and he’ll never take another snap for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Not ever. I’m not saying the Grey Cup champions were wrong to discard their now-former starting quarterback like a banana peel, but I feel bad for the guy. I mean, no one in the western precinct of the Canadian Football League is looking for an aging, brittle QB. Ditto Montreal, Ottawa and the Hammer in the east. Which leaves only the Tranna Argos. Hmmm. Bombers to the Boatmen. That’s like telling a kid who just won a trip to Disneyland that he’ll be going to the dentist instead.

Kobe Bryant is dead and grown men and women weep while the hosannas continue to pour down on the former Los Angeles Lakers great like wet stuff in a Brazilian rainforest. Fine. But here’s what I don’t get: Why is it considered bad manners for scribes and talking heads to tilt Kobe’s halo by mentioning his rape case in 2003? It happened, it was a huge story, and no retro look at the life and times of Bryant is complete without it. So spare me the gnarly discord.

Thoughtful piece by Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab on media reaction to the helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and “seven others” last Sunday. Like Mad Mike, I find it curious that so little attention has been paid to victims three-through-nine—John, Keri and Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser and Ara Zobayan. It’s as if their lives didn’t matter.

Having said that, I don’t need Mad Mike telling me that I should “learn all I can” about the “seven others.” It’s enough that I’m saddened that they’re gone, especially the children. I’m not sure what it is about news snoops who feel the need to tell us what we should be thinking and how we should be reacting. I mean, Mad Mike wants us to study up on seven dead people, and a week ago Cassie Campbell-Pascall informed us we “better start” watching women’s hockey. Or what? She’ll show up on our doorstep carrying a court summons? If it’s all the same to them, I’ll choose my own reading material and my own entertainment.

High-Class Snit of the Week: “Alex Steen blew off media post-game, and the team’s PR staff—who said earlier in the day he would for sure speak—wouldn’t make him available, after playing his 1,000th game in his hometown and with all kinds of interview requests. Absolute joke,” Mad Mike tweeted after Saturday night’s skirmish between the St. Loo Blues and Winnipeg Jets at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie. Not to be outdone, Scott Billeck of the Winnipeg Sun chimed in with this: “Alex Steen, given a nice tribute by the Jets and a nicer one from the fans who stood to recognize his 1000th NHL game tonight, refused to talk to the media after the game. Classless.” I have just three words for that level of media whinging: Boo freaking hoo.

Watched the Edmonton Oilers take Calgary to the slaughter house on Saturday night, so remind me again why the Flames recruited Milan Lucic. Oh, that’s right. To be the team guard dog. To provide some spine. Yet when all hell broke loose between the bitter rivals twice in four nights, where was the Looch? Playing innocent bystander. Looch spent 27 minutes, 34 seconds on the ice during the latest home-and-home installment in the Battle of Alberta, and here’s what he had to show for it: 0 goals, 1 assist, 0 time in the brig. Cripes, man, Calgary keeper Cam Talbot had a fight and two roughing penalties. Turtle Man Tkachuk chucked knuckles twice. Sean Monahan and Buddy Robinson dropped the mitts. Yet the supposed meanest dude on either side of the fray went all Switzerland. And they’re paying him $5.25 million for that?

Just a thought: It must really rot Don Cherry’s socks that he no longer has his Hockey Night In Canada pulpit to squawk about the kind of hoorawing that we saw from the Oilers and Flames. And, to think, he was silenced because of poppies.

Kasperi Kapanen of the Maple Leafs was scratched from the lineup Saturday night for what was described as “internal accountability.” Just wondering: Is that an upper or lower body injury?

Since the start of the 2017 tennis season, here’s the scoreboard for men’s Grand Slam titles: Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic 13, Rest of World 0. The last player not named Nadal, Federer or Djokovic to win one of the four majors? Stan Wawrinka, at the 2016 U.S. Open. (Footnote: In the same time frame on the women’s side, there have been 11 different champions, with only Simona Halep and Naomi Osaka winning twice.)

And, finally, I’d really like San Fran to win today’s Super Bowl skirmish because of Katie Sowers. I just don’t think they will.

Let’s talk about QB Messiah and his pumpkin head…Winnipeg Blue Bombers not so boffo at the box office…baseball and boobs…Teemu, Troy and a wine glass for an appetizer…the real curling capital…Tiger tops the Zozo…and other things on my mind

A day-before-Halloween smorgas-bored…and let’s hope no one casts a spell on you…

I’m not sure where or how Zach Collaros is spending his down time this week, but if he’s been reading his press clippings and/or listening to natterbugs on air and on the street, the guy’s head ought to be the size of farmer Joe’s blue ribbon-winning Halloween pumpkin right about now.

Oh, yes, the hosannas continue to pour down on the walk-on-water quarterback, whose successful debut as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers starter has put the faithful into a tizzy.

Consider, for example, the musings of Doug Brown in the Drab Slab.

“A breath of fresh air in what had become a suffocating offensive situation,” is how Brown described Collaros after observing his handiwork in a 29-28 conquest of the Calgary Stampeders. “It’s rare that you would hand the keys over to any franchise after a single game, but if you didn’t see the difference and the potential of a Collaros-led offence Friday in contrast to the last few weeks or months, you simply weren’t paying attention.”

Fair to suggest, then, that we can count Brown among the many who expect (demand?) to see Collaros behind centre when Winnipeg FC engages either the Stampeders or Saskatchewan Flatlanders in the opening step of the Canadian Football League playoff dosey doe on Nov. 10.

I’m not prepared to argue with him, because Doug once put bread on his dinner table by scaring the bejeebers out of quarterbacks and stealing their lunch money, or anything else he fancied, so he knows QBs.

Meanwhile, the boys on the beat are bucking for QB Messiah, too.

Here’s Jeff Hamilton of the Drab Slab: “If Collaros isn’t the guy tasked with leading this team to a Grey Cup with (Chris) Streveler back in his role as the short-yardage QB, then the Bombers don’t deserve to win. And they won’t.”

Here’s Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun: “If he remains upright, the guy makes the Bombers the league’s playoff wild card.”

That’s tall talk. But not unreasonable, given that the Bombers long ago established that they can go toe-to-toenail with either the Stamps or Flatlanders regardless which man is putting O-coordinator Paul LaPolice’s marching orders into motion, Streveler, Collaros or Matt Nichols.

My main concern is health.

I mean, if Collaros is the Chosen One on Nov. 10, he might not be able to answer the bell due to an upper-body difficulty—his big, fat pumpkin head and halo won’t fit into his helmet.

The Bombers took a healthy hit at the box office this season compared to 2018, which is bound to put a pair of grumpy pants on Wade Miller, the CEO whose job it is to convince the rabble that Football Follies Field in Fort Garry is the place to be at least nine times each summer/autumn. The final head count was 228,728 (via stats.cfldb.ca), a whopping dip of 13,195, and if we are to consider each lost patron as a 50-dollar bill, that’s a $659,750 whack to the bottom line. Can you say “ouch,” kids?

Major League Baseball has banned two women, Julia Rose and Lauren Summer, indefinitely for baring their breasts behind home plate during Game 5 of the World Series. Hmmm. That’s the same game Donald Trump attended. Looks like they booted the wrong boob.

As a rule, I’m not in favor of public nudity, but, hey, I’m all for anything that will keep me awake during four-hour baseball games.

I saw five pucks—on just 19 shots—get past Connor Hellebuyck on Tuesday night and he saw unicorns and fairy dust. Again. “It’s not like I’m coming in here and saying I played bad,” the Winnipeg Jets goaltender told news snoops after a 7-4 loss to the Disney Ducks in Anaheim. “I liked a lot of my game. I was just a little bit off. I liked the way I was playing. I liked the way I was feeling, I liked the way I was feeling the puck, and for some reason just (not) getting any of the lucky bounces.” I’m sure the Ducks liked his game, too.

Fun, but kind of creepy, story from old friend Teemu Selanne, who did the 20-questions thing with Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Athletic and confirmed that former Jets captain Troy Murray once chowed down on a wine glass during dinner. “Oh my god, that was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” the Finnish Flash told Fitz-Gerald. “He ate a whole wine glass. Not the bottom, but the top part. He chewed that very close. Such small pieces. I was disgusted. But that’s what he did. It was unbelievable. I think he said that when you chew it, little by little—very small—it doesn’t hurt. But I would not try it.”

I think it’s important to note that Murray ate just the top half of the wine glass, which means no one can ever accuse him of being a bottom-feeder. (I know, groooooan.)

Teemu, by the way, also told Fitz-Gerald that he prefers the old Jets uniforms to the present-day duds, and I couldn’t agree more.

Great line from Matt Baldwin, 93-year-old Alberta curling legend who was on hand for this week’s launch of Terry Jones’ latest book, World Capital of Curling. “You know you’re getting old when you can’t remember where you left your walker.”

No doubt the Jones tome is boffo, but I’m afraid the title is a tad misleading, if not a big, fat fib. The book is an homage to Northern Alberta Pebble People, which is fine, but the rest of us know that the true “World Capital of Curling” is Good Ol’ Hometown—Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Old friend Jonesy knows that, too, but they’d probably stuff him in a broom bag and deport him to Lethbridge or Medicine Hat if he ever admitted it.

On the subject of Pebble People, nice to see local lad Matt Dunstone nail down his first Grand Slam of Curling title, winning the Masters in North Bay last weekend. Matt does his thing on the Flattest of Lands now, playing out of Regina, but he was weaned on the pebble of River City and we like to remind people of that whenever one of our own shows ’em how it’s done.

Tiger Woods won something called the Zozo on the weekend, and that’s not to be confused with Zsa Zsa or ZZ Top. The Zozo Championship was Tiger’s 82nd W on the PGA Tour, putting him alongside legendary Sam Snead atop the all-time leaderboard, so why am I still hearing people say Jack Nicklaus was a better golfer? Ya, sure, the Golden Bear has three more Grand Slam titles to Tiger’s 15, but if winning majors was the sole measuring stick, we’d be talking about Margaret Court as the greatest female tennis player in history. We know she isn’t. And Nicklaus isn’t the greatest golfer either.

And, finally, I can’t decide who to dress up as for Halloween, so I think I’ll just stay home and hope I don’t turn into a pumpkin.

Let’s talk about Mike O’Shea feeding Chris Streveler to the wolves…CFL MOP candidates…Coach PottyMo’s milestone…scandal brewing in The ROT…the price of hot dogs and beer…Shapo gets it done…a Yankee-free World Series…and autumn leaves

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and if you’re old enough to vote today, you’re old enough to do the right thing…

Okay, it’s agreed. Chris Streveler is one tough dude.

I mean, someone could huck a live grenade down the guy’s pants and he might miss a play or two while medics re-attached both his legs with a tube of Gorilla Glue and some Scotch Tape. But he’d be back in the fray pronto.

We know this because Streveler, when last seen, was walking like a man who’d just let a Rottweiler use his right ankle for a chew toy. While a dingo gnawed on his right wrist.

The Calgary Stampeders didn’t just chew him up and spit him out on Saturday night in the Alberta foothills. They turned him into a blue-and-gold pinata. I haven’t seen one man take that bad a beating since Mel Gibson let the Romans thrash Jesus Christ for two hours.

Somebody should have called a cop. And arrest Mike O’Shea.

Apparently Coach Grunge was the only person who didn’t notice that his starting quarterback’s body parts were strewn all over the field at McMahon Stadium. Wrist at the 40-yard stripe. Ribs at the 52. Ankle at the 35.

Instead of turning over control of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers offence to understudy Sean McGuire or newby Zach Collaros in the last-gasp moments of a Canadian Football League game that was every bit the barroom brawl, Coach Grunge instructed the much-mangled Streveler to finish what he had started, even though he belonged in ICU rather than a mosh pit of large, angry men. It was like telling Custer to have another go at Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and their braves.

The result was predictable, of course. Streveler, try as he might, was unable to muster another score and the Bombers were left wanting in a 37-33 loss that exhausted their aspirations of a first-place finish.

But never mind regular-season bragging rights. It’s about O’Shea’s refusal to sit Streveler down when there’s another weighty dosey doe with the Stampeders on Friday night, not to mention November football when there are no more excuses or tomorrows.

Streveler is O’Shea’s guy, we know that, so why did Coach Grunge jeopardize his health and Winnipeg FC’s playoff aspirations?

“You trust your players,” he told news snoops after the fact. “If he says he can go, he can go. At this time of year all these guys are nicked up, but obviously Strev got a little nicked up in that game.”

A little nicked up? Ya, like Evander Holyfield’s ear was just a “little nicked up” after Mike Tyson had it for a late-night snack.

It was reckless coaching, the sort of thing I thought O’Shea had gotten past. But no. Apparently, someone will have to saw off one of Streveler’s legs at the hip and hand the limb to Coach Grunge before he considers an alternative course of action at the most important position on the field.

And it isn’t good enough that Streveler wanted to re-enter the skirmish due to some warrior code.

“When guys do that they just, they’re putting it on the line for teammates,” said O’Shea. “They wanna be out there for ’em, they just love working for their teammates.”

Look, we all know professional athletes are wired differently than us mere mortals. Broken ankle? No biggie. It’s a long way from the heart, kid. Walk it off. Sometimes, however, they need to be protected from themselves. This was one of those times, and O’Shea ignored the risks because that’s the way he played the game. Balls to the wall, baby.

That’s what Coach Grunge knows best. That’s what got him into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. And Streveler has that same linebacker mentality. It’s admirable. But dumb for a QB.

Just not as dumb as a head coach allowing it to happen.

So who do you like for the Most Outsanding Player Award in the CFL? I’ve got Speedy B of the Hamilton Tabbies, but Reggie Begelton of the Stampeders is closing fast on the inside. And, yes, even though the B.C. Leos have been a bust, Bryan Burnham warrants consideration because he’s a human highlight reel and the trinket goes to the most outstanding player, not most valuable.

I fully expect the Winnipeg chapter of the football writers to nominate Andrew Harris as the local MOP candidate, but I’d vote for Willie Jefferson. Sorry, but Harris is a tainted tailback.

On the subject of head coaches, a tip of the bonnet to Paul Maurice, whose Winnipeg Jets outlasted the Edmonton McDavids, 1-nada in a shootout, on Sunday night at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie. If you’re scoring at home—and aren’t we all?—that gives Coach Potty Mouth 700 Ws as a National Hockey League bench puppeteer, and I say that deserves something more than the sound of one hand clapping.

Got a kick out of Blake Wheeler’s reaction to Coach PottyMo’s milestone. “What an accomplishment,” said the Jets captain, who also happens to be teacher’s pet. “Obviously, been in the game a long time, he’s turned into an old man on us and, you know, I think the biggest quality of Paul is his ability to adapt to different seasons and different teams. Throughout his tenure as a coach, I think that’s why he’s had such great longevity. Players never tune him out, never get sick of his message, ’cause he’s able to keep it fresh and refreshing, and I think when you see teams really fall off and really struggling big time it’s ’cause the players stop buying into the coach’s message. Not even close to what’s happening here.” No, they only tuned out Coach PottyMo in Carolina (twice), Toronto, and Russia.

Hey, I’m not here to scoff at or trivialize Coach PottyMo’s accomplishment. Just to prove it, I won’t even mention that his 624 losses put him No. 1 on the NHL all-time loser list.

I don’t know about you, but the Jets are exactly what I figured them to be this crusade, which is to say all over the map. Really, nobody should be surprised by their herky-jerky start, and I suspect it’ll be like this for the long haul. Question is, will .500 hockey be good enough to get them to Beard Season?

Oh, dear, is there a controversy—indeed, a scandal—brewing in the Republic of Tranna? I ask that, because Mitch Marner says he wants to skate alongside his good buddy Auston Matthews. “Hopefully,” he told news snoops on Sunday, “we do play together a little more often.” Does this mean young Mitch’s feathers are ruffled? Is he calling his coach, Mike Babcock, a bit of a bozo? Is he saying he considers John Tavares a slug? Of course not. And nobody’s nose appears to be out of joint in The ROT. It’s strictly meh stuff, unlike in Good Ol’ Hometown after Patrik Laine expressed similar sentiments about his role with the Jets. Puck Finn told a Finnish reporter that he wanted to play with the big dogs, Rink Rat Scheifele and Blake Wheeler, and that was interpreted as a mortal slap at Coach PottyMo and centre Bryan Little. A tempest ensued. Big headlines. Puck Finn texted an apology to Little. Didn’t matter. Many among the rabble wanted him on the first stage out of town. Some jock journos suggested he zip his lips. I’d never thought of local news snoops as bigger drama queens than the mob in The ROT, but apparently they are.

As a folo to my Sunday post, whereby I mentioned something about a beer and a hot dog costing more at a Jets game today than an admission ticket in 1974, this was the going rate back in the day at Winnipeg Arena: Reds $7, Blues $6, Nosebleed $4. There was also a promo that allowed a parent to purchase a seat in the greys at the old barn on Maroons Road for the regular $4 fare, plus a second seat for their son or daughter for $2. Buy the kid a hot dog and Coke, and you were still under a 10-dollar bill for the night. Now the hot dog alone is $10.

Came across this interesting tidbit from my first boss at the Winnipeg Tribune, legendary scribe Jack Matheson: “You Read It Here First Dept.: The Jets will be long gone by 1976 because too many big business people in this town are big four-flushers,” he wrote in October 1974. Matty was out by 20 years, but his prediction came true, nonetheless. And he was spot-on in reasoning why the Jets would disappear. As he forecast, they split for Phoenix because none of the high rollers in town were interested in losing money.

Our guy Denis Shapovalov has finally won an ATP tournament, besting Filip Krajinovic of Serbia, 6-4, 6-4 on Sunday, and let’s not quibble about the Stockholm Open having less glitz and glam than in the past. A win is a win is a win, and anytime you can put your name in the same grouping as tennis legends Bjorn Borg, Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg, Ivan Lendl, Mats Wilander, Boris Becker and Roger Federer you’ve done alright for yourself. They’re all past champions in Stockholm, so I’d say Shapo is keeping good company.

I must say, I’d be more interested in the World Series if the New York Yankees were involved. Not that I like the Yankees. Can’t stand the Yankees, because I was weaned on the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers and the damn Yankees always seemed to have our number. So I like to see them lose in the annual Fall Classic. As it is, neither the Houston Astros or Washington Nationals do it for me. Should be boffo pitching, though.

And, finally, this tweet from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: “The autumn colors are spectacular this time of the year.” What, as opposed to the autumn colors in winter, spring and summer?

Let’s talk about female athletes quitting…will we miss them when they’re gone?…Dani Rylan aka Darth Damsel…LPGA visibility…no friends in the media…sexism, homophobia and Katie Sowers…and swinging cats at lesbians

A work week hump day smorgas-bored coming down in 3, 2, 1…and the back half of August feels an awful lot like the front half…

I thought Megan Rapinoe’s 15 minutes of fame was fini. Hadn’t heard from her for a few weeks.

Then her purple hair showed up on Good Morning America a few days ago and, along with Yankee Doodle Damsel teammate Christen Press, she talked about faith and hope and compromise and, most significant, bang for your buck.

“We won’t accept anything less than equal pay,” the U.S. women’s national soccer team co-captain declared.

Or what? They’ll quit?

Like approximately 200 elite female hockey players quit? Like members of the Swedish women’s national hockey team quit?

The Swedish women are supposed to be in Vierumaki, Finland, for the 5 Nations Tournament this week, but they’ve had it up to their blonde ponytails with being treated like second hand Roses and found something better to do. What that something is, we don’t know, but it isn’t wearing a yellow-and-blue hockey jersey with three crowns on the front.

There are 10 points of contention between the women and their governing body, the Swedish Ice Hockey Association (SIF), and they include everything from increased funding (top of the list) to wardrobe. Yes, clothing.

It seems that being forced to adorn themselves in male attire is a disagreeable bit of business to the Swedish women.

“For a five-year period, we have asked for clothes in a women’s model, clothes that must be sewn and adapted for women,” is Point 7 in their list of necessary upgrades. “In response, we are told that SIF provides equal clothing to all national teams, ie. men’s clothing. It should be in SIF’s interest that the Crowns represent SIF in a professional and respectful way. How does SIF want the Women’s Crowns to represent Sweden and the Swedish Ice Hockey Association?”

That might sound petty, but I’m reasonably certain that if members of the Swedish national men’s side were required to drape themselves in female finery, they’d sparka upp en stor stank (kick up a big stink). But, then, they’d never ask the fellas to do that, would they?

Anyway, as much as I enthusiastically applaud and endorse any female athlete’s fight for equal pay, equal benefits, equal opportunity, and the equal right to change tops courtside during a tennis tournament, it seems to me that quitting is an ill-conceived strategy when one of the main laments of all women’s sports is lack of exposure.

The women want to be seen and heard in print, on air and in the public conscience, yet they choose to disappear in a quest to achieve said goal.

Interesting gambit.

Let’s say the U.S. national side takes its lawsuit against U.S. Soccer to court and a jury decides the pay scale is not gender based? Hence, no additional coin. Does that mean Rapinoe and her world champion gal pals will be no-shows for next summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo? Certainly they’d be present by their absence, and whichever country were to emerge as champion would have an asterisk attached to its name, but I fail to see how that helps the cause of women’s fitba.

Are Sweden’s female hockey players getting a bum deal? Certainly sounds like it, yes. But there’s a danger in their ploy. That is, what if nobody gives a damn? It’s the same predicament players on this side of the big waters find themselves in. The Canadian Women’s Hockey League has already bolted the doors, and now approximately 200 elite players say they won’t lace ’em up again until Dani Rylan pulls the chute on her National Women’s Hockey League and a sugar daddy/mama (read: NHL) surfaces. Well, there are no signs of surrender in commish Rylan, so will anyone really care that the ForTheGame200 have gone AWOL?

The ForTheGame200 bully tactic doesn’t appear to be intimidating Rylan, because the latest roster update from The Ice Garden tells us that 66 players, including 13 Canadians, have signed on for the NWHL’s fifth season, set to face off on Oct. 5. That happens to be World Girl’s Hockey Weekend, and I’m thinking there’ll be about 200 elite women who’d like to be part of it.

Prediction: At some point, the 200 boycotters will turn on Rylan. They’ll accuse her of acting like she believes herself to be “bigger than the game,” and make her out to be Darth Damsel, an evil force standing between them and the “$50,000 to $100,000” salaries Cassie Campbell-Pascall thinks they deserve. Bet on it.

How significant is exposure? Well, let’s consider what Ladies Professional Golf Association commissioner Michael Whan has to say on the matter.

The distaff swingers mostly fly under the radar unless you subscribe to the Golf Channel. Still, they’re playing for a total prize purse of $70.5 million in 2019. By way of comparison, the men appear on network TV every weekend 10 months of the year, and it doesn’t seem to matter if Tiger Woods shows up to hack his way to another over-par score or not. NBC, CBS or Fox Sports will be there on Sunday to tell us Tiger’s wearing a red shirt. Oh, and the boys divvy up a $300 million-plus pot of gold.

“If you give me 39 weeks on (national) TV, I’ll close the gap on viewership in a long way, and if I close the gap on viewership I’ll close the difference in purses and pay,” says Whan. “But you can’t do one without the other.”

So, what part of being seen do female hockey and soccer players not understand?

The 10 highest-paid female athletes in the world, according to Forbes, are tennis players. The women’s purse at all four Grand Slam tournaments is equal to the men’s. They didn’t get there by going into hiding. They got there by negotiating while still playing.

Media, of course, plays a significant role in exposing sports to the masses, and there’s definitely a substantial divide in coverage of women’s and men’s competition. For example, I’d wager that few, if any, of you are aware that Canada and the U.S. recently engaged in two hockey tournaments—three-game series between the women’s under-22 and under-18 sides. TSN ignored both events. Yet if I thought watching shinny in summer was a worthwhile activity (I don’t), I could have tuned in to the boys’ World Junior Summer Showcase and the Hlinka Gretzky Cup. Perhaps someone at TSN can explain why our future female Olympians aren’t as important as our future male Olympians. Meanwhile, at Troy Media, they have award-winning journalist/columnist Bruce Dowbiggin telling us that women’s sports is “second-class entertainment.” Steve Simmons of Postmedia once advocated for the elimination of women’s hockey from the Olympic Games. With friends like that, it’s a wonder female athletes even bother to leave the house.

So, you say you’d like to coach college hoops. Sorry, no can do. Not if you’re lesbian. What about pro football then? Sorry, no can do. Not if you’re female.

That, kids, is a double whammy of discrimination and Katie Sowers lived it.

Sowers now earns her daily bread as an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers, but she only landed the gig after another National Football League outfit told her it was “not ready” to have a women join their stable of on-field instructors.

Years earlier, she had offered her services as a volunteer basketball coach to alma mater Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana.

“I had just finished up my basketball career,” Sowers told Kristine Leahy on the FS1 show Fair Game. “My four years of eligibility were done, so I was on my victory lap and I started playing track and field for fun, and I also was thinking ‘I really want to get my coaching career started.’ So I went to my basketball coach, who had given me…I was a team captain all the years I played, I was a leader on the team, and I knew that they were low on staff, they were low on practice players. I actually emailed him and I said ‘Would this be an opportunity where I could be a volunteer coach?’ I didn’t even think there was a chance for a no. But he responded saying just to come into his office to talk about it.

“And what he told me was that because of my lifestyle, he didn’t want me around the team. And when I was on his team, I was someone that he would protect, but now that I’m not, there’s not much he can do about it. And there were prospective students’ parents that were concerned that if there was a lesbian coach, their daughter might ‘catch the gay’ or whatever it might be, because people might think it’s contagious or whatever it was. But for some reason, they didn’t want me around.

“There was another school in the division that I played, I had a really good friend who played basketball, got kicked off the team at her school because they found out she was gay. She lost her whole scholarship. This was 2008, 2007.”

And people wonder why there are still Pride parades.

And, finally, this from the aforementioned Dowbiggin of Troy Media: “You can’t swing a cat without hitting a lesbian in a women’s sport.” Sigh…there just aren’t enough words.

About Commish Randy’s flag football and NFL Lite…an “effing crazy” tennis champion for Canada…equal coin for female curlers…it’s criminal what the Bruins did…the CWHL final on Sportsnet…and other things on my mind

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and, no, I don’t have a St. Patty’s Day hangover because I was in bed before they started pouring the pints…

Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie was already up my nose, but he’s digging in deeper and deeper.

Randy Ambrosie is playing a different kind of flag football.

I mean, the guy’s globetrotting and making nice with people who’ve never seen the pointy end of a three-down football was an annoying bit of business, but Commish Randy is playing a dangerous game of flag football when there’s talk of reducing the number of Canadian starters—seven down to five—for each game-day lineup and adding two “global” spots to each overall roster. That’s just wrong.

I’d like to think that Justin Dunk of 3DownNation received bad intel when sources advised him that our homebrews are under attack. But I fear he’s spot on about the Canadian-import roster ratio.

Homeys are at the very core of our game and ought not be used as bargaining chips in negotiations for a fresh Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the CFL Players Association. If Commish Randy and U.S. players want fewer Canadian starters, let’s get rid of the rouge, too. And while we’re at it, let’s shrink the field, adopt the fair catch and four downs, eliminate that pesky 12th man on defence so American QBs like Johnny Manziel aren’t confused, and replace the CFL on TSN panel with Curt, Terry, Howie, Michael and Jimmy. We can call it NFL Lite.

That might sell tickets in the Republic of Tranna, but I doubt it will wash on the Prairies, which is the heartland of the CFL.

So, how do we like our “effing crazy” tennis champion so far? I like her a lot.

It’s one thing to wow ’em with an assortment of shots and gritty stick-to-itness on court, but Bianca Andreescu also wowed ’em in the press chat room scant moments after she had toppled Angelique Kerber, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, in the championship match of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., on Sunday.

“A year ago I’d been struggling a lot with my tennis and with my body, so it’s crazy what a year can do,” the 18-year-old from Mississauga told news snoops. “I was playing $25Ks (tournaments) in Japan and now I’m the…can I say the F-word? No I can’t…I’m the effing champion of Indian Wells. Crazy. Crazy is the word of the tournament for me. Just crazy.”

For those of you who give tennis no more than a passing glance, this was no rinky-dinky tournament. Indian Wells is huge, one of the premier events on the calendar with most of the elite women and men on site. It’s a notch below the four Grand Slams. So where does Bianca’s achievement rank in Canadian tennis history? Numero uno in singles play. Milos Raonic has won eight titles on the men’s tour, Darling Carling Bassett and Hurricane Helen Kelesi had two each on the distaff side, and Genie Bouchard once racked up a W (that seems like a very long time ago). But what Bianca accomplished on Sunday—unparalleled.

I know what some of you might be thinking, or at least hoping—that Bianca doesn’t go all-Genie on us. Bouchard, of course, was the flavor of the month on the Women’s Tennis Association Tour in 2015, rising as high as world No. 5, but then she started taking her clothes off for Sports Illustrated and putting on the ritz. As a consequence, her game has gone kaflooey. I don’t see Andreescu falling down that same rabbit hole. No “effing” way.

For those of you keeping score at home, Bianca has now beaten four Grand Slam champions this year—Kerber, Garbine Muguruza, Venus Williams and Caroline Wozniacki. Heady stuff for a kid.

I realize most of our vast land still remains covered in white stuff, so is it too early to anoint Bianca Andreescu our top athlete for 2019? Seriously, who’s going to trump the tennis neophyte’s astonishing run at Indian Wells? I suppose golfer Brooke Henderson might have something to say about it, but it will take some doing.

Chelsea Carey, third Sarah Wilkes, second Dana Ferguson, lead Rachel Brown with $32,000 worth of trophy.

Chelsea Carey has it all wrong and she’s selling herself and all elite female curlers in this country short.

Our Chelsea and her gal pals from the Glencoe Club in Calgary are over in Denmark right now, having swapped their Wild Rose of Alberta for the Maple Leaf to defend Canada’s rank as the global pebble power, but she left some interesting sound bites behind before crossing the big pond. Like her take on payouts at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the Brier.

“I think,” she said, “from a financial standpoint, from a business standpoint, it’s hard to demand exactly equal money. That would be great, but it does need to get closer.”

No, Chelsea. It has to be equal, not just closer.

Kevin Koe, B.J. Neufeld, Jumpin’ Jack Flasch, Ben Hebert with $70,000 worth of trophy.

I mean, same number of teams. Same number of games. Same hard work to get there and stay there. Same TV appeal (the Brier in Brandon had more viewers than the Scotties in Sydney during round-robin play, but the women had better numbers for the playoffs and blitzed the Brier in final vs. final audience—762,000-659,000).

True, the boys at the Brier did better business at the box office, but Kevin Koe and his Glencoe team earned $70,000, so that’s what Carey and her Scotties champions should have collected, not $32,000.

If Curling Canada has to rob Peter to pay Paula, so be it.

Interesting comment from Reid Carruthers after he and his fellow Buffalo Boys—Mike McEwen, Derek Samagalski, Colin Hodgson—had crashed and burned at the Brier. “It’s hard to put a team together and all of a sudden win in its first year,” the Manitoba third said. I’d buy that except for one thing—Koe won the Brier with a first-year team, and Carey won the Scotties in her first year with new teammates.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Conor McGregor, the most vulgar and vile man in sports, was arrested in Miami Beach and charged with strong-arm robbery and criminal mischief after he stole and smashed a tourist’s cellphone. That was scant days after the former UFC champion and lousy boxer had completed community service obligations as punishment for hurling a dolly through a bus window in Brooklyn last year. (His lawyers arranged a plea deal on charges of assault, attempted assault and criminal mischief.) And that’s the guy the Boston Bruins trotted out—to considerable pomp and fanfare—for a ceremonial faceoff last week? They celebrated a criminal? What, O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson weren’t available?

If you have a hockey-playing daughter who’s inclined to hang ’em up in her mid-teens because she doesn’t think there’s anywhere for her to go, you’ll want to give young Jeff Hamilton’s excellent piece on girls’ shinny a read in the Drab Slab. There’s such a thing as the Manitoba Women’s Junior Hockey League, and the championship was decided on Saturday night when Prairie Blaze beat the Silvertips in a shootout.

And, finally, on the matter of distaff shinny, it’s terrific that Sportsnet will air the Canadian Women’s Hockey League title skirmish featuring the Calgary Inferno and Les Canadiennes de Montreal on March 24, but what’s with the noon ET faceoff time? Does someone have a plane to catch? Like, they couldn’t drop the puck in mid-afternoon to give the Clarkson Cup reasonable air time across the country? That’s no way to sell the women’s game.

About Josh Morrissey doing a Jacob Trouba…the fashion police weigh in on Winnipeg Jets third uni…the hair on hockey players’ chinny-chin-chins…pants on fire in Montreal…Johnny Rotten’s bruised ego…fighting fossils…tennis brats…and other things on my mind

It occurs to me…

Now that Josh Morrissey is back on board, here’s what I’m curious about: Will the rabble—and at least one prominent jock journo—speak and write the same evil about him as they did Jacob Trouba during the past two years?

Trouba, you’ll recall, failed to surface for Winnipeg Jets training exercises in 2016 and he’s been Darth Skater ever since. It’s as if he’s responsible for all that raw sewage pouring into the city’s river system.

Morrissey was MIA for the first three days of Camp PoMo. Does that make him Darth Skater Lite?

I mean, from what I can determine there’s just one difference between the two young National Hockey League defenders: Trouba declared a desire to get out of Dodge prior to his contract impasse, which stretched into November of ’16, and his hankering for a new postal/zip code became a matter of public record. Morrissey, meanwhile, has expressed no such yearning. The only comments he delivered for public consumption during his prolonged contract discussions sounded like a 1960s love-in: Love the Jets. Love my teammates. Love River City. Want to be on board for the long haul. We’ll get a deal done.

Well, now that the deal is done (two years, $6.3 million), I’m hoping that Morrissey will be spared the unharnessed hostility heaped upon his blueline accomplice, and that’s as it should be.

Like Trouba before him, Morrissey has done nothing wrong.

“You make your decision and you stand up for what you believe in and I wouldn’t expect him to take anything less that what he feels he’s worth,” Trouba was saying the other day, not long after the local lads had assembled for their initial pre-season frolic.

Exactly.

The notion that these players should happily lap up whatever Kool-Aid that Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and his main bidder, Kevin Cheveldayoff, are serving is absurd.

Let’s be clear: Morrissey and les Jets had agreed to disagree until Sunday. That doesn’t make him a malcontent or a bad guy.

Mark Scheifele in Jets beer league jersey.

Here’s my thought on those third jerseys les Jets unveiled on Friday: That’s the biggest swing and a miss since mighty Casey struck out for the Mudville Nine. Seriously. Has a beer league team reported a set of stolen sweaters?

Here’s my thought on Tyler Myers playing on the left side of les Jets defence: Egads.

Much has been made of the fact that Jets goal-scoring maestro Puck Finn shed 14 pounds and the worst set of chin whiskers in hockey history during the summer. Here’s betting that if the puck isn’t going in early and often for Patrik Laine, the bread-butter-and-eggman beard grows back.

Speaking of facial foliage, I note that the Tranna Maple Leafs have scrapped their ban on beards. Yup, players can now sprout chin whiskers. Most excited about the new directive is forward Mitch Marner. It gives him something to look forward to when he finally reaches puberty.

I find it interesting that les Leafs and Air Canada would lift their respective restrictions on beards at the same time. As for extra baggage, Air Canada is still charging a fee and Ron Hainsey is still with the Leafs.

It’s a given that everyone in sports lives on Planet Pinocchio, which is to say they tell fibs. It’s part of their DNA. But it’s difficult to determine whose pants were on fire in Montreal recently, when les Canadiens ownership/management and former captain Max Pacioretty engaged in a “he said/he said/no I didn’t” peeing contest.

Geoff Molson, team bankroll: “We’re just going to focus on telling the truth, and that’s that a (trade) request was made. When the request was made to look at making a trade, we started to actively go after that.”

Marc Bergevin, general manager: “Last season, he asked for a trade. I will not go into details. But that’s a fact.”

Pacioretty: “There’s no truth to that. And I can confidently say that.”

Pacioretty is now with the Vegas Golden Knights. No one is denying it.

If you’re looking for some good reading (and you know you won’t find it here), check out Dan Myers’ nhl.com piece on Minnesota Wild head coach Bruce Broudreau and the 9/11 tragedy, and New York Islander goaltender Robin Lehner’s first-person account in The Athletic on his winning battle with the bottle, depression and suicidal notions. As my first sports editor, Jack Matheson, would tell us whenever we wrote something that caught his fancy, it’s “damn good” stuff. Very powerful.

Is it mere coincidence that Antonio Pipkin had his worst day at the office scant hours after TSN’s favorite lousy quarterback, Johnny Manziel, shot off at the mouth about losing his job as the Montreal Alouettes starter?

Pipkin was beyond dismal in the Larks’ 32-14 loss to the B.C. Lions on Friday night, throwing for less than 100 yards and four interceptions, including a pair of late Pick Sixes. What I found myself wondering while watching the carnage was whether or not Johnny Rotten’s rant during the leadup to the skirmish impacted on Pipkin’s performance.

“They traded half of an organization I feel like in terms of what they gave up to get me here,” Manziel had told news snoops. “I would think I would get a chance to come in and still play. That’s where maybe it’s a little bit lost on me. Missing the game because of the concussion and then not getting to play once I was back, it’s been frustrating for sure. Because I felt like there was a lot of hope and a lot of faith in me being the guy here and how quickly that’s changed in two weeks is tough.”

Sounds to me like the bleating of an entitled, me-first rich kid.

To recap, Manziel started two games behind centre for Montreal. He was gawdawful in his Canadian Football League debut, and only marginally better the next time out, when he suffered a concussion. He was 0-2. In his absence, Pipkin won two of three assignments, pumping oxygen into the lifeless Larks and establishing himself as the No. 1. Apparently, none of that registered with Johnny College. Despite missing three days of practice with the flu, he’s convinced he should have been at the wheel vs. B.C.

It’s believe he’ll miss the next month of the season due to hurt feelings.

Oh, joy, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are going to exchange punches again for a gazillion dollars in December. How will they bill the fist fight between the two boxing fossils, The Wife Beater vs. The Homophobe? And how many suckers will actually pay to watch it?

The is too funny: Last week, Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna wrote, “I really hope the Maple Leafs pick a captain soon—so everybody can just shut up about it. The captain stuff: Relatively meaningless.” So what’s the first snippet in Simmons’ latest notes column about? You guessed it. The Leafs “relatively meaningless” captaincy. Does he even read his own stuff before hitting the send button?

I began covering tennis in 1971, when the premier players in the country made the first of their annual summer pilgrimages to the har-tru courts of the Winnipeg Canoe Club for the Canadian National tournament. In the ensuing years, I witnessed no small amount of brattish behaviour, perhaps the most memorable being a classic hissy fit from the tightly strung Dale Power, who, after an unexpected loss, hucked all his racquets and other paraphernalia into an open construction pit that was to become the badminton wing of WCC. In tennis, the men were the divas (hello John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ilie Nastase). McEnroe became a pathetic caricature of himself. Connors was a narcissistic boor. Nastase was a lewd, crude oinker. So where does the great self-promoting female crusader Serena Williams fit in with the bad-ass boys? I’d say she’s a combination of McEnroe and Connors—a narcissistic caricature.

And, finally, chair umpire Carlos Ramos, he of the Serena Williams foofaraw at the U.S. Open, dinged Marin Cilic of Croatia with a code violation for racquet abuse in his Davis Cup match vs. Sam Querrey of the U.S. today. Cilic did not call Ramos a “liar” or a “thief,” nor did he mention anything about parenting or fighting for equal rights. Apparently, he simply played on. What a concept.

About Matt Nichols still the man for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers…a battle for first place on Oct. 26?…adios Duron Carter…when is a concussion not a concussion?…CFL power rankings…headline hunting QBs…beer and Dodgers baseball…hockey in August…Tiger wows ’em…Daniel Nestor’s “window dressing”…and other things on my mind

Two soft-boiled eggs on whole wheat toast and some weekend leftovers for a Monday morning breakfast…

It has come to my attention that some among the rabble are less than enthusiastic about the work of Matt Nichols.

A pocket of people, in fact, were calling for Nichols’ removal on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, even though he had the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in front of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, 19-7, when the large lads retreated to their changing rooms for mid-match down time.

To which I can only say: Have you lost your flipping minds?

I mean, sure, Nichols was off his game when tossing the long ball. If misses were kisses he’d have been covered in hickies. But take him out? You don’t want to go there. All Nichols has done for Winnipeg FC is win (27-15). If not for the objectionable and curious decision-making of his head coach, Mike O’Shea, in the past two Novembers there’d likely be a playoff victory or two on his resume.

Ask yourself this: What Canadian Football League quarterback would you rather have ahead of Nichols? If you say Mike Reilly or Bo Levi Mitchell, I’ll agree. If you say anyone else, I’ll be inclined to give you an argument.

So, unless Nichols is hobbled and sent to the repair shop, let’s have no more talk of his ouster.

First the bad news: The head count at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry is down 6,140 through four home dates. Now the good news: Still on the Winnipeg FC calendar are visits from the Saskatchewan Roughriders (2) and Calgary Stampeders (1). In an ideal world, which is to say if the pointy ball bounces in the Bombers box-office favor, the Oct. 26 skirmish vs. the Stamps would be an argument over top spot in the West Division. Can you say sellout, kids?

The surprise is not that the Roughriders shed themselves of multi-purpose pain in the ass Duron Carter the other day, the surprise is that he lasted so long with Gang Green.

Apparently, CFL concussion protocol doesn’t apply to quarterbacks named Johnny Manziel. He was knocked loopy in Montreal Alouettes’ loss to the Ottawa RedBlacks, yet permitted to carry on without missing a beat. Scary stuff.

Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…

1. Calgary (7-0): Didn’t play last week. Didn’t matter.
2. Edmonton (5-3): Three wins vs. West outfits.
3. Winnipeg (5-3): Still feasting on the East.
4. Saskatchewan (3-4): What’s next from mad scientist Chris Jones?
5. Ottawa (5-3): They were tooth and toenail to beat a horrible Montreal team. Not impressed.
6. Hamilton (3-5): Hard team to figure out.
7. B.C. (3-4): Dudes are tough at home.
8. Toronto (2-5): Didn’t play. Nobody noticed.
9. Montreal (1-7): Getting worse in either official language.

Quick now! Name the only starting quarterback who failed to toss a touchdown pass in the CFL last week. I’ll give you a hint—he’s TSN’s favorite lousy QB. That’s right, Johnny Manziel.

Now, who among the six starters flung the football for the fewest number of yards? Right again, Johnny Rotten.

Finally, who among the starting six is 0-for-the-CFL? Yup, heeeere’s Johnny!

So why is it that his name still dominates headlines in mainstream media and on the Internet?

News snoops and talking heads continue to fawn over Manziel like Republicans and Donald Trump, regardless how dreadful or ordinary his work might be. Most notable among the groupies is, of course, the ever-drooling mob in the Cult of Johnny, otherwise known as TSN, but they aren’t alone. The morning after Manziel and the Alouettes were paddywhacked by the RedBlacks, it was Johnny this and Johnny that clear across the www universe.

I swear, the last Johnny to get this kind of attention was a guy called Appleseed. Difference is, he actually accomplished something worth writing about.

I should point out that a couple other QBs also saw their names in headlines. But, whereas Johnny Rotten was described as “better” and “improved” in defeat, Matt Nichols “struggled” in victory. Mike Reilly, meanwhile, was “crap,” and that will never be mistaken for a compliment.

Here’s what went down in CFL quarterbacking last week, including the newest advance stat, Name in Headlines…

Manziel delivered a most curious sound bite after his second loss in two starts as the Larks QB: “It’s not about wins and losses right now.” It isn’t? Since when? Vince Lombardi must be spinning like a lathe in his grave.

This just in: If a trip to Los Angeles to watch the Dodgers in on your agenda, you no longer will be required to trudge up and down the stairs to concession stands for your beer. That’s right, patrons at Dodger Stadium now can order their brown pop from the comfort of their seats behind home plate, down the lines or in the bleachers. And I think that’s only fair. After all, Dodger fans like myself have been crying in our beer for 30 years, so why should we have to get up to get it?

I’d have something to say about the Hlinka-Gretzky teenage tournament that just concluded in Edmonton, but—how do I put this without sounding unCanadian?—the hockey thing just doesn’t work for me in the dog days of August. I realize we live on Planet Puckhead and some folks need their shinny fix 12 months of the year, but shouldn’t we all just all go to the beach? Or, in my case, the ocean?

I have just one thing to say about Tiger Woods and the mob that followed him in the final round of the PGA Championship on Sunday: Wow. Just wow.

Question for anyone who follows men’s tennis: If Denis Shapovalov weren’t one of us, which is to say Canadian, would we like him or would we look at him as a cocky kid who needs to be brought down a peg or two?

Noted hockey scribe Eric Duhatschek was on the tennis beat for The Athletic during the Rogers Cup in the Republic of Tranna, and he wrote that Shapovalov and Greek teen Stefanos Tsitsipas are “currently taking men’s tennis by storm.” Really?

Career titles on ATP World Tour: Tsitsipas 0, Shapovalov 0.
Career finals on ATP World Tour: Tsitsipas 2, Shapovalov 0.
Won/lost 2018: Tsitsipas 30-19, Shapovalov 23-19.

If that’s a storm, I’m Serena Williams’ live-in nanny.

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star writes that tennis is “primarily a game of singles—the rest is window-dressing and filler.” That’s highly insulting if your name is Daniel Nestor, the most accomplished player ever produced in the True North. Nestor has made a career out of doubles tennis, on numerous occasions reaching world No. 1 status. His CV includes eight Grand Slam men’s titles, 91 tournaments titles, four Grand Slam mixed titles, one Olympic gold trinket, and career earnings of $12,821,626. If that’s window dressing, the window is the size of the Pacific Ocean.

I note that Donald Trump was back riding his hobby horse last week, hoo-rawing about National Football League players who take a knee or raise a fist during the national anthem. “Find another way to protest,” he tweeted. I say they should make a deal with the deal-maker: They’ll find another way to protest if he finds another way to pay for his wall.

Here’s the latest from Roberto Osuna, the Houston Astros relief pitcher who awaits his day in court on a charge of beating up a woman: “It’s easy to forget about the stuff that’s going on off the field.” That is such a wince-inducing, insensitive comment. He says it’s easy for him to forget “stuff” like roughing up a woman, but I doubt his victim has forgotten. I also doubt I’m alone when I say I hope karma bites the Astros in the butt during the Major League Baseball post-season. Their blind eye toward domestic violence and disrespect for women is appalling.

So, I’m reading Willie Nelson’s biography, My Life It’s a Long Story, and he mentions guys like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell among those who inspired him and belong on the Mount Rushmore of country music. That got me thinking about the jocks who grabbed my attention as a sprig in the 1950s and never let go; athletes who form the very bedrock of a lifetime watching sports and 48 years of writing about it. After about 30 seconds of deliberation, I got out the hammer and chisel and went to work on my personal Mount Jock—Sandy Koufax, Floyd Patterson, Wilma Rudolph and Arnold Palmer. If not for those four, I likely would have done something radical. Like pick up a guitar and write and sing hurtin’ songs that wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good as Willie’s.

And, finally, if I were to create my own Mount Rushmore of hockey, guaranteed Stan Mikita would be included. I was in my mid-to-late teens when Stosh was at his absolute best with the Chicago Blackhawks, and I marveled at the things he could do with the puck. I had a Stan Mikita helmet and, later, a Blackhawks jersey No. 21. The helmet and sweater are gone and, sadly, so is NHL legend Mikita, a victim of Lewy body dementia at age 78. I never met him, but often wished I had.

About the Blue Bombers coughing up a hairball…Jacob Trouba’s shelf life with the Winnipeg Jets…shoddy journalism…liars, liars in sports…happy 25th to the Goldeyes…a female voice on jock talk TV…a really dumb question about Serena Williams’ pregnant pause…who’s the duchess of what?…Joey Votto and a rat’s ass…numbers crunching in The Athletic Winnipeg…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…

Loved the headline in the Winnipeg Free Press after the Winnipeg Blue Bombers coughed up a 17-point hairball and lost 20-17 to the Lions at B.C. Place Stadium on Saturday night: GOOD GRIEF!

Good grief, indeed, Charlie Brown.

Winnipeg FC had no business losing to the inferior Leos, but that’s what happens when you play and coach stupid football. Seriously. Three roughing-the-passer violations? Twice ignoring a gimme three points? That’s dumb, dumber and dumbest.

Asked post-game why he twice gambled on third-and-short rather than kick field goals, head coach Mike O’Shea said: “To me it’s a no-brainer.”

Exactly. No brains.

I don’t know about you, but I look at the signing of Connor Hellebuyck as an appetizer, something for the rabble to nibble and nosh on until the main course arrives, hopefully later this week.

I mean, yes, the freshly minted agreement between the Winnipeg Jets and their all-star goaltender takes care of the blue paint for the next six National Hockey League crusades. It’s a favorable development. But the real intrigue in Jets Nation is on the blueline, in the form of Jacob Trouba and, to a much lesser degree, his running mate, Josh Morrissey.

Trouba is the X factor.

Given his history that includes a training-camp/early-season work stoppage and a trade request, skeptics abound when it comes to the 24-year-old defender. They won’t be convinced that Trouba is, as they say at the Vegas poker tables, “all-in” with Winnipeg and les Jets until they know his signature is at the bottom of a contract. Long term. As in six or eight years.

Trouba has an audience with an arbitrator scheduled for the morning of July 20, a bargained-for option exercised by 43 other NHL players this summer. If dealings with les Jets stall this week and he meets with the arbitrator, all bets are off on his shelf life in Good Ol’ Hometown.

My guess? Trouba stays. Six years. Then he leaves.

Apparently, Paul Wiecek has insider intel on Trouba. If only he’d be kind enough to let the rest of us in on the scoop. But no. When Wiecek writes that “Trouba is a problem. Again.” it’s his little secret. He isn’t prepared to share the gory details. We have to guess what it is that makes No. 8 “a problem. Again.”

Well, here’s the actual problem: Wiecek harbors a stalker-like obsession with Trouba, one that began in September 2016 and has become an obscenity.

Twice in the past 10 days, Wiecek has launched gratuitous, factless attacks on the Jets young defender. First the Winnipeg Free Press sports columnist informed us that “Trouba, for one, has a long track record of doing what’s right for Trouba, even when it’s been what’s wrong for Trouba.” (It’s uncertain exactly how Wiecek could possibly know what’s right and what’s wrong for Trouba, but, hey, perhaps the guy’s got a life-coaching gig on the side.) He then doubled down with his cryptic “Trouba is a problem. Again.” Ah, but Wiecek provided not a sliver of evidence to prop of his allegation.

Why is Trouba so far up Wiecek’s nose?

Is it the arbitration thing? Naw. Can’t be. Forty-three other NHL players filed for arbitration, including four of Trouba’s teammates. I hardly think that qualifies any of them as a problem child.

Maybe it was the trade demand two years ago. Naw. Can’t be that either. Plenty of people have wanted out of Winnipeg, the great Dale Hawerchuk among them. No one thought of Ducky as a problem child.

So what is it? Simple. During the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Trouba told Wiecek a mistruth. Said he was happier than a pig in slop to be playing in River City, and he hoped to be on board for the long haul. Shortly thereafter, Trouba was a no-show at training camp and he was AWOL through the first month of the season. So he had lied (just like everyone else in hockey, including writers). Wiecek took it as a personal affront and he’s waged a one-man, two-year vendetta to discredit Trouba, branding him a liar, petulant, a malcontent, impetuous, the biggest loser, reckless, greedy, phony and, most recently, selfish and a problem.

It’s irresponsible, tawdry journalism, and someone high on the food chain at the Freep ought to step up and nip it in the bud.

I had issues with fibbers during my time in sports. Jets GM John Ferguson once told myself and Friar Nicolson a flat-out lie about Bobby Hull. It was a whopper. So I called him out, in print. Fergy was steamed. I was, too. We didn’t talk to each other for two weeks. Not at the rink. Not on the team bus. Not at the airport. Not on the phone. He would just glare down the gun barrel that passed for his nose, and I would ignore him. I don’t recall how we arrived at détente, but Fergy and I eventually got along just fine. Whatever fibs he told me thereafter were little and white. The worst was Sam Katz, owner of the Winnipeg Goldeyes. Sammy was a carnival barker. He would tell the boys at the Free Press that a baseball was round, then he would tell us at the Winnipeg Sun that a baseball was a hockey puck. I couldn’t believe anything that fell from that man’s mouth, so I simply stopped interviewing him and took to calling him The Unmentionable Man in print. Sammy and I were cordial when our paths crossed, but we never warmed to each other. No big deal. I didn’t need him to do my job and he didn’t need me to fill seats in the Ballyard At The Forks.

Speaking of Sammy, his Goldeyes celebrate their 25th anniversary this season. There were ample doubters at the beginning for the independent ball club—and I still wish he’d named his rounders side something other than Goldeyes—but Sammy pulled it off and the Fish have been a rousing success at the box office and between the foul lines with four titles. So good on him and them.

More kudos to Sportsnet for putting Caroline Cameron on the Tim & Sid show while Tim and Sid are goofing around off-set. She was co-hosting with Donnovan Bennett last week and, among many issues, they discussed the eventual return of Roberta Osuna, the Tranna Blue Jays relief pitcher who faces a court hearing on a domestic violence charge and is under suspension by Major League Baseball.

Bennett: “Are you okay with him being back with the Jays before the actual court case is resolved?”

Cameron: “No I’m not, and for a few reasons. If the Blue Jays see this as a baseball decision, it’s not simply that. A situation like this never is. And in sports at lot of time we see that it mirrors what’s happening in society, and that includes the things that are going wrong with society. And the nice thing about sports—and excuse my use of the cliché—is sports you can play by your own rules, right? You can make your own decisions and figure out how you want to deal with these societal, moral issues. If the Jays bring Osuna back because they think they need his arm in a season that’s already lost, what message are you sending to the fans? And even on the flip side, innocent until proven guilty, do you want to have Roberto Osuna out there, out on the field, out in the bullpen when this is not resolved? What kind of reaction do you think he’s going to get? I just think you have an opportunity—and I’m not saying the Blue Jays have to set a precedent—but someone at some point has to set a precedent or else change will not happen and this will continue to be just a ‘baseball move’ as opposed to what it actually is.”

Imagine that. A woman, rather than a man, giving voice to a topic so significant to so many women. On a Canadian TV sports gab show. That’s as rare as a Serena Williams loss on Centre Court Wimbledon. Most of the women on Canadian jock talk TV get to read a teleprompter, nothing more. This is refreshing.

Did one man, Mark Masters of TSN, really ask another man, ESPN tennis analyst Darren Cahill, to put the past year of Serena Williams’ life into “context?” Yes. Yes he did. Which means Masters wins the award for the dumbest question ever, ever, ever. I mean, how in the name of Mama Liv Walton can a man possibly give context to carrying a fetus for nine months, giving birth to a six-pound, 13-ounce girl, breast feeding, then returning to play in the ladies’ championship match of a tennis Grand Slam tournament? Only three people—Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Kim Clijsters—can answer that question, and none of them are men. What will Masters do next? Ask John McEnroe what it’s like to be a lesbian on the tennis tour? To his credit, Cahill politely answered the questionable question about Williams’ pregnant pause, saying, “You can’t put that into context” before mentioning that Clijsters and other women have put their careers on hold to start a family and returned to win Slam titles.

I suppose with a soon-to-be 37-year-old mom navigating her way to the Wimbledon final in just her fourth post-childbirth tournament, pundits will be slagging the quality and depth of women’s tennis. But in besting Williams on Saturday, 6-3, 6-3, Angelique Kerber became the seventh different champion in the past seven majors. So, I’d say the distaff side of the sport is just fine, thank you. The real issue is on the men’s side, where all four semifinalist at the All England Club are 30somethings. Generation Next simply cannot break through.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell my British duchesses without a program. Is Kate the Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan the Duchess of Sussex, or is Kate the Duchess of Sussex and Meghan the Duchess of Cambridge. If they’re going to sit in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, I think they should be obligated to wear duchess name tags.

Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds swatted his 266th home run last Monday to climb above Matt Stairs on the all-time dinger list for Canadians in Major League Baseball. He now stands second to Larry Walker. Well, to borrow Votto’s words when he piddled on our Corn Flakes earlier this year, “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about that,” and I won’t give “a rat’s ass” if he goes on to surpass Walker’s record of 383 HRs.

I heard Dave Poulin gabbing about the Connor Hellebuyck contract on TSN the other day, and I had to tune out because the guy no longer has street cred. Not after he was one of seven voters to leave Connor McDavid off their all-star ballot. I mean, McDavid was the scoring champion, for cripes sake. And Poulin is telling us he wasn’t among the top three centre-ice men last season? What would he have us believe next? That Bobby Orr was a slowpoke? Sidney Crosby needs to work on his hand-eye coordination? Bobby Hull never wore a rug? It’s one thing for shinny scribes/broadcasters to dumb down, but there’s no excuse for a former NHL player to be such a d’oh boy. If you’re wondering, the other geniuses who made their ballots a no-McDavid zone were Dave Shoalts (Globe and Mail), Mike Colageo (New Bedford Standard Times), Stephen Conroy (Boston Herald), Emily Kaplan (ESPN), Gann Matsuda (Frozen Royalty), and Arthur Staple (The Athletic New York). Off with their press passes!

There’s a lot of good reading in The Athletic, but I’m deeply disappointed in the Winnipeg content. A chap named Murat Ates is the man about the Jets, and he’s advertised as someone who delivers a blend of “modern hockey analysis with engaging storytelling.” Sorry, but what I’ve seen to date is nothing but number crunching. All the “engaging storytelling” must be hidden in the math and, since I’m not a numbers geek, his copy is a total, also lengthy, yawn. Reading all those numbers makes my eyes glaze over. I don’t say that to be mean, but math and I have been at odds since Grade 1 at St. Alphonsus, and I believe sports is more about people than salary dumps and contract term. Meanwhile, if The Athletic Winnipeg has someone on the Bombers beat, he or she must be in a witness protection program. I realize the online newspaper is still looking for good people, but giving the Canadian Football League short shrift when Winnipeg FC is the only game in town until September is bad form. The Athletic Winnipeg needs a jolt of creative juice. Pronto.

And, finally, I note that 680 CJOB in Good Ol’ Hometown is getting back into the jock talk business. All sports director Kelly Moore needs now is a host, and I find myself wondering if he’d be brave enough to do something radical. You know, like hire a female as the lead voice on the gabfest. Actually, I wonder if any women will bother to apply. As mentioned earlier, jock talk in Canada is very much an old boys club.

About the Winnipeg Jets being built on free agents…the ice fishing is great, right Big Buff?…Richie’s a Hall of a coach this week…pigging out in the (hot) dog days of summer…media friendly Vic Peters…Caroline Cameron gives Tim & Sid a fresh voice and look…those wacky Wimbledon women…don’t diss Ronaldo…and a sports scribe who preaches one thing but writes about another

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

Welcome to Winnipeg, armpit of the National Hockey League.

Well, okay, that’s not exactly how shinny scribes Scott Burnside and Sean McIndoe worded it when Paul Stastny chose Glitter Gulch over Good Ol’ Hometown, but that was the sentiment of each pundit’s analysis—River City sucks. Still. Otherwise Stastny wouldn’t have vamoosed from the Winnipeg Jets to the Vegas Golden Knights scant seconds after the NHL opened its grab bag of free agents a week ago this very morning.

Here’s Burnside of The Athletic:

“While he did choose to waive his no-trade clause to go to the Jets at the trade deadline, Stastny’s departure as an unrestricted free agent merely reinforces the idea that, as good as the Jets are—and they are really good—they still aren’t at the stage where they are a destination for free agents. Not yet at least.”

Here’s McIndoe of Sportsnet:

“They were a darn good team before Stastny arrived, and they’ll be a good one with him gone. But seeing a top UFA walk away will reinforce the old idea that the Jets are at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting top players.”

Both scribes stopped short of stereotypical jabs about the dark, the cold, the crappy WiFi, the pothole-to-person ratio, and summer skeeters the size of a Zamboni in River City, but the gist of their analysis is unmistakable, and this Winnipeg-as-NHL armpit narrative is oh so dog-eared. Also wearisome.

I mean, I’d buy it if Stastny had gone on record saying he defected to Sin City because “Winnipeg is a garbage dump with a lousy zoo and an ugly museum.” But no.

“In the end,” the 32-year-old centre-ice man told the Las Vegas Sun, “sometimes you just have to go with your gut feeling. Sometimes it’s just one of those things that is the best fit, hockey-wise, family-wise and everything in between.”

Doesn’t sound damning to me.

Yet those of the Burnside/McIndoe ilk trot out the woe-is-Winnipeg refrain every time someone gives Good Ol’ Hometown the cold shoulder, mainly because it’s a convenient and lazy plot line that plays to the ill-informed among the rabble and, at the same time, ignores history. Yes, history.

Benny Hatskin and Bobby Hull on a happy day in Winnipeg.

Go ahead, kids. Name the most significant free-agent signing—ever—in professional hockey. That’s right, the name is Hull, Bobby Hull. And where did that game-shaping event take place? At the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street, where a flock of thousands gathered to witness Robert Marvin Hull, fresh off his fifth 50-goal season for the Chicago Blackhawks, scrawl his John Hancock on a Winnipeg Jets contract on June 27, 1972. This was the NHL’s glam guy, choosing Pegtown over Chitown. The sport and salaries were forever altered by one free-agent signing.

More to the point, the very foundation of the Winnipeg Jets was built exclusively on free agents, guys who willingly came to River City to form the World Hockey Association’s flagship franchise.

Ab Mcdonald, Joe Daley, Sudsy Sutherland, Ernie Wakely and others from the ‘hood came home from hither and yon to wear Jets linen. Anders Hedberg chose Winnipeg over Toronto. Kent Nilsson chose Winnipeg over Toronto and Atlanta. Willy Lindstrom could have played anywhere in North America. He chose Winnipeg. Ulf Nilsson and Lars-Erik Sjoberg chose Winnipeg. Peter Sullivan chose Winnipeg. Etcetera, etcetera and blah, blah, blah.

So enough of the tired, old refrain about Pegtown being a shinny leper colony.

Are there guys who’d rather not play in River City? Absolutely. We’re told Good Ol’ Hometown makes most no-trade lists. Just ask Ilya Bryzgalov. But, hey, John Tavares rejected 30 cities just last week, so it’s not like Winnipeg is unique. Look, players talk about three main things when wrestling with free-agency options: 1) Money; 2) the opportunity to win; 3) location. Well, Ben Hatskin wasn’t paying Hull $2.7 million in Monopoly or Canadian Tire money in 1972, and David Thomson and Mark Chipman aren’t paying Dustin Byfuglien $7.6 million per annum in food stamps with the present-day Jets. Competitively, les Jets were a final four team in this past spring’s Stanley Cup runoff. As for location, the ice fishing is boffo, thank you. Just ask Big Buff. So what’s not to like?

Just wondering: Are we still calling for Richie Hall’s head to roll? Probably not. Hall is the much-maligned man tasked with mapping out strategy for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive dozen, whose deficiencies were exposed like a porn star’s privates in two of their first three skirmishes this Canadian Football League crusade. Then along came the B.C. Lions with a benign offence designed to heal whatever ails a wonky defence. So I assume Winnipeg FC’s 41-19 victory over the Leos on Saturday evening at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry means it’s safe for Hall to go grocery shopping and pump his own gas this week. Just to be safe, though, he should have Adam Bighill tag along.

Here’s something to chew on: Joey Chestnut celebrated the dog days of summer by successfully defending his Nathan’s hot dog eating title, scarfing down 74 tube steaks in 10 minutes. It’s believed that no one has ever gone through that many dogs. Except the Edmonton Oilers, of course.

Richard Deitsch of The Athletic asked this question of jock journos on Twitter: “Who is the most media-friendly athlete you have dealt with?” For me, that’s a no-brainer: The late Vic Peters, with about 100 other curlers tied in second. Vic, in the grand scheme of jockdom, was a smooth-edged gem on a beach full of sharp stones. A most obliging, engaging man, he had time for us all. Always.

Loved the new look and sound on the Tim & Sid show last week. Unfortunately, it’s only temporary. Caroline Cameron has been sitting in for the vacationing Sid Seixeiro on the Sportsnet gabfest, and they’re as different as a pit bull and a kitten. I mean, Sid’s shtick is to talk tough. He dresses the part, too. He looks like he belongs on the set of a gangster movie, skulking around with Luca Brasi and nervously glancing over his shoulder to see if Eliot Ness is on his tail. He wears his sneer on his sleeve. He’s prone to prop humor and theatrical orations that would earn him a failing grade in a high school drama class, and his rants are usually about as sincere as a Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll. Caroline, on the other hand…we’re talking Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Polished, professional, knowledgeable, smiling, impeccable, pretty, a girl making her way and succeeding in a guy’s world. A lot of viewers (read: guys) pooh-pooh women on sports talk TV as empty heads. Well, Caroline Cameron is compelling evidence that there should be more female voices in the jock gab game. She’s very good.

Yes, now that you mention it, the goings-on in London are very strange, most notably on the women’s side of Wimbledon. They’re spitting out seeds like it’s a baseball dugout. Gone are nine of the top 10 seeds and 25 of 32 overall. Wimbledon has never seen such carnage. Serena Williams will have to break both legs and carry her baby on her back to lose this tournament. Even at that, she could probably win the thing and claim her 24th tennis Grand Slam title on crutches.

A lot of British accents on our flatscreens during the World Cup, one of them belonging to Danny Dichio, former forward in the English Premier League. Sportsnet trotted him out as an analyst during the group stage of the event, and he had this exchange with Jesse Fuchs…

Fuchs: “People love to compare Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo…Messi missed a penalty earlier in the tournament, now so has Ronaldo. And it ends up costly, as Portugal are held to a draw. Is it fair at all to criticize CR7?”

Dichio: “No. Not at all fair.”

So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight: The president of the United States, the Pope, Queen Liz, the Beatles, any journalist you care to name, and Jesus Christ himself are fair game for a roasting when they cough up a hairball, but Ronaldo, a guy who’s supposedly god’s gift to soccer, is untouchable when he gags on a shot from the 12-yard spot? As if. Dichio gets a red card for being a nincompoop.

And, finally, based on his scribblings over the years, it’s apparent that Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press does not harbour a healthy fondness for professional athletes. He often writes of them with resentment, contempt and scorn, painting them with one broad brush stroke—they’re all money-grubbing elitists who look down on the rabble from their perch of privilege.

“A tiny cadre of coddled millionaires,” is how he described the Jets players in one of his tamer remarks.

Therefore it wasn’t out of character that he assailed play-for-pay jocks—defrocked Jets goaltender Steve Mason in particular—while making the case that the amateur athletes in our great nation are underfunded by the feds and underappreciated by the unwashed masses.

“Such is the deification that we accord professional hockey players in this country that we think nothing of paying the washouts millions not to play, while at the same time throwing chump change at our amateur athletes and then scolding them if they dare return home without Olympic medals every four years when we remember again that they exist,” he writes.

He calls financial support for our top amateurs “laughable” and “a complete joke.”

Actually, the joke is a sports columnist prattling on about underfunding and underappreciation for amateurs when 95 per cent of his yearly material is devoted to his personal hot-button issues like Jacob Trouba’s attitude, Mike O’Shea’s “goofy” short pants, and Mark Chipman’s past life as a used-car salesman. His own newspaper treats amateur athletes like they have the cooties. Unless, of course, they’re holding a curling rock in one hand and a broom or sliding apparatus in the other. Kaitlyn Lawes, Jennifer Jones, Mike McEwen, Reid Carruthers and other pebble people get the jock star treatment from the Freep. The rest? Basically bupkus.

Here’s the professional/amateur story scorecard from the past seven editions of the Drab Slab: 140-13. Granted, seven days of sports sections is a small sample size, but just 8.5 per cent of all articles was devoted to amateurs.

In that same seven-paper time frame, Wiecek wrote three columns: his apples-to-oranges argument about amateur funding vs. greedy professional jocks getting too much coin for not enough work; the Blue Bombers lousy defence and firing lousy coaches O’Shea and Hall; and, once again, greedy pro athletes.

What’s that you say? Some sports scribes must be overpaid, underworked and coddled, too? Who knew?

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