Scruffy’s This N That

1 – YOUR COACH HAS SPOKEN RIDER NATION: One day after the Riders improved their record to 4-0, many didn’t want to talk about the performance of the football team nor the fact Corey Mace joined Ken Miller and Corey Chamblin as the only Rider head coaches to start their Saskatchewan careers at 4-0. They wanted to talk about the attendance.

This is getting beyond tiresome folks. The debate about what it is the best time to have a Riders home game and why people aren’t going has been going on for years. At the end of the day, YOU are the reason why you are either attending or not. You have your reasons for doing so which is fine. I completely understand that lack of desire to make the trip from outside a 100-kilometer radius from Regina for a Thursday night game unless you are making a long weekend of it. If you want to spend your entertainment dollars on the Riders, you will do so by attending games. If you don’t want to do that, you won’t. You can complain about this and that, but at the end of the day you are making the decision for whatever reason.

Corey Mace (or the Riders social media team) went to X last Friday with the coach saying “Rider Nation. We Appreciate You, We Love You. We Heard You, You Helped Make A Difference. Let’s Skip the lake on the 19th, Let’s pack this place like the Good Ole Days”

Mace has thrown the challenge out there. Will YOU answer it? 10-15 years ago, I would have said yes, but now I’m not sure and there are many factors to blame. Some can be put at the feet of the organization, but others cannot. The fact is the CFL is not what it used to be with people. There are many other things to do and it is safe to say that this league and its teams have lost many in the 18-45 age bracket for a variety of reasons.

While I applaud the Riders for getting Mace to send the message, there are many who feel Saskatchewan football on a Saturday night isn’t how they want to spend the evening unless they are catered to. A win over BC in Vancouver will help, but the good ole days aren’t coming back —- at least not yet. That being said, many will likely watch from the lake.

2 – THE SHEA SHOW ACT 2: What was your final verdict on Shea Patterson and what are you hoping to see tonight in Vancouver? More importantly, is he a guy to start building around? An informal poll this week on “X” suggested yes. I don’t know if it would be in the Riders best interest to bring Trevor Harris back at the salary he is making and I don’t know if you can afford to lose Patterson unless the organization wants to spin the quarterback carousel again and see who falls off.

3 – QB DOWN: Once again, CFL quarterbacks are falling like flies. Trevor Harris, Zach Collaros, Bo Levi Mitchell, Dru Brown and Cody Fajardo have all been injured and the season isn’t even at the one-third pole.  The CFL needs its number one quarterbacks under center. Yes, it allows guys like Patterson to show what they’ve got, but teams need to have their number one signal caller playing. 

4 – $$ALARIES OUT OF CONTROL: You can sit there and talk about the salaries that some are making in pro sports are beyond ridiculous. I get it. What I don’t get though is now NBA players are getting the money they do.

Take Boston’s Jayson Tatum. He will earn 62.8 million this season. The top 5 NHL players salaries right now are Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Nathan McKinnon, Elias Pettersson and Artemi Panarin. Their total combined is 61.6 million.

I don’t know about you, but methinks the NBA has to do something about its salary structure.

5 – SOCCER SHENANIGANS: I told you last week that I am a soccer fan especially when it comes to international events like the World Cup, the European Championship which ends this weekend and Copa America which also winds up on the weekend.

On Tuesday night, a lot of the country tuned into TSN to watch David try to slay Goliath as Canada met Argentina for the 2^nd time at Copa and predictably they lost.  What many in this country took away wasn’t the fact Canada had lost, but the amount of ridiculous flopping the Argentinians did.

There was a play that was well documented on social media where an Argentina player went down as if he had been shot after being grazed by a Canadian defender and saying grazed might be harsh.  There was another one where a Canadian player was given a yellow card after he kicked the soccer ball into the back of an Argentine player from about three feet away with that player rolling around as if he had been assaulted severely.

It is this that has to stop.  It has been going on for years, but at some point the sport has to crack down on plays like this and start punishing those who embellish instead.  Doing that will improve the image of the game tremendously and perhaps get more interested in it. We Canadians know how tough hockey players are so this is a complete 180 from how soft soccer players come off as. It really is disgraceful.

6 – MORE CHALLENGE NEEDED:  The PGA Tour might be in the best spot its been since the Tiger Woods era when it comes to the talent on the course. However, it is just baffling to me as to why organizers of tournaments are happy with events where the scores are ludicrous.  72 hole scores should not be in the -28 range as Davis Thompson had at last week’s John Deere Classic. Any course having a score of -20 or better on a consistent basis should be finding ways to make it more challenging for the field. Give me an event where the winning score is a reasonable score and not a birdiepalooza. This is why I laugh when I hear golfers complaining about a course that is too tough.

7 – THE ESPYS: I love the fact that “the worldwide leader” takes a night out to honor the best in sports by giving us the ESPY’s every summer. They usually hold it when baseball is on its all-star break, but they didn’t this year for whatever reason.

I wish TSN or Sportsnet would do something similar and honor the best in Canadian sports while telling us some inspirational stories like ESPN does. I would watch. Would you?

8 – WESTERN CANADIAN DEVELOPMENT MODEL: I am interested to see what the Western Canadian Development Model will mean for Junior A hockey in Western Canada and the WHL. I haven’t scoured through it yet, but from what I have seen it works for me.  

9 – WCBL INTEREST: I have had a lot of fun sitting in to do some P-A work for the Regina Red Sox this year.  It’s been great to see a lot of people coming to Currie Field to watch the first place Red Sox. Crowds have been close to 1000 and I am pretty confident more Reginans will come out as the playoffs get closer.

10 – SETTLE DOWN PHIL: I was highly amused by a column written by Phil Tank of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix this week. Tank wondered aloud if it’s a shot against Saskatoon when it comes to the Saskatchewan government seemingly not paying attention to the desire the city has for a new arena. He thinks the Bridge City is getting snubbed.

The column comes as we approach the 12 year anniversary of then-Regina mayor Pat Fiacco and then-Premier Brad Wall announcing at a Riders game that Mosaic Stadium would be built.

This just in: Saskatoon had a chance for a downtown arena and they failed by putting SaskTel Centre where it is. If the facility had been put in downtown Saskatoon, the spinoffs would have been tremendous and we are not having this conversation.

Plain and simple, the ball got dropped. 

This also just in: While Saskatoon’s plans for a new rink are a little ahead than Regina’s plans, I haven’t heard boo from the government on a new rink here either Phil. Same on a proposed new ballpark for the Red Sox.

Phil’s column should have been called “Crying for Saskatoon” or “Hey it’s another chance for me to take a run at the current government”  because that’s what he’s guilty of in my opinion.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!