Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

1 – QUARTERBACKS – Nathan Rourke has been released by the New York Giants, which once again had left his immediate NFL future in doubt and many CFL fans hoping he will make his return home. Thursday, the Atlanta Falcons signed him to a contract. So he’s not coming back anytime soon. I’m not usually one to pump the tires of CFL talent being underrated but in this case, I’ve seen plenty of NFL quarterbacks who are absolutely worse than what Rourke would be. Rourke even has a preseason from last year for film that shows he deserves an opportunity. Unless something has drastically changed as far as development is concerned, Rourke is definitely better than one of Daniel Jones, Tommy DeVito, and Drew Lock. But the investment from the Giants in each of those three is more than what it is in Rourke so I guess he gets shown the door. In Atlanta, the top two QBs are cemented in the highly paid Kirk Cousins and controversial first round pick Michael Penix.  Taylor Heinicke is listed as the number three and I’m not sure Rourke is going to unseat him if he can’t beat out the dog’s breakfast offered up by the Giants.

2 – CANADIAN QB – The prejudice towards Canadian quarterbacks isn’t limited to the NFL. All Tre Ford does is get results and yet, until the fourth quarter of last week, he sits on the bench of one of the worst teams in CFL history. Utter madness. I’m not convinced Ford is going to get much of a chance to unseat the disappointing McLeod Bethel-Thompson despite throwing three garbage time touchdowns in the loss to Hamilton on Sunday, but the Edmonton Football Club should absolutely turn the controls over to him, which they are for this next game against Saskatchewan but beyond that it remains to be seen. The other thing I would say here is that Ford was likely available via trade when you consider how uninterested Edmonton has been in using him and yet there are teams just about everywhere in the CFL who are trotting out worse pivots and none of them made a deal for him. It really makes me wonder how many other Canadian quarterbacks have been rejected just because they are either Canadian or played at a Canadian university.

3 – FLAMES QUIT TRYING – The Calgary Flames are, essentially, admitting they don’t have the least bit of an inclination to try and contend until they are in their new digs. Professional sports rebuilds are such a fraud.  Name another product whereby they can brag that it’s no good but you should try it anyway and also pay a premium for it while you are at it.  It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to fool the fans. If you are, openly, saying that you aren’t going to spend money and invest in the team so the fans can enjoy a winner, then tickets should be discounted to reflect as much. Hey, I like Blake Coleman as much as the next guy but he’s not Matthew Tkachuk. Fans, especially Canadian ones, need to be way more demanding of their teams.  This is why no Canadian club has won a Stanley Cup in over thirty years.  Like zombies, we just go to the games because we are thankful to have a team, even if it is terrible for 30 years straight. Teams like Florida, Dallas, Carolina, etc have no choice but to ensure their teams are relevant each and every year or else nobody will go to the games.  Nor should they.  

4 – LONDON ACCUSED GET CONTRACTS – Former Flame Dillon Dube has signed a one-year contract in the KHL. Dube is facing a criminal charge in relation to his involvement in an alleged sexual assault in London, Ontario in 2018 and has received no offers from the NHL. I’m a little surprised Dube is allowed to head overseas. Hypothetically, I would think it would be challenging to get him back here in the event he decided he wanted to just stay over in Russia for the rest of his life so he’s obviously provided an assurance that when the time comes, he will return to face a judge. Saturday morning, it was announced Michael McLeod, another one of the accused, is also signed to a deal in the KHL.

5 – JEFF MAREK – The Athletic ran an exclusive this week on why Jeff Marek is no longer with Sportsnet and the long and the short of it is that at the NHL Draft, 60-90 seconds before the selection is made public, Sportsnet staff are made aware of who’s going to be chosen so that they have cameras situated on the family, video file footage ready to go, etc. Well Marek has a buddy (Mark Seidel) who runs a scouting service and it’s alleged that Marek was tipping him off immediately as soon he became aware of who was getting selected and then Seidel was going to social media and coming off like a master predictor. In 2020, Seidel was 12-for-12 at the top of the first round when predicting picks.  In 2022 he tweeted, “I’d lay money on him,” when referencing Cutter Gauthier possibly getting drafted by Philadelphia. And, that, my friends, is the issue here. In a sports world where you can bet on everything having a guy like Seidel getting the scoop from Marek is a major problem so if these allegations are true, Marek should never work in sports media ever again. 

6 – SENIOR BASEBALL – WCBL President Kevin Kvame appeared on the Rod Pedersen Show this week and talked about potential expansion interest from other centres, all of them in Alberta (assuming Lloydminster is Alberta) as well as Brandon. I tip my hat to the league as it’s carved out a nice piece in the sports marketplace during the summer season where people have a lot of options and not a lot of time to take advantage of the warm weather. Teams in Swift Current and Weyburn continue to survive despite my reservations over the exorbitant cost of doing business in a league with major cities thousands of kilometres away where upwards of 3000 fans a night are attending games. I have thought and continue to believe there is a void in the smaller cities for a baseball league where there are a limited number of imports, a reduced schedule, and shorter travel distances whereby a team can make a decent coin should they draw an average of 400 a night.  I live in Yorkton and don’t believe there is a huge appetite for baseball here. Melville, on the other hand, is a different story. I’d love to see a league set up similar to the old Manitoba Senior Baseball League that features the likes of Weyburn and Swift Current along with Melville, Moosomin, Brandon, and maybe one other centre (Estevan?) and a 30-game schedule.  There seems to be a plethora of talent graduating from the U18 ranks that aren’t good enough to play WCBL and a senior (or junior) league along the lines of what I’m talking about would help fill that void and, perhaps, even be a feeder league for the WCBL.

7 – CEBL PLAYOFFS – The Winnipeg Sea Bears had their CEBL season come to an end Friday night, losing 84-82 to the Calgary Surge in what was an incredibly entertaining playoff game.  The Surge led 39-21 late in the first half, but the Sea Bears chipped away until they finally tied the game in Elam Time at 82-82 and they had two chances to win it but a mental mistake by former Rattler Justin Wright-Foreman while dribbling the ball up court cost them on one, while a sloppy in-bound play did them in on the second. Emmanuel Akot had a great game for Winnipeg, scoring 23-points and 6-rebounds and he also had a game saving block late in the contest. Wright-Foreman had 20 despite getting smothered by the Calgary defense and another former Rattler Scottie Lindsay scored 15.  For the Surge, Mathieu Kamba had 27 and Corey Davis scored 23, including the game winning hoop. Calgary got off to a bad start, 0-and-3, early in the year but they are my pick to win the West and will visit Edmonton on Sunday.

8 – OLYMPIC BOXING – I mentioned last week that I don’t spend a second of television time on the Olympics but I feel as though I should write a little bit about it since it’s topical. If you believe everything you see on mainstream and social media (and you should absolutely not believe anything without digging deep), there are two men who are entered in female boxing and despite being disqualified by the IBA, the Olympic Committee sees no issues with having a man punch the daylights out of a woman. You can watch and cheer as you see fit. I won’t. I had a discussion with a person earlier this week and we agreed that we are moving past the point of labeling people as right or left. It’s now up or down. Good or evil. Some of you are so entrenched and brainwashed that you don’t even recognize evil but most people who disagree on political and social issues are starting to find common ground as the world becomes more crazy by the day.

9 – MORE OLYMPIC BOXING – An update – Apparently these two men aren’t men at all. They are women who failed some sort of gender eligibility test that the IBA conducted to determine whether or not they’d be accepted into women’s boxing. Can someone make it make sense? We are conducting tests now to figure out if you are a man or a woman? And even the test is up for debate? This entire thing is nonsense. In the case of the incident this week, that boxer (Imane Khelif) who everyone is calling a man is actually a woman, according to the IOC. That’s what is on her birth certificate.  The reason for all the confusion is because her chromosomes are XY, which are usually reserved for males. It’s an abnormality that just so happens to affect two female boxers at the Olympics. Are you buying this because I am not. On Saturday, an official with the World Boxing Organization stepped forward with strong words saying he warned the IOC back in 2022 about men (including Khelif) competing in boxing as females and he claims to have first hand knowledge that Imane Khelif is, in fact, a man. “The problem was not with the level of testosterone because that can be adjusted. The gender test clearly revealed Khelif is a male.” The official says tests were conducted on five boxers and all five were revealed to be male. The IOC was notified immediately and didn’t respond. Here’s another one for you: former women’s world champion Maria Kovacs says there is now a 20% chance of a female boxer getting a testicular injury. Clearly, there are rules in place and some of them are so strict that you can get disqualified for taking cold medicine.  If they can go to that extent to determine who competes and who doesn’t, they should be able to have parameters in place that determine gender and the matter should be cut and dried but for some reason there are a few of you out there who still believe men can have menstrual cycles and babies so there is no convincing 100% of the population and we will continue to perform exorbitant mental gymnastics to satisfy a rationale that just makes zero sense.

10 – BANNING COUNTRIES – Here’s another one that makes no sense to me.  Russia is banned but it’s okay to have North Korea at the Olympics. If you ask me, they should ban Canada. Is there another country participating that froze the bank accounts of its citizens? Yes, most of you reading laugh at the ridiculousness of my statement but on the international stage, our country is viewed a lot differently than how we view it from the inside. I assure you. And that’s not a good thing but we are so incredibly self-unaware to even care.

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