THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE
1. AMBROSIE BASHERS OFFER NO SOLUTION: I’m all for critical thinking. Without that, blogs like this wouldn’t exist and talking heads like me wouldn’t have much fun, either. But piling on in a once-in-a-lifetime crisis and scapegoating one person for the misfortune it has caused is nothing short of appalling. I get a kick out of Sportsnet, or at least the people at Rogers who still care about the CFL, and how they laugh in Randy Ambrosie’s face about the fact he couldn’t solve the COVID crisis. I wonder how many of these Sportsnet know-it-alls have ever run their own business or even could explain a financial statement? Blame the Commissioner of the Canadian Football League all you want for all of the world’s problems but until you offer a credible solution to get our game back on the field, you haven’t got a leg to stand on.
2. CFL OWES FANS NOTHING: The big leagues like the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL are all multi-billion-dollar cartels who routinely enjoy record profits and drain enormous resources from the North American economy. The least they can do is bear the brunt of short-term losses to help the public cope with the coronavirus. The Canadian Football League is not the same thing at all. Team owners are not getting rich off the CFL. The players are badly underpaid and the main network, TSN, has always bent over backwards just to make the league viable. The people who enjoy the spoils of our league are its fans. Players, themselves, are even offering to take pay cuts just to play in 2021. How is that for selfless love of the game? No fan or talking head has the moral right to point fingers about why we didn’t have a season this year or why we might not have a season next year, either.
3. FANS OWE CFL A LOT: Nothing brings rich-poor, American-Canadian, French-English or East-West together better than the Canadian Football League. It’s the greatest game on earth and corporate Canada has always propped it up for us, sometimes to its own detriment. Quite frankly, we’re lucky to have it. Nobody should blame the CFL one iota if it doesn’t play until after the vaccine is in full distribution and the world is back to normal once again.
4. CFL SIMULATION HAS TAUGHT ME: I don’t want this “Top 6 teams getting in”. I want the East-West playoff format. It’s given us some classic confrontations, especially in the past five years. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
5. CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE LONG GAME: We spend a lot of time in this space discussing how to get to 10 franchises. That’s important for so many reasons but the ultimate goal shouldn’t stop there. The long run should be all about maxing this league’s potential from coast to coast. Halifax is still a goal and it should be. So should, in this order, Quebec City and London, Ontario. They are both central bases to populations of surrounding areas around one million strong and both are largely underserved regions for professional sport. They are also markets not engaged in the Canadian Football League. Adding all of these franchises are a benefit only if they increase the pie big enough to justify giving each franchise a smaller piece. These markets could accomplish just that. These are things the CFL should flesh out during this long nap.
6. MY BIGGEST WORRY FOR 2021: The Western Canada Baseball League. I need my Regina Red Sox back for next year and have suffered from severe withdrawal without them. I want the CFL back, too. But it’s the Sox who I think about most when considering our path back to prosperity.
7. ELECTION TALK: Congratulations to Regina’s new Mayor, Sandra Masters. It’s wonderful and long overdue to see a woman as Mayor of our great city and it looks like half of our council will be made up of women as well, which is a good thing. I voted for Michael Fougere, who I’d like to thank for helping lead Regina through some rough circumstances, including the start of this awful pandemic. He exceeded my expectations as Mayor from start to finish. I also voted for Cameron Wilkes for city council and Ted Jaleta for Regina Public School Board. Regina is very lucky to have so many terrific candidates who want to help our city and the civility of it all is something we should never take for granted, especially with what we’ve been watching south of the border.
8. BOBBY ORR CRITICISM FAIR GAME: Number 4 and his endorsement of Donald Trump is getting a big thumbs down from columnists, activists and even some Bruin fans. I respect Bobby Orr’s right to support whomever he or Don Cherry chooses. I also respect anyone else’s right to trash Bobby Orr for his decision to support someone who has threatened Canada’s livelihood and has created as much fear and anxiety in the world as Donald Trump has. Bobby Orr signed up for all this. I hope the juice was worth the squeeze.
9. HOWIE MEEKER: Don Cherry before Don Cherry. The biggest difference between Howie and Grapes, as Dave Hodge put it, is that Howie was never bigger than the show itself, never tried to be bigger, wouldn’t have been allowed to be bigger. Howie Meeker was pretty well phased out by the time my generation started watching Hockey Night In Canada. And for us, that’s a bloody shame.
10. QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Places that control the virus get control over their economy. Places that don’t, don’t.”— Dr. Tom Frieden who once served as the Director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. He led North America in its fight against the Ebola scare a few years ago and actually has some expertise in this field, unlike the anti-mask know-it-alls, who don’t.
(Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)
