THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE

1. INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS WON’T PAY THE BILLS: The best argument I hear from pro XFL-CFL merger dreamers is how The Rock has this incredible social media following and that it would somehow be useful to the Canadian Football League. The CFL has tried that celebrity appeal route before when Bruce McNall, John Candy and Wayne Gretzky bought the Toronto Argonauts from Harry Ornest going into the 1991 season. It lasted all of 3 years and led into arguably the league’s lowest point, economically, in the past 60 years. The Rock’s Instagram followers have no better shot at paying the CFL’s bills than John Candy’s Uncle Buck watchers did 30 years ago. This reminds me of Hockey Night in Canada’s failed experiment at hiring George Stroumboulopoulos to appeal to viewers who aren’t hockey fans. They ignored their base and it blew up in their face spectacularly. The CFL is at risk of doing the same thing here.  

2. NEW XFL OWNERS BLINDLY MISLEADING: Alec Scheiner, one of the partners in U.S. equity firm REDBIRD CAPITAL who is bankrolling the newest version of the XFL, touts the fact that the league’s TV ratings do better than other big league sports. The part he conveniently leaves out is how those ratings only did better when the games were played on network television, exposing them to a much bigger audience than they would ordinarily get cable TV. To give you a comparison, the CFL haters like to brag about the Super Bowl getting better ratings in Canada than the Grey Cup. What they conveniently leave out is mentioning that the Super Bowl is on network CTV while the Grey Cup is relegated to cable channel TSN. The Grey Cup would unquestionably blow the Super Bowl out of the water if it too was played on CTV. The XFL started strong on FOX last year before its predictable sag throughout the remainder of the season. Scheiner, who spent time as president of the Cleveland Browns, during which his team produced 20 wins and 60 losses, clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about and should maybe look for a new line of work. 

3. ADDING XFL FRANCHISES WOULD BE AN ADVENTURE: I remember going to Rider games from 1993-1995 throughout the heyday of the CFL’s American expansion era. It was exciting. There was so much variety to look forward to each game. I even remember telling my best friend at the time, “Boy it must’ve sucked to only have 8 or 9 teams. That would be so boring!” Well, we went back to that in ’96 and have been there ever since. I still think Quebec City and Halifax are much better solutions but if nothing else, adding an XFL franchise to play in our league for a year or two until that franchise folds, isn’t something to be scared of and although bush league, could be a lot of fun.

4. GEORGE REED: George isn’t sure the CFL can survive another missed season and he would know. Nobody has been around the league longer than George has and none of us are any sharper than George, either. Even at his advanced age of 81. I still see George everywhere around east Regina, despite his limited mobility and this awful COVID thing. I consider George perhaps the greatest hope that football can be played safely. A bruising running back from a bygone era is still sharp as a tack some 45 years after playing his final down. George is undoubtedly the greatest living Roughrider and greatest living athlete of all time currently living in Regina. We’re lucky to have him.

5. NFL CANADA A STEP IN REVERSE: I once had one fan tell me she wished the CFL would just become a minor league for the NFL. Say what? Whatever happened to the idea that the CFL is not inferior to the NFL but rather, different? I would take the opposite approach and quietly distance the Canadian Football League from the NFL more than it already is by requiring all contracts to include at least 2 seasons between NFL tryouts. If you’re content bowing to the NFL and their ridiculous rules than you probably didn’t really love the CFL all that much to begin with, anyways.

6. JUNIOR HOCKEY LEAGUES DEREGULATING A STEP IN REVERSE: I’m hearing about the BCHL and other leagues trying to distance themselves from the Canadian Junior A Hockey League and Hockey Canada, in general. This is embarrassing on a number of fronts but the final straw for me is to hear how these leagues are pushing for less accountability during a time we need more accountability to ensure people like Graham James, and more recently Bernie Lynch, aren’t roaming free in junior hockey organizations. The BCHL should be embarrassed for putting business and dollars ahead of ethics or common sense.

7. SJHL BUBBLE TOURNAMENT COULD’VE BEEN DONE: I’m hearing they were turned down for the Weyburn Bubble due to the fact the players and staff would’ve had to all share one hotel. The league could have separated each team to different hotels or assigned billets throughout Weyburn to house them all. At any rate, the season is over and everyone can have a bit of closure to that. Though it’s hard not to view all 2000-born players as the biggest victims here. Their 19-year-old and 20-year-old seasons have gone down the drain. You don’t get those back, either.

8. WORLD CURLING CHAMPIONSHIP: The thing I love most about curling is to see that a good number of them are NOT finely conditioned athletes. Darren Moulding, the third on Brendan Bottcher’s Canada rink has a gut big enough to fit a small tractor tire in it. That’s what endears them to us all. They’re normal people which makes them to relatable to the rest of us in the real world.

9. OWING THE BLUE JAY BRASS AN APOLOGY: It’s not that I hated Mark Shapiro when he took over the Jays following their playoff run in 2015. It’s that he had all the signs of the uber-arrogant JP Ricciardi when he became team president. Since then, all he and his sidekick, GM Ross Atkins, have done is turn the Blue Jays into a contender with one of Major League Baseball’s top five farm systems along the way. And he’s done it with a smile on his face while being nice to the fans and media, too. Sorry Mark, I doubted you and so did so many others. This reminds of when some angry Green Bay Packer fans setup a website called, tedthompsonsucks.com because he, as Green Bay GM at the time, chose to move on from Brett Favre to a much younger and unproven Aaron Rodgers. That website later issued an apology to Mr Thompson when they won the Super Bowl less than three years later. A few of us could do the same for one Blue Jay President, Mark Shapiro. 

10. BOOK OF THE WEEK: Danny Gallagher’s latest read arrived in the mail via Amazon Monday, entitled NEVER FORGOTTEN: TALES ABOUT RON LEFLORE, RON HUNT AND OTHER EXPOS YARNS FROM 1969-2004. I obsess about the Montreal Expos and still can’t get enough of them. Danny’s best trait as a writer is his uncanny ability to tell stories that haven’t been told already and in a way that makes it interesting. I’ve read several of his books before and can’t wait to plow through this one, too.

(Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)