STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 -RIDERS WIN – What a difference a week makes.  Maybe it was the opponent.  Cody Fajardo, once again, looked like the best quarterback in the league and, for the first time this season, the running game was a major factor in helping the Riders emerge victorious.  Fajardo talked after the game about how hard the last couple of weeks have been for him in that you can’t really avoid seeing the venom from the social media mob that, quickly, jumps off the bandwagon.  Such is the world we live in.  People only seem to be happy if they are making someone else miserable.  Personally, I think Fajardo is the best thing to happen to Roughrider Football in 20 years with both his on-field ability and off-field charisma.  I wish him nothing but greatness and am rooting for him big time.

2 – NEW STAR – Kian Schaffer-Baker is generating a ton of buzz.  The 6’4” receiver from Guelph is, quickly, becoming a fan favorite with his hands, speed, size, and toughness.  I don’t know if this is entirely accurate because I don’t proclaim to be the most astute CFL commenter, but Schaffer-Baker reminds me of Jason Clermont, when he was in his heyday with the BC Lions.  Am I too far off the mark on that comparison?

3 – RANKINGS – Rather than rank the teams 1-9, I think the league has broken up into groups of teams that are close to each other.  I have the Bombers as the class followed by Saskatchewan and BC in the next tier.  Edmonton, Hamilton, and Toronto are in the next group with all three of these teams being interchangeable depending on healthy quarterbacks.  Montreal and Calgary are better than Ottawa.

4 – DISCIPLINE – AC Leonard has been suspended for an additional game for verbal abuse of doping control officers.  This is on top of the two games he got for failing to provide a sample.  So he’s been suspended for 21% of the regular season and only 50% of the season will remain when he’s eligible to come back.  On a team where on-field discipline has been the number one issue, I don’t understand why Jeremy O’Day doesn’t just send a message to the rest of the team and, simply, move on from Leonard.  This is a clear disregard for the rules and the team’s stance comes off as soft.  When a player feels as though the rules don’t apply to him off-field, why would you believe he will follow on-field ones any better?

5 – ATTENDANCE – The crowd was announced at just over 25,000 (which makes it the smallest congregation to watch a Roughrider game in almost 15 years).  The consensus is that there were no more than 17,000 actually in the seats.  This has to come as a major surprise for the Riders seeing as how they implemented the mandatory vaccine policy at the behest of their fans so how come even fewer showed up after they made it ‘safer’?  I’ve seen some really laughable excuses that have ranged from ‘a long and tiring week’ to ‘too late of a start to go’.  I’m going to, instead, suggest this was a message from the general population that they are opposed to mandatory proof of vaccination.  Some of these people are called anti-vaxxers but there is another significant category of people that fall into the ‘fully vaxxed but it should be up to me to decide if I want to prove it’ category.  I have seen lots of praise from ‘fans’ on social media who have admitted they were not at the game but are proud of their team for doing the right thing.  Unfortunately, if you support the mandatory passports but don’t go to the game, it’s hard for the Riders to pay the bills. 

6 – MEDIA PUSH – There were a number of media people in Regina who led the cheering for the mandatory vaccination proof at Rider games and then, at least, two of those people made jokes about the low attendance.  It’s hard for me to respect a person who does that.  I’d much rather see those individuals admit they were wrong at assuming Mosaic would be sold out once the new policy came into play.  I believe more than one said that for every person who said they weren’t going to the next game there would be between three and five others waiting to replace them.  That, clearly, wasn’t the case and a simple admission of being wrong tends to give plenty of credibility.

7 – FAN DIVISION – Here’s what one fan, who refuses to go to games told me on Saturday morning:  “A passionate and loyal fan base has turned against one another.  People who used to high five and celebrate during the game are now attacking and spewing hatred against one another.  Everything that was ‘community’ is now gone.  Some fans who have been attacked for not being vaxxed won’t come back even if they get vaxxed.”  That’s a powerful statement and one that I hope isn’t true but it does give me pause and it brings a lot of sadness because no matter what ‘side’ of this you are on, we all have to agree the communication from the ruling class has been even worse than poor.  As an example, would it have been all that bad for Scott Moe to get in front of Saskatchewan this past week and simply say the government miscalculated and made a mistake when they declared 70% as the magic number needed in order to open?  That would go a lot further with me than blaming and finger pointing.  As a reminder – I am fully vaxxed so this is not a personal defense.  I’ve done all the things required in order to ‘do my part’ but I do not despise those who haven’t because that seems to be precisely the goal from those who make the rules and I refuse to buy into hatred and division.  

8 – PACKERS REDEEM – I’m not back on the Aaron Rodgers bandwagon by any stretch.  Detroit is a team they absolutely should beat at home.  They’ve got San Francisco in week three and that will tell me whether or not week one was an aberration.  While I’m not hitting the panic button yet, the other team I’m watching closely is Kansas City.  Super Bowl runner-ups have a tendency to disappoint the following year and the Chiefs have been a team that seems to turn it on and off at will ever since they won the Super Bowl in 2019.  What I’ve seen from them so far is a lucky victory against Cleveland and then two blown leads against Baltimore (missing 15 of 22 starters) that resulted in a loss.  Couple that with Denver and the Raiders both bei ng 2-and-0 and then you have the Chargers who are also 1-and-1 and this is not going to be a walk in the park for the Chiefs.

9 – NO HOCKEY – In Manitoba, the small community of Grunthal has cancelled its minor hockey season after their enrollment dropped from 130 to 40.  Organizers say pandemic health restrictions are the biggest reason for the steep decline.  I also think there are other reasons in play here, not the least of which are that kids have found new things to be interested in and some have had their zest for sports sucked out of them almost entirely.  An American CDC study indicates childhood obesity has more than doubled since March 2020 yet we only seem concerned about keeping kids Covid free, all the while not realizing we are putting them at health risk in a lot of other areas while doing so.  

10 – TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING – The Columbus Blue Jakets are not inviting Zac Rinaldo to main camp because he’s not vaccinated, yet he’s allowed to attend their minor league affiliate’s training camp in Cleveland.  Does this mean the health and safety of those who play in Cleveland simply isn’t as important as those who play in Columbus or am I missing something?  I just want it to make sense and so much of it doesn’t.  The communication just gets worse with each passing day.  Seriously though.  How can he be allowed in Cleveland but not in Columbus?  It’s just a question. 

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