Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – RIDERS MAKING MONEY – Earlier this week, the Roughriders announced a handsome profit of $2.1-million for 2024, which is a solid turnaround from 2023 when they lost $1-million.  The real story here isn’t so much the profit but rather how much less it costs to run the team in 2024 compared to 2019, the last year before Covid.  In 2019, the Riders posted a loss of $200,000 despite hosting a playoff game with 33,000 fans.  The Riders hosted a playoff game in 2024 with 26,000 fans.  In 2019, the Riders announced gate revenue at $17-million while in 2024 it was $10-million.  The Riders have applauded fans for buying a lot of merchandise in 2024, with sales at $6.5-million but that’s only $500,000 more than what was sold for merchandise in 2019.  So, with seven thousand less fans at the playoff game and with overall ticket sales down $7-million dollars, the Riders made a lot of money last season while in 2019 they lost money.  With inflation being a major factor, the fact that the Riders can make up a $7-million loss in ticket receipts and find other streams of revenue and cost savings to turn a healthy profit is a work of magic by those at the controls.  

3 – CFL FOOTBALL ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE – The CFL announced only two teams made money last season.  That’s not a recipe for overall league success.  Fans are simply not coming out.  We can all speculate as to why and I am going to tell you why I am not as interested and perhaps I’m out to lunch on this but here’s my take and I’ve mentioned it before – I come back to the fact the talent isn’t what it used to be yet tickets cost more than ever.  Why is there a talent drain?  I don’t see this talked about much, and maybe it’s a non-issue but in 2010, NFL practice rosters were 8 players.  Today they are 17.  That’s 9 players per team for a total of 288 really good players who would, otherwise, be available to play in the CFL.  Then you factor in the UFL, which has 50 players on each team x 8 teams, which is another 400 players and we are at nearly 700 professional players who are, essentially, not playing in the CFL that, perhaps, would be if this were 15 years ago.  In particular, quarterbacks Luis Perez and Jordan Ta’amu have been spring football veterans for several years now.  They, obviously, love the game and want to play.  Is it unreasonable to suggest they’d be in the CFL if the UFL didn’t exist and is it fair to say they’d be upper echelon QBs in the CFL?  Regardless, with all the injuries at the quarterback position we need as many good QBs as we can get our hands on as that’s the marquee position.  

4 – DISRESPECT TO CANADIAN QBs – One debate I saw this week on social media with CFL pundits centred around bias towards Canadian players and I am on the side of it existing, at least as far as Canadian-trained quarterbacks are concerned.  I can tell you from watching my fair share of Canadian university football that there have been a number of pivots who were good enough to be rostered in the CFL and, potentially, be developed into starters but they were not respected by the coaches, who almost all come from American backgrounds.  The graveyard of American trained quarterbacks who, frankly, have embarrassed themselves on a Canadian football field trying to play our style of professional football is a big one and I don’t really want to embarrass some of them further by listing them but, perhaps, the greatest Canadian university football quarterback of all-time (Chris Flynn) never got a sniff at the CFL other than when he was 30 he was listed as being on Ottawa’s roster.  When Flynn would’ve been in the prime of his career, Saskatchewan trotted out Warren Jones, Jimmy Kemp, Kevin Mason, and Heath Rylance as starters all in the same season.  If you saw Flynn play, you know he was better than all of them.  So, yes there has, historically, been a bias against Canadian trained quarterbacks.  Is it better today?  I am going to say ‘yes’ but it’s definitely still a thing. 

5 – ELGERSMA – Laurier’s Taylor Elgersma was the top Canadian university quarterback this past season and he earned himself a spot with Green Bay following a tryout in May but he’s listed as 4th on the depth chart and would have to nudge out Sean Clifford for a roster spot.  Meanwhile, he slid all the way to 18th overall in the CFL Draft before he was picked by Winnipeg.  I get that the CFL Draft has to be more about picking players who you think will play for you more than it is about picking the best players but quarterback needy teams (of which Winnipeg is not) should have been looking at Elgersma.  To me, you put a Canadian-trained QB like Elgersma on a CFL roster that is already loaded with surrounding talent and it’s a perfect situation.  I hope we see what he can do at some point in the future and I hope he gets a fair shake.

6 – CANADIAN UNIVERSITY SPORTS – U-Sports gets no respect nor should it when organizers do less than nothing to promote it as a quality product.  I wish someone would go through that main office with a broom and replace everyone with people who have passion for it.  It’s sad because every time I watch a Canadian college hockey, basketball, or football game I come away feeling completely satisfied with the level of entertainment.  I’m envious of people who like sports that live in Regina and Saskatoon.  I’d be at a gym or rink or field every weekend.  But if you are a casual fan, you would have no clue most weekends what’s going on or where, why, or what’s at stake.  There’s no reason why every game in every sport isn’t available on TSN+.  I have a daughter going to U of S this Fall so I’m going to make a real attempt to attend and follow their athletics programs.  My other daughter goes to Mount Royal and their hockey team is full of players and coaches who I am very familiar with yet every time I go visit it happens to be a weekend when their teams are on the road.  Hopefully I get to some games this season and if I can write about it here and enlighten someone to start going to watch and appreciate the talent, I’ve done my job.

7 – NHL DRAFT – The NHL Draft took place on the weekend and I am no longer tapped into the junior ranks well enough to say who did and who didn’t get steals but I did find some of the trades interesting.  Philadelphia moved up to select Jack Nesbitt, a centre, 12th overall.  Nesbitt is 6’4” and his stock has been going up with a bullet for the last six months.  On a lot of so-called expert draft boards, Nesbitt may have been still available later in the round when the Flyers were slated to pick but they weren’t taking a chance so they made a trade to get higher in the round just to be safe.  Philadelphia also made a trade for Trevor Zegras from Anaheim.  Zegras was joined at the hip to Jamie Drysdale when the two were Ducks and the reputations aren’t good.  I suspect Rick Tocchet will have his hands full.  Speaking of reputations, Vancouver traded JT Miller to straighten out their dressing room but have now brought in Evander Kane.  Make it make sense.

8 – DRAFT FORMAT – I watched some of the draft highlights on social media and am I the only one wondering why the NHL decided to monkey around with the broadcast presentation format?  What was broken about having it in an arena with 20,000 in attendance and with teams bringing up a conglomerate of dignitaries to announce the pick?  I’m just not sure what the league was trying to accomplish by decentralizing it and some of the celebrity draft pick announcements were duds.  Nikki Glaser is funny but the draft isn’t the time to drop 14 jokes in 90 seconds.  Tell one and then tell the fans who the Blues are taking.  I did like Adam Sandler’s Boston announcement but most of the rest that I got a chance to see were pointless.  Especially if the celebrity isn’t in attendance and has to do the pick by Zoom.  At least we got to see lots of Gary Bettman and how incredibly awkward and weird he is in front of the camera.

9 – RATTLERS – The Saskatchewan Rattlers were major surprise winners on Thursday night, defeating the first place Calgary Surge for the second time this season and winning their first home game in 350 days on the strength of Nate Pierre-Louis’ 28-points and the clutch performances of bench players Isaac Simon and Anthony Tsegakele, who were pressed into action because Devonte Bandoo and Jamir Chaplin are injured and because Cody John was released even though he was the team’s leading scorer (can you say off-the-court issues?).  Despite a 3-and-9 record, the Rattlers have played 10-games that have been decided by 8 points or less and the other two were blowout losses to Vancouver.  It would be an incredible turnaround if they can do it, but the Rattlers have 2 games left with Edmonton and that’s who they need to catch for a playoff spot.  They also play 2 against Ottawa and 1 against Brampton and those two clubs are near the bottom of the standings  in the East Division.  I’m not saying they’ll do it, but if they pull off 4 wins in those 5 games, they’ve got a puncher’s chance.   Footnote – The Rattlers blew a 12-point second quarter lead and lost by 12 to the Bandits on Saturday night.  The Rattlers are now 0-and-3 against Vancouver this season.

10 – UFC317 – UFC317 had an electric finish on Saturday night as Ilia Topuria knocked out Charles Oliveira with a devastating right hook in round one to win the Lightweight Championship.  Topuria is now tops in both Lightweight and Featherweight divisions and pound for pound, it’s fair to say he has leapfrogged Merab Dvalishvili and Islam Makhachev.  In the Flyweight Division, Alex Pantoja defended his title against Kai Kara-France with a third round choke submission and the fight before that saw Joshua Van win his Flyweight bout against Brandon Royval by unanimous decision.  It certainly looks like Van and Pantoja are on a collision course and Topuria may defend his Lightweight belt against Paddy Pimblett, but Topuria-Islam would be the biggest UFC fight in a long time.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)