STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – CFL PITCH – The Commissioner did a bad job making his pitch for government help.  There’s no other way to put it.  I’m not sure what it is about this League, but they’ve had some pretty good leaders (Tom Wright, Mark Cohon, Larry Smith, Randy Ambrosie) and somehow the people around these leaders have managed to fail the man in charge time and time and time again.  I feel like somebody somewhere should have been assisting Ambrosie on this matter and yet it appears as though he’s on an island and, for some, standing in front of politicians and making a presentation is difficult.

2 – SASKATCHEWAN IS UNIQUE – When it comes to the CFL, I don’t think Roughrider fans really understand this concept, but in other Canadian cities, the CFL is not a big deal at all and a large majority of people won’t care if this league goes the way of the dinosaur.  Interest in Montreal isn’t high right now.  BC, Calgary, and Toronto have shown to be fairly indifferent at times.  Ottawa has struggled to keep their team.  We don’t know if the Maritimes even really wants one.  That leaves Edmonton, Saskatchewan, Winnipeg, and Hamilton as places where it’s considered to be part of the overall culture of life.  My suggestion for Ambrosie is to hang on as long as possible.  If we can get to a situation across Canada where gatherings are allowed as long as we distance from one another, maybe games in front of 10,000 and a season of even 6 or 8 games can mitigate the losses enough to keep this thing afloat for 2021 and beyond.  The closed border is still a big issue, however.  And, a Prime Minister who is in no hurry at all to make an attempt at normalcy (he says we are still in the emergency phase and hasn’t considered a recovery plan even though many provinces are opening) is also a major problem for a football league that needs the rules from one province to the other to be pretty much the same.

3 – DISPOSABLE INCOME – When sports return, are people going to have the same disposable income they had before the middle of March?  My guess is that they won’t and that means one of two things will need to happen:  either fewer fans attend games or else professional clubs are going to have to drop prices.  Both options are disastrous for the NHL, where revenue and the salary cap are directly tied together.  Imagine the mess some teams will be in if the cap goes down when they are already pressed up against the ceiling.  In the short term, look for prices to actually go up and teams will see if Joe Fan finds a way to make it work so that clubs can recoup some of the billions that have been squandered from the panic.  My guess is that Darren Rovell is right and we will see a market correction in sports franchise values and that’s bad news for pro athletes’ salaries.  The Portland Winterhawks aren’t pro, but it appears as though they are headed for receivership and there will be other teams (pro or not) that will be facing similar decisions.

4 – MLB LABOUR – Major League Baseball owners want more concessions from players in order to salvage a season where games are played without revenue that could be generated from live fans attending games.  The players are saying this is a non-starter for them.  Either pay them their agreed-upon salary or pound sand.  I don’t like this stance by the players.  It really shows their lack of understanding of overall business.  If we end up going a couple of years without fans being allowed to attend and players decide they won’t play unless they get their full paycheques, then I can’t wait to see how many of their jobs will be lost.  You can bet there are a handful of teams who don’t make money as it is with their fans coming, parking, buying junk food, merchandise, etc. Then there is the fact that many of players are throwing prime years of their career for a future payday down the drain by staying home.  This has long been baseball’s problem.  They are without a clue as to how to expand their audience and this labour fight will only turn fans off even more.  Young people already weren’t watching and the longer we go with no baseball the easier it is for people to find other ways to occupy their free time.  I will almost always side with players trying to extract as much money as possible from dishonest owners and I have every reason to believe they are being dishonest again as to how much money they stand to lose with fans not attending, but the players need to suck this one up and just play.  In a country where upwards of 30 million people don’t have any jobs at all, they are going to lose this PR battle in a big way.

5 – FAN INTERACTION – I’ve been one of the people fortunate enough to host the SJHL Canalta Simulation event online and one of the better aspects of it, for me, is the interaction with the fans who can send messages during the game.  I wonder if this isn’t something that can be better incorporated into the major sports moving forward?  I think hockey and basketball are, definitely, too fast-paced.  But, there may be some limited opportunities in football and baseball where it can definitely be done. 

6 – HURTFUL COMMENTS – NHLer Brendan Leipsic has had his contract terminated after making hurtful comments about teammates, a teammate’s wife, and women in general while on a private chat that got exposed to the general public.  This should have been a non-story.  Both men and women will say hurtful things about others, including making inappropriate remarks about another person’s physical appearance or even what a sexual experience was like.  It happens whether you like it or not.  It should not be ‘news’ for the media.  Lost in all of this is that even more people than just a bunch of nosy idiots on Twitter ended up seeing the names of the victims in this conversation.  So once again, the ambulance chasing media is to blame when this all would have been solved without their help through the proper channels of a teammate kicking the daylights out of Leipsic.

7 – HOW DID IT LEAK – Why am I the only one concerned about how this private conversation got leaked?  Second hand, of course, but there’s reason to believe one of the guys involved was asleep and facial recognition was used to unlock the phone.  Which is only ethical if you find demeaning messages, right?  I’m not defending them as good people because they aren’t.  I’m defending their right to be obnoxious people in private conversations amongst other like minded obnoxious people.  If we have nothing to fear about private conversations because we are all virtuous and don’t speak in a demeaning way about others, then I say let’s open up all of our phone texts and email messages and let’s see what everyone has to say about one another.  Then let’s allow the general public to decide who gets to keep their jobs based on those private messages.  Many have told me over the last few days they’ve never spoken badly about another human behind their back.  All of you who proclaim this are liars.

8 – ANONYMOUS WARRIORS – Someone with an anonymous handle on Twitter wants to have a conversation with me about this subject, but doesn’t have the courage to use his real name.  He even boasts to be an elite athlete who has been in locker rooms but has never ever engaged in this type of behaviour.  How brave of him to make this claim anonymously.  I’ve never really understood people who feel strongly enough to give an opinion but are too weak to put their actual John Henry behind it.  What are you afraid of?  If you are confident in your convictions, chances are there are many others who feel the same way and it will encourage them to use their voice too.  If not, then be a big person and admit your opinion is wrong and be open to changing your mind.  That’s what real conversations are for.

9 – TRUST YOUR EYES –  I get into arguments all the time with sports nerds who wouldn’t recognize a future Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan unless some computer analytic program told them so.  I always say just watch the game and make up your mind based on what your eyes tell you.  If you aren’t sure after one time, go watch a second time.  And, a third.  By then if you haven’t figured things out, you shouldn’t be an evaluator.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t use analytics, but analytics should not decide over the human eye.  This is also why the coronavirus is such a problem.  We don’t trust what our eyes are telling us despite having two months of evidence.  We worship the projected numbers.  But, here’s the reality:  this is not a deadly virus for those who are healthy and even less so for those who are young and healthy.  Yet, we are frightened into the basement, even in southern Saskatchewan where you have about 20 active cases and maybe 2 or 3 in the hospital out of a population of close to a million people (not including north in these figures).  Think about that.  I don’t care about ‘what ifs’ or any of the sort.  Look at the numbers.  The cases are astronomically low.  Get back to work.  Get football teams back together and let’s go.  And if a bunch of us test positive, who cares?  Most wouldn’t be sick enough to know the difference anyway.  And, if you do happen to get sick enough to be in the hospital, there is plenty of room.  If you are a vulnerable or elderly person, chances are you already are taking precautionary measures from all the other things the world has to offer that can kill you.  Incredible overreaction since the middle of March. 

10 – LIABILITY – Here’s the other thing that has ruined society and Canadians are worse than Americans when it comes to this:  we will sue over the smallest thing and I think a lot of these sports leagues would flip the bird at the health experts and start up tomorrow but in the event one compromised person gets the virus, they are staring at a multi-million dollar lawsuit.  And, that’s also what keeps other things closed.  Fear of liability.  So pat yourselves on the back.  I’ve seen stories posted on social media about evil restaurants opening up and having a full house against government orders, well how did the place get so populated?  By people who made up their own minds to go out and have a nice meal and a good visit.  Don’t blame the restaurant.  Nobody had a gun to the customers’ head to show up and order food.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)