STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – FOCUS SHOULD BE ON PLAYING – As we sit here towards the latter stages of May, the entire country of Canada has about 5,000 active cases of the China-started Coronavirus (Quebec excluded).  In a country of 30,000,000 (Quebec excluded) that is a tiny number and therefore I can’t figure out why we wouldn’t be more aggressive towards finding avenues to salvage the CFL season as opposed to bellyaching about government bailouts.  Manitoba is going on a week straight of no cases.  Saskatchewan hasn’t been hit really at all in its more populated areas.  Edmonton has had no problems, Calgary has turned the corner, BC got ahead of the issue quite quickly, Hamilton has less than 200 active cases, and Ottawa is registering fewer than 20 per day.  There should be no reason why football can’t be played in stadiums with partial crowds.  One has to think if you could get 10,000 or so in each stadium, it may be enough to mitigate disastrous losses.  Maybe you do some things like have specified times for each section to be admitted to the games so it’s not bottle-necked outside and perhaps you could do something similar when it comes to food vendors.  There has to be a way to do it but the focus from everyone seems to be on canceling.  Folks, 2021 isn’t going to be any better so you better figure out a way around this now as opposed to later.

2 – NFL ROONEY RULE – There is a suggestion that the Rooney Rule is insufficient when it comes to hiring black coaches in the National Football League and an improved draft pick may be needed to encourage teams to leave qualified white coaches unemployed while, potentially, hiring unqualified black coaches.  I’ve long believed (and I’d like someone to prove I’m wrong) that NFL teams would hire, literally, anyone regardless of background if it helps them win games.  I don’t follow the NCAA or high school sports in the US but I’m wondering who’s being left out of the NFL hiring ranks?  In fact, I’d suggest teams are giving black head coaches a chance but very few are delivering wins.  Let’s look at the most recent hires:  Steve Wilks, Arizona (3-13); Vance Joseph, Denver (11-21); Hue Jackson, Oakland/Cleveland (11-44-1), Todd Bowles, NYJets (26-41), Eric Studesville, Denver (1-3); Lesley Frazier, Minnesota (21-32-1).  What reasons could there be for letting these coaches continue?  They all have losing records.  The only minority coaches with winning records are still head coaches.  Anthony Lynn, Chargers (21-12), Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh (103-57); and Ron Rivera, Washington (76-63-1).  I’m just not sure who’s missing out and there’s decent evidence to suggest some of these men got a fair bit of rope to succeed or fail.

3 – NFL LOOKING IN WRONG PLACES – I think the National Football League is doing a disservice to their black workforce (the players) and should offer them more assistance in helping them escape some of the social problems that plague a certain number of them.  The idea of “Money Doesn’t Mean Everything” suddenly becomes rosier and I don’t proclaim to understand but there is a problem when you have Brandon Browner sitting in jail for 8 years or Giants DB Deandre Baker and Seahawks CB Quinton Dunbar wanted for armed robbery.  It’s a significant enough problem that USA Today keeps a running track of all NFL players who get arrested and an extremely large number of them are black.  It doesn’t mean all these people are bad guys, but the NFL does have an obligation, in my opinion, to help these people become better human beings so they can better contribute to society.  Having former player Cris Carter (Duron’s dad) tell the masses that ‘you need a fall guy’ when speaking to prospective players isn’t the way to go.  How about owners who aren’t white?  How many of those are there?

4 – NASCAR BACK – I like car racing, but I don’t like it enough to watch it over other sports on a Sunday afternoon.  Having said that, I was quite entertained with the Darlington 400 as Kevin Harvick led for about half the race and ended up taking the checkered flag.  His very real reaction when interviewed afterwards was what got me as he took his helmet off and it really hit him that there was nobody there to cheer for him.  He called it weird.  He’s right.  I know some of you NASCAR fans have your favorite racer.  I don’t really have one although Brad Keselowski was one of the first to capitalize on Twitter so I’m a bit drawn to him.  He won Stage 2 on Sunday and then faded to a 13th place finish.  Jimmie Johnson crashed on the final lap of Stage 1, which was a real buzz kill for him and his team and fans. All in all, it was a good race and I’ll be watching again on Wednesday night.

5 – MISSOURI HOSTS BASEBALL – An estimated 550 kids and their parents converged on an area outside St. Louis last weekend for a baseball tournament.  There were some safety precautions in place, including the umpire calling balls and strikes from between the pitcher’s mound and second base.  So far, there have been no reports of sickness or death related to the event.  So if minor baseball can pull it off, surely Major League Baseball can do it too.  Over the weekend, an 80-page document was presented to the players on behalf of ownership.  Make no mistake about it, most of the jargon will be based on liability in case a player ends up positive and passes it on to an elderly relative.  Other than that, there is no reason why MLB can’t resume in a little more than a month’s time and I think if it goes well, you will see limited fans at games in about two months and who knows what happens beyond that.  For me, it’s all about airports and airplanes.  That’s where the virus seems to thrive and hit those of us who aren’t elderly.  If they can control it there, I think it’s going to be just fine.

6 – ECONOMICS – This has become a very public spat between baseball players and owners, but I think it’s widely overblown.  You don’t need an economic degree to know that not playing costs money.  Putting on games without fans costs even more money (travel, meals, electricity, etc.).  Common ground will be found and baseball will resume.  As long as the number of positive cases is kept down to less-than-a-dull-roar and we don’t pay attention to stupid media, the season will be completed.  I think the same for the NHL and NBA.  If one of them can get going, you know the other two are going to try and find a way to do likewise. 

7 – NHL/NBA – What I’m reading a lot about is that teams in both of those leagues who don’t have a sniff at winning aren’t interested in finishing the year.  For the NBA, this is a fairly easy decision.  I think you could bring back the top 8 in each conference and have a bit of a ‘preseason’ and then go straight to the playoffs.  A hub city or two hub cities makes the most sense.  There’s a six game gap in the East between 8th place Orlando and 9th place Washington.  In the West, Memphis is three games ahead of Portland.  For the NHL, 24 teams coming back seems to be gaining the most steam.  I can see why they’ve picked that number because those are the number of the teams that, technically, are still in the mix with about a dozen games remaining.  Maybe you have everyone play five games and then narrow the field to 20 and have a best of three between 7th vs 10th and 8th vs 9th in each conference and then you are down to 16 from there.  It would take about 3 weeks of play though before you actually ‘begin’ the playoffs.  That means you crown a Stanley Cup winner in early to mid September and then pause until early November for the 2020-21 season.  It’s doable.  My concern for the NHL is that it’s a lot like the CFL but not quite as amplified.  They need fans to survive.  I think it’s entirely possible that by September, something is arranged for stadiums to have partial crowds.

8 – NHL CLOSE STANDINGS – When we last left the NHL, Florida was not a playoff team, but only 3 points behind Toronto and a game in hand with twelve games overall remaining.  The Islanders are one point out of a playoff spot, but two games in hand on Columbus.  In the West Winnipeg, Nashville, Vancouver, and Minnesota are separated by three points and only two of those teams will qualify.  Maybe not as much fun, but what if you just bring back the top three in each division and give the division winners a bye and the others play a best of five over the course of eight days.  Then you end up with a top eight and can wrap up the season in about a month.  You’d have to have some sort of a ‘regular season’ with the twelve teams so that everyone is sharp and not just going into the playoffs, but I like that idea better than 24 teams, except for the fact Winnipeg isn’t involved if you do 12.

9 – SJHL UPDATE – Bill Chow was our guest on the SJHL Simulation broadcast on Saturday and he made a few interesting comments.  First of all, the SJHL isn’t likely to return unless buildings are allowed 50% capacity although the plan right now is to be ready for a mid-September start up.  Second of all, the concern for players appears to be low when it comes to transmitting the virus during actual game play.  It’s the dressing rooms and the coaches behind the bench where there appears to be the biggest issues.   Thirdly, recruiting American players is very uncertain, but one would think that the chances of keeping a Saskatchewan kid close to home are greater than ever before.  For me, this third point is a positive and it is a real opportunity for our teams to show what they can offer players who have one foot out the door for another league before they reach age 18.

10 – MLS SOCCER – I’m a huge fan of their proposed plan to stage a summer tournament in Orlando.  I don’t follow the league, but I will if they can pull this off.  They are signalling June 22nd as a return which beats the rest of the leagues back to active status.  Tournaments in just about any sport will pique my interest and soccer is already being played in Europe so if they use that as a model to follow here in North America, there shouldn’t be any issues.

BONUS POINT – I don’t know what the Prairie Football Conference is planning other than I can say Calgary is slated to go ahead on July 24th with training camp.  If the season has a late start, maybe they’ll have to look at a shorter schedule and less travel which is to say Calgary only plays the two Edmonton teams and the Thunder, Hilltops, and Winnipeg Rifles would play each other.  That could end up being just four games instead of eight, but that’s also better than 0.  To get in an extra game, maybe everyone makes the playoffs and 2nd vs 3rd in each broken up conference would play a playoff game with 1st meeting the winner and then the top team from Alberta would play and then lose to the Hilltops (because they always win) for PFC supremacy.  I also think in the event of no CFL games, junior football is looking at a huge spike in interest should they be allowed to proceed.

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