Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

1 – RIDERS REGULAR SEASON FINALE – Not a whole lot I can say about the Roughrider regular season finale other than I thought they’d maybe use the A Team for the entire game to try and ensure they kick BC over to the East Division as I view the Lions as the top threat to the Riders winning the Grey Cup. Instead, it looks like we will maybe see BC again in two weeks’ time, after the clinched second place Saturday with a 27-21 victory in Regina. The report I got from someone who watched the game was that the CFL Command Centre stole the game from Saskatchewan but I can’t comment on it any more than that because I never watched. Suffice to say if the Command Centre gets involved, it usually means a miscarriage of justice to some degree.

2 – USPORTS IN SASKATOON – I was fortunate to take in three University of Saskatchewan games on Saturday, starting with football where the Huskies downed the Manitoba Bisons 31-12. The Bisons are the only team to have beaten the Huskies this season but the Huskies struck early and threatened a blowout but the Bisons got back in it only to lose their momentum on a fumble recovery late in the fourth quarter that put the contest out of reach. Next up was Women’s Basketball, where Saskatchewan dominated MacEwan for the second night in a row, trouncing them 98-37 with five players scoring in double digits. In the Men’s game, the Huskies avenged a Friday night loss to the Griffs by winning 88-73 on the strength of a 12-0 run to start the fourth quarter.  

3 – OVERALL INTEREST – Attendance at all three events was shameful. More on that in a bit. Just over 2300 were on hand to watch Daniel Wiebe cap his university career with two receiving touchdowns, which puts him atop the all-time U of S career list in that category.  Wiebe looks a lot like a future Weston Dressler to me and there is no doubt he’s pro calibre. There were less than 200 at PAC to witness last year’s national championship runner-ups, who destroyed their opposition for the second game in a row. Tea DeMong had 17-points, 12-rebounds, 4-steals.  Gage Grissick added 13-points, 9-rebounds, 9-assists in what is a very balanced offense. The Men’s game was of great interest to me because I wanted to see Saskatchewan Rattler Easton Thimm play amongst his university peers. Thimm had 21-points and 18-rebounds in an 82-80 loss on Friday night, and then scored 14-points and 8-rebounds on Saturday. Perhaps the most impressive player was Dylan Miller, who hit 6 three-pointers and finished with a team high 20 points. Attendance was announced as just over 400 for this one.

4 – NOT SPORTS FANS – We can’t legitimately call ourselves sports fans in this country after what I witnessed a week earlier in Minnesota. I realize that in Canada we view university sports as just some sort of extension to minor sports so, usually, all you will see for a crowd are friends and family of the athletes participating but the general public is truly missing out.  These are excellent athletes playing at a high level. Ticket prices are, extremely, affordable at around $20 a head. U of S students get in for free and I’m stunned at how few of them actually care about the athletics programs on campus. If I lived in Saskatoon (or Regina), I would be a regular at all U-Sports games in as many sports as I could take in. To me, it shouldn’t be ridiculous to expect north of 7500 to watch football in Saskatoon and 1500 or more for basketball. If this were an American university in a similar sized city, there’d be even more fans than that going to games and the buzz would be noticeable throughout the city. My guess is most casual sports fans had no clue there were three games on campus yesterday.

5 – GETTING WITH THE TIMES – It’s looking promising for the Saskatchewan Roughriders to have sanctioned tailgating for next year. I still think it’s a mistake to get the government involved. To me, it’s as simple as banning open fires, furniture, charcoal grills, and pets. Enforce clean up of garbage and maybe designate certain areas for alcohol with a rule that prohibits drinking games and that’s about it. The Riders should be given the authority to come up with what’s acceptable and what isn’t. After all, they are in the football business. Governments are in the business of syphoning money from our pockets. So just keep them out of this. I have heard concerns about increased crime, such as assaults, as well as the potential for drunk driving but you don’t hear of these as problems with our American friends so this would be a commentary on the make-up of our local demographics more than it would be on tailgating itself.

6 – NBA BETTING SCANDAL – The criminal charges/investigation into the alleged illegal betting practices of Portland coach and NBA Hall of Famer Chauncy Billups and Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, along with retired player Damon Jones are just the tip of the iceberg as far as what’s going on with pro athletes, coaches, officials, etc in professional sports. It’s nice to pretend this is an unusual situation but the reality is that it’s not. I suppose kudos should be given to the FBI for all their work on bringing charges to those deemed to be responsible but I’d much rather they arrest celebrities who took part in the abuse of teenaged girls from the Jeffrey Epstein days. Make no mistake about it, if they can figure out Billlups cheated at poker and if they can reveal the names of a handful of others, not charged, who were there and also playing poker … they can figure out who Ghislaine Maxwell was trafficking girls to.  

7 – RAMPANT ILLEGAL BETTING – I’ve seen several videos in recent days where it’s very clear players were placing wagers on final scores and certain events from within games they were playing in. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Elite athletes get to the pinnacle of their sport from being uber competitive and gambling tends to bring out some of that competitive edge that only a top athlete would understand. This is why when Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky are linked to various gambling incidents, I barely shrug my shoulders. What else would you expect?  I have, deep down, long believed that many of our sports games have an element of compromised integrity to them because the money involved is, simply, too much for powerful people to just sit idly by and allow things to happen organically. In a perfect world, you’d think sports leagues would distance themselves from sports gambling companies but they were way too deep into it for anything to change. Even the cancellation of prop bets would seem to be a long shot.  Gambling outfits make a fortune on those. Meanwhile, the NCAA just passed legislation saying it’s okay for their athletes to get involved in sports gambling as long as they stick to professional leagues and stay away from NCAA matches. Could you be any more tone deaf?

8 – CONFLICT – The NFL owns a piece of ESPN, which owns a piece of ESPN Bet Sportsbook. Wouldn’t it be ethical for ESPN Bet Sportsbook to be put up for sale? Gambling addiction is as real as alcohol addiction and here’s my biggest issue when it comes to sports leagues getting involved with beer companies and gambling companies:  a player who drinks too much Miller Genuine Draft isn’t affecting the outcomes of games. I heard one media pundit say this NBA gambling saga is a nothing burger because the fans are still going to watch, which would seem to indicate there is still very high public confidence that nothing is rigged to the point that outcomes are affected in the win/loss columns. I also think that while it’s the NBA in the spotlight today, no sport is immune from this problem. Baseball did a nice job with Shohei Ohtani, getting his interpreter to take the proverbial bullet but there’s all sorts of little warning signs out there that maybe not everything is decided entirely on the playing surface in a fair manner.

9 – WORLD SERIES TICKETS – I saw some whining online about the cost of Blue Jays’ World Series tickets. I believe the screen shot that ended up on social media that went viral was indicating single seats going for $5000 a game and higher. Clearly people aren’t starving in Canada the way we (or maybe just I) think. There’s still lots of money flowing in the economy and for people who say that’s an outrageous price to pay to watch a sporting event, just think about what the atmosphere must’ve been like when Addison Barger hit that grand slam on Friday. You can’t replicate something like that and it is, to steal a word from MasterCard’s long time ad campaign, ‘priceless’. 

10 – EYE POKES – The main event for UFC 321 fell flat on Saturday afternoon when the heavyweight title bout between Tom Aspinall and Cyril Gane was called a no contest after Gane double eye-poked Aspinall late in the first round.  Aspinall was unable to continue despite being given ample time to try and recover his vision.  Replays of the incident are gruesome, so for someone to think Aspinall was trying to weasel his way out of the fight is ridiculous. True, Aspinall maybe had a broken nose from earlier in the round  and this fight was well on its way to being a lot closer than many had predicted but neither fighter had anything to gain from this.  Look for a rematch as soon as possible.  

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)