THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE

1. RIDERS STILL SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY:  It’s hard not to admire the outside-the-box hire by Rider GM Jeremy O’Day by going with a perennial Special Teams Coach, Craig Dickenson, to be his Head Coach. But trend-setting doesn’t always translate into success between the white lines. It’s far too early to give up on the 0-2 Roughriders, but there’s no denying that we will have to wait a few more weeks to see what this team’s identity, if it has one, really is. Early returns suggest a long season but in reality, we’ll have to wait until August to at least get a feel for where this team is headed in the quarterback-heavy west.

2. QUARTERBACKING NOT THAT IMPORTANT: Apparently not. Mike Reilly is 0-2, Bo Levi Mitchell is 0-1 and Cody Fajardo couldn’t win in his debut, despite a near flawless effort. Ottawa’s Dominique Davis wasn’t even a clear-cut starter before training camp but he’s 2-0 with wins over both Mitchell and Fajardo.

So, what gives?

It a good thing all-around. Football was never designed to be about just one position. The other 23 starters plus special teamers play a role, too. It makes the games less predictable. It’s also a sign that it’s okay to roam around as a journeyman quarterback into your late 20’s, like Dominique Davis has, or even early 30’s, like Kerry Joseph did and still find yourself as a star quarterback in this league. Too many quarterbacks give up and are given up on at an early age.

3. CFL ATTENDANCE: CJME’s Darrell Davis wrote a piece this week, worried about attendance at CFL games averaging around 22,000/crowd. I’m not worried about it as TV broadcast rights have become insanely profitable due to the premium advertisers still put and will continue to put on live sports. It’s just about the last thing people will watch live without fast forwarding through the commercials. Crowds haven’t been real strong in the early going but the Argos had a decent turnout (for them over 16,000) for their season opener and crowds right across Major League Baseball have taken a tumble, too.

It’s the digital age and changing world we live in. That said, a new batch of owners with fresh ideas in Montreal and Vancouver wouldn’t hurt either.

4. MONTREAL EXPOS WOULD HELP CFL: This idea of Tampa Bay sharing the Rays with Montreal is hogwash and nothing more than sabre-rattling by Major League Baseball to have a new park built in the Tampa area or maybe even get out the Rays out of their lease at the Trop.

All of which begs the question: If and when the Montreal Expos return, what will it mean for the CFL?

The answer: It would be great news. Would engage a massive, and mostly francophone, audience with TSN and RDS’s programming and that content could be used to cross promote the Alouettes and the CFL in general. Pro sports in this country got a lot of support in the 70s, 80s and early 90s when the brewing companies were in a bidding war with each other for audience share. Today, the same is true with telecoms Rogers and Bell Media.

And if there was synergy with live sports and beer, then there’s a ton of synergy with live sports and TV/internet/radio broadcasting.

5. JIM POPP OVERRATED, PERHAPS: Looks like maybe Marc Trestman wasn’t the only one who rode Anthony Calvillo’s coattails in Montreal for all those years. The Argos looked overmatched and overrun in week 1 which is partly the head coach’s fault, too. But the TSN broadcasters did observe that it just didn’t appear as though the Boatmen had the horses to compete. That one’s on the GM. When the Alouettes failed near the end of his time there, part of the blame was on Jim Popp being a good General Manager but not Head Coach. A few more losses like the one the Argos endured in their home opener over the weekend and the jury might be out on how good of a GM Popp is, either.

6. IF THE RIDERS CAN’T BEAT THE ARGOS: Stick a fork in ‘em. I wrote earlier in this piece that it will take until early August to gauge what this team is/has and it will. But an 0-3 start with losses all coming at the hands of the weak sisters down east would be far too much to overcome.  

7. REGINA RED SOX WHITE-HOT START: The 14-3 Regina Red Sox are the best team in Regina for 2019 so far, bar none! In this my 4^thseason doing the webcast on the Sox YouTube channel and facebook page, depending on the night, this is easily the best squad I’ve seen yet. And their depth is incredible. With Ben Komonosky, Willie Estrada and Chris Diehl, they have 3 capable catchers on one roster which is something I’ve never seen before. The pitching is good too with most of their staff hitting the low 90 MPH or high 80 MPH mark on the radar gun consistently. Last night’s 16-8 whitewash of the Medicine Hat Mavericks didn’t quite make up for last year’s loss in the finals but did make it feel a little better, I’m sure. I love seeing the Alberta teams come through town and the Mavs will be at Currie Field tonight and tomorrow when we should have PERFECT ball weather.

8. BOB McCOWN: Crushed to hear that Bobcat won’t be doing Prime Time Sports anymore. In the early 2000s when isolation and depression was a big thing in my world, hearing Bob calmly taking the world view on sports and everything else somehow seemed to make the universe make sense. Living in southern Ontario for a year in the shadow of the States, listening to Bob at 6 o’clock every night was my connection to home and the rest of Canada. He truly is/was the best Sports Talk Show host in North America and I can’t wait to hear what he has in store next.

9. NHL AND NBA DRAFTS: Boring to watch and always have been, unless there are some big trades going on like there were over the weekend in Vancouver. Cheesy as it sounds, I watch drafts on YouTube from 20 years ago, only because we know how those all turned out which makes them far more interesting than hearing about players we’ve never heard of and mostly will likely never hear of again.

10. WEEKLY WISDOM: “Anyone who stops learning is old. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” – Henry Ford

(Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)