THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE

1.GREY CUP 2020 HALFTIME ACT SHOULD BE: Someone big and probably someone American. If they’re going to charge us all an arm and a leg for tickets, and they will, then I don’t buy into this nonsense that it has to be a Canadian doing the halftime act. The point of the Grey Cup is to show our game to the world. And you don’t showcase to the world by recycling the same Canadian acts for the halftime show.

2.ROUGHRIDER SCHEDULE: Burning a bye-week off in week 1 is never good for anyone but with 3 bye weeks throughout the season, the Riders should be able to manage. The thing that caught my attention the most out of the 2020 schedule was this neutral site road game vs the Argos in July. This would be a great way to build momentum for that 10^th franchise in Halifax. I suspect and hope they will play this game at the undersized St. Mary’s University and build more of a buzz in that city.

3.RYAN DINWIDDIE: When Kevin Glenn got injured the week before Grey Cup 2007, who would’ve thought all 3 quarterbacks on the Winnipeg roster replacing him would all end up as pro football head coaches? Zach Taylor (Cincinnati Bengals), Kliff Kingsbury (Arizona Cardinals) and now Ryan Dinwiddie (Toronto Argonauts) gets his turn. They never did let him (Dinwiddie) run the offence in Calgary and so it will be interesting to see how he manages an entire roster. We did learn from Craig Dickenson this past season that rookie head coaches can succeed, even without experience as a defensive or offensive coordinator.

4.SCOTT MILANOVICH: Decent hire for the Edmonton Eskimos. He’s leaving his NFL job to move to Edmonton and admitted to watching CFL games, even during his NFL season as the Quarterbacks coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s nice to see people choosing our league over the NFL.

5.RICK CAMPBELL: He’s put himself in the crosshairs by jumping to BC. He could’ve laid back and blamed any issues in Ottawa on the General Manager, which he kind of did when he resigned. However, if he fails in BC it will be as much his own fault as anyone else’s.

6.REGINA RED SOX DOWNTOWN PARK: City councilor Jerry Flegel recently unveiled his vision for a recreation complex near the rail yard in downtown Regina. The naysayers complain this doesn’t generate enough revenue for that location. And apparently a wide open, empty space does? We need more people living downtown and the more amenities like this will help move that along. This would be a homerun for the Red Sox and more importantly, the city.

7.THE NHL IS STILL BORING BECAUSE: Too much tennis. Watched a few minutes of the Vancouver-San Jose game Saturday night and could only bare a few rounds of the back and forth dump-and-chase. Borrrring!

8.THE NHL COULD BE GREAT AGAIN IF: Hockey is at its best when it is ballet on ice with pretty passing but we haven’t seen much of it in about 25 years. Illegal defense penalties would outlaw the trap and fix that issue. And the goals-per-game is still sluggish around 6 per night. It should be between 8 and 8.5. Slightly bigger nets would solve that problem too. Say what you want about the other leagues and the changes they have made over the years but at least they evolve to keep the game strong. Can’t say that about the NHL.

9.MOVIE OF THE WEEK: “Jack of All Trades” on Netflix takes us back to an era of baseball and hockey cards being all the rage. I remember getting my own NHL sticker book in the late 1980’s and the ensuing excitement of buying $1.00 mini-bags of stickers at Balfour Drugs in Kipling to see who I would get and try to fill my book through trades with other little punks doing the same thing. Then Metz’s Sportswear opened up with hundreds and probably thousands of trading cards and it was crack cocaine for this sports junkie. This movie explains what crumbled that whole scene and how it can still be reborn again. 

10.SHAUNAVON: I just love touring different small-town rinks around the province and over the weekend made my first visit to the new Crescent Point Wickenheiser Centre in Shaunavon, home of the Shaunavon Badgers. They decorated it real nice with jackets and jerseys from the different teams over the past 50 years. I was always curious about that place since it was supposed to be one of my first jobs in radio but never panned out. If you’re a small town looking to build a new rink, I would say take a trip there and see what they have. As fine of a small-town rink as you’ll find anywhere.

(Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)