Verdict expected for former CFL star accused of choking former girlfriend

By The Canadian Press - Monday, February 25, 2013 at 5:14 AM - 0 Comments

CALGARY – A former Canadian Football League all-star accused of assaulting and choking his former girlfriend is expecting to hear a verdict today from the judge hearing his case.

Joffrey Reynolds, 33, was charged with assault causing bodily harm, common assault and breaking and entering with intent following a night of drinking last July.

His one-time girlfriend testified at his trial in Calgary that he tried to choke and smother her when she came home and found him in her bed.

Kaitlin Ward, 27, had dated Reynolds for six years before ending their relationship in December 2011 upon discovering he had been cheating on her.

Continue…

Grey Cup champion Argonauts ready to host rare victory parade in Toronto

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 10:56 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Toronto sports fans are getting ready to enjoy a rare treat — a championship party in their own backyard.

The Toronto Argonauts will parade the Grey Cup through the streets of Canada’s largest city today to celebrate their 35-22 win over the Calgary Stampeders in the 100th edition of the CFL championship game.

The procession will start near Union Station and will proceed up Bay Street to Toronto City Hall, where city officials will declare it “Toronto Argonauts Day.”

A fleet of 28 pickup trucks and one convertible will carry quarterback Ricky Ray, running back and Grey Cup MVP Chad Kackert, wide receiver Chad Owens and others along the parade route.

It’s the first championship parade in Toronto since the Argonauts won the Grey Cup in 2004 and will be a shot in the arm for the city’s long-suffering sports fans.

Canada’s largest sports market has also been its most underachieving. Baseball’s Blue Jays have not won a championship since 1993, hockey’s Maple Leafs have been shut out since 1967 and basketball’s Raptors and soccer’s Toronto FC haven’t even come close. Continue…

Argos: 35, Justin Bieber: 0

By Emma Teitel - Monday, November 26, 2012 at 5:36 AM - 0 Comments

Last night Justin Bieber asked a crowd of 53,000 middle-aged men to be his boyfriend (sources say he went home alone) and the Toronto Argonauts won their first Grey Cup in eight years. They won it at home too, which is pretty cool, and puts this notion to shame.

Speaking of shame…

I still don’t know all the rules of the game (I almost wished the CBC had aired another one of those sexist programs catering to sports ignorant women), but I do know the Argos killed it last night–namely Chad Kackert, Ricky Ray, and Swayze Waters, says National Post sports writer, Sean Fitz-Gerald, who was sitting beside me in the press box–and was kind enough to tell me that.

In other news, this happened during Burton Cumming’s lounge remix of  the national anthem:

The Stampeders logo was decapitated shortly after fans poured out of the stadium. Of course, the grass zambonis (not sure what the proper term is) had to wipe everything away eventually, but the horse’s head went especially early.

Headless Stampeders Horse:

And on my taxi ride home I didn’t hear a single honking horn. Instead, I saw just three lonely blue-clad figures at Yonge and Dundas waving an Argos flag. Maybe I’m being unfair, or it was a Polkaroo moment, and I happened to miss the mobs of Argos fans every time I went outside, but I don’t think Toronto fully appreciates that we are at long last, victorious. Or perhaps I forgot that we do care about Toronto football.

Just maybe not so much the Argos…

Ricky Ray’s legacy game

By Charlie Gillis - Monday, November 26, 2012 at 12:26 AM - 0 Comments

Argonauts quarterback Ricky Ray looks down field during third quarter CFL Grey Cup action. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

Chad Kackert got the MVP nod after the 100^th Grey Cup—and deservedly so. The Toronto Argonauts’ running back was a human cannonball in his team’s 35-22 win over the Calgary Stampeders. If you can feature a cannonball who catches.

But make no mistake: the difference-maker in the centennial celebration of this grand ritual was Ricky Ray.

Nerves heading into a big game is a condition we can all understand. Even the Argos mild-mannered QB threw an interception on his first play of the game. “It was hard to get into a rhythm tonight,” he admitted afterward. “It was the longest game I think I’ve ever played in, between the pre-game and half-time (shows), and it was hard, just not being able to get into the normal flow of the game.”

But Ray is a player who settles, who adjusts. Always has been, dating back to his earliest days with the Edmonton Eskimos, when I watched him fight his way into a job held by a pretty competent pivot by the name of Jason Maas.

This game, as a result, quickly became tale of two QBs, which is exactly what the Argos wanted. There was Ray, loose and fluid, gunning his way down field to set up a field goal and another touchdown. And there was his counterpart, Kevin Glenn, wound so tight he looked ready to snap, squibbing easy sideline passes and—at the 43 second mark of the second quarter—heaving an interception that Argos cornerback Pacino Horne ran back for a major.

For Calgary, arguably the CFL hottest team, it was the fooball equivalent of a tire fire. Two-and-outs. Broken offensive plays. Untimely penalties. With the score 24-6, the Stamps retreated to their locker room seeking some small glimmer of hope. But they couldn’t find it.

Yes, Glenn rebounded a bit in the third quarter, putting the team into a position to score. “But if you don’t score touchdowns,” said Stamps coach John Hufnagel ruefully, “you’re going to have a hard time winning, and we had to keep settling for field goals.”

There was more to the Argos’ triumph, of course, than Ray’s serenity. Or his deadly accurate arm. Credit will got to Scott Milanovich, the Argos no-nonsense coach for constructing a multi-faceted offence, allowing Ray options he says he never had with other teams. It is also due the devastating Toronto defence, which stuffed Calgary’s one shot at a major at the one yard line.

And, of course, Kackert.

But for me, this game goes down as the one that nudges Ray into the pantheon of great CFL QBs, alongside Flutie and Cavillo and Damon Allen. Despite his 2005 nod as Grey Cup MVP (when he beat Calvillo and the Montreal Alouettes), and his resilience amid the sharp decline of the Edmonton Eskimos afterward, that level of recognition for Ray was in doubt.

He had endured the stigma of yesterday’s man before last winter’s blockbuster trade that brought him to Toronto. He arrived in a city where the future of Canadian football, never mind the Argonauts, remained in question. Over a bumpy regular season, and a better playoff season, his calm seemed to spread. He has laid those questions to rest—at least for the time being.

His performance tonight brings to mind the aforementioned legends in their primes: not the best of his career, but great in the cauldron-like conditions of Canada’s biggest annual sports gathering. Ray is a player who can carry his team, and a good many of the 53,208 people crammed into the Rogers Centre tonight could see it. They shouted their appreciation when Ray stepped onto the dais for the Cup ceremony.

Ray was reluctant to reflect on his legacy after the game, citing the years left in his career: “Hopefully when I’m done playing I’ll have time to reflect on all the memories, the great years I’ve had,” he said.

So enjoy your luck, Toronto. And make the most of the time you have left with a future legend.

Chicken nuggets: official diet of the CFL

By Emma Teitel - Saturday, November 24, 2012 at 12:28 AM - 0 Comments

Maurice Price took advantage of me…

My ignorance of CFL football, that is.

My Maclean’s editor asked me to cover the Grey Cup and the million of events that surrounded it because she said it’s “funny” when people who don’t know about sports are forced to report on them.

So I went to the Rogers Centre and waited outside the Calgary Stampeders dressing room, roster in hand, hoping to interview somebody–anybody– about anything other than football. I would ask about post-season plans, I thought. My dad was a sports writer (he wrote a book about the Argos in the ’80s) and he said a lot of the players work other jobs in the off-season. He once wrote a piece  about CFL players who work as repo men in the summertime. Maybe I’d find some repo men.

I flagged down the first muscular guy who walked out of the dressing room. He told me he was in a hurry.

“Just a few questions?” I asked .

He smiled and said ok. And then he asked the first question: “Do you know who I am?”

(If you are ever forced to cover a sport you know nothing about, bring a photo roster)

“No, I’m sorry,” I answered. His friend, another burley black guy, laughed.

“I’m the team trainer,” he said. “They come to me to get in shape for the season.”

Oh cool, I thought, I’ll ask him about their pre-game meals.

“I make them eat chicken nuggets  and hamburgers and pizza,” he said. “It’s good for your nutrients. That’s how we get so big and strong and fast.” The trainer told me chicken nuggets were actually the standard in football nutrition. He said they eat nuggets in the NFL, too: “overpriced nuggets, from McDonald’s.”

Something wasn’t right. “Come on man, just tell her who you are,” his friend said.

“All right,” said the trainer. “I’m Arjei Franklin.”

“Who’s Arjei Franklin?” I asked his friend. He’s not Arjei Franklin, said the friend. “He’s Maurice Price, the best wide receiver in the Canadian Football League.”

I googled Maurice Price. He was standing in front of me.

“I tried to tell you,” he said.

Maurice is from Orlando. He says the biggest difference between Americans and Canadians is that Canadians have “bigger heads.”

“Like physically, or mentally?” I asked him.

“Physically,” he said. “I don’t know what it is.” Either he’s been watching too much South Park or he’s right.

If we do have bigger heads that’s about all some of us have in common. Stampeders fans-easily distinguishable from Torontonians by their smiles (and of course the occasional cowboy hat) aren’t afraid to brave the elemtents. I’ve seen 15–and counting–in shorts. And one guy in a tank top. They must eat their chicken nuggets.

Canada, Land of Zero Tebows

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 11:11 PM - 0 Comments

(Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

Tim Tebow. Say what you want about the man, and you will, but he is good copy. I got into a Tebow discussion the other day on Twitter after I started wishing aloud that he would come to Edmonton and save our CFL Eskimos from the wretched, dare I say almost Rider-like, state into which they have fallen. I was not really being serious. Well, OK: maybe ten percent serious.

About a year ago our genius general manager Eric Tillman decided to risk all on one turn of pitch-and-toss and trade our longtime quarterback, Ricky Ray, for magic beans from a passing pedlar. This decision was second-, third-, and nth-guessed at the time, and it was, we now know, rabidly opposed by head coach Kavis Reed. Ray does not throw the ball very far, or in an especially conventional way, but he has supreme accuracy statistics and had won two Grey Cups in Edmonton with pretty underwhelming teams. (The once-proud Eskies have not had a 12-win season yet in this century.)

Ray was divisive, though, Lordy, not Tebow divisive. But the trade united the city in agreement that the return was disappointing, and the unfolding of the Esks’ 7-11 season emphasized this in an especially brutal way. Continue…

Toronto Argonauts to play 100th Grey Cup at home against Calgary Stampeders

By The Canadian Press - Monday, November 19, 2012 at 5:20 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – The Toronto Argonauts have a chance to celebrate the Grey Cup’s centennial on home turf this week. The Calgary Stampeders will do their best to spoil the party.

The 100th Grey Cup will be Toronto versus Calgary on Sunday at the Rogers Centre, the Argonauts’ home field.

The Argos last won a Grey Cup at home in 1952 — they lost one in Toronto in 1982 and now they’re home again in 2012 — each time exactly 30 years apart.

The Stampeders are playing in the championship game for the first time since winning it against the Montreal Alouettes in 2008. That year they upset the Als on their home turf at Olympic Stadium.

Calgary earned a berth this year by upsetting the defending champion B.C. Lions 34-29 in the CFL West final at B.C. Place Stadium, while the Argonauts advanced by stunning the Alouettes 27-20 in Montreal in the East final yesterday.

Off-season acquisition Ricky Ray powered Toronto with 399 yards passed, including a touchdown strike, as the Argonauts reached the Grey Cup for the first time since 2004, when they won their 15th title with a victory over B.C.

Stampeders quarterback Kevin Glenn threw for three touchdowns as Calgary denied the Lions a chance to repeat.

For the 33-year-old Glenn it will be his first chance to play in a Grey Cup after 12 season in the CFL. He was denied the opportunity in 2007 after he led the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to victory in the East Final but suffered a fractured arm.

That year’s Grey Cup, which the Bombers lost to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, was also in Toronto.

The last time the Stampeders faced the Argonauts in the CFL championship was in 1991 in Winnipeg, where Toronto won 36-21 with the help of Rocket Ismail. The wide receiver recorded an 87-yard touchdown on a kickoff return and was named game MVP.

Ray gains redemption, leads Argos to CFL East semifinal

By The Canadian Press - Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 10:39 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Chad Owens couldn’t have picked a better time to score his first punt return TD of the season.

Owens’s 59-yard punt return TD highlighted a record 31-point second quarter and led the Toronto Argonauts past the Edmonton Eskimos 42-26 in the East Division semifinal Sunday. Owens’ first return touchdown since October 2011 broke a 7-7 tie and provided a huge momentum shift in the contest.

“The defence fed off it, the offence started rolling,” Owens said. “The way the game was going we needed to do something and that’s the great thing about specials, we can be the eraser, we can be the cleanup crew if things aren’t going well.

“We can come out and make a play that can spark everybody and that’s what happened.”

Special teams and defence anchored the outburst — the most points scored in one quarter by one team in CFL playoff history — to delight of the Rogers Centre gathering of 25,792 with the roof closed due to the installation of camera rigging for the Grey Cup game Nov. 25.

Ricky Ray threw two touchdown passes and ran for another in the second for his first win in three games against his former team. Ray helped convert two Edmonton turnovers into 14 points in the quarter.

Ray’s 11-yard TD pass to Chad Kackert at 2:00 came after Toronto successfully challenged an end-zone interception by Edmonton’s Joe Burnett, which was overturned. That allowed the Argos to maintain possession after initially getting the ball when Ronald Flemons recovered former Argo Cory Boyd’s fumble at the Eskimos’ 27-yard line.

Marcus Ball’s 53-yard interception return to the Edmonton 29-yard line set up Ray’s 11-yard scoring strike to Maurice Mann at 9:06. Ray completed the onslaught with a seven-yard TD run at 14:59 that gave Toronto a commanding 31-7 half-time lead.

Argos head coach Scott Milanovich, who received a Gatorade shower from his players following his first playoff win, said Flemons’ fumble recovery was a turning point in the game but that Owens delivered the key play.

“The momentum started with that fumble . . . and Chad, it felt like, sent it over the top,” Milanovich said. “The sideline got electric after that.

“I think guys really started to feel good about the game.”

Ray certainly did.

“That was huge,” he said of Owens’ touchdown. “That was our first all year . . . and to get it in a game like this was a huge spark.

“He just grabbed the momentum for us.”

While happy to get the win, Milanovich didn’t feel it was deserving of a post-game shower.

“I said, ‘This isn’t the Grey Cup. This is one playoff win, it’s one of three steps we hope to take,”’ he said. “I wasn’t seriously upset but I’d like us to act like we’ve been there before even though we haven’t, I guess.”

Toronto’s second-quarter fireworks effectively quashed an impressive start to the contest by Edmonton, which outrushed Toronto 99-0 in the first. Joseph’s 11-yard TD pass to Cary Koch at 9:06 opened the scoring and capped a smart nine-play, 91-yard drive. It also marked the first time this season the Eskimos had scored a TD on their opening possession.

But Milanovich credited Ray with keeping the Argos on an even keel despite Edmonton’s early dominance.

“We couldn’t have started worse than we did,” he said. “That’s why it’s good to have a veteran quarterback that’s been in that situation and isn’t going to get rattled.

“Our defence stepped it up after that first drive and kept giving us the ball back and we had good field position basically from towards the end of the first quarter and throughout the second and were able to take advantage of it.”

Eskimos coach Kavis Reed said his team was its own worst enemy.

“It’s painful that we essentially gave up 31 points on our mistakes, on not tackling defensively,” he said. “We did not tackle very well.

“Special teams did not play very well in the second quarter. When you get down with a good football team with a lot at stake, it’s going to be hard to dig yourself out of it.”

The Eskimos stunned the CFL last December by dealing Ray, a two-time Grey Cup champion, to Toronto for journeyman quarterback Steven Jyles, Canadian kicker Grant Shaw and a 2012 first-round pick. The 10-year CFL veteran finished 23-of-30 passing for 239 yards in finally beating his former team.

“I don’t have any hard feelings,” he said. “Just losing to them twice in the regular season and not having that first win against your former team makes this one feel so much better.

“It’s kind of like getting a monkey off our back and being a playoff game makes it a little bit more special.”

Edmonton played without linebacker J.C. Sherritt. A finalist for the CFL’s top defensive player award after registering a league-record 130 tackles, Sherritt watched wearing a walking boot on his right foot.

The lopsided loss capped a season to forget for Edmonton, which entered the playoffs having lost three straight and eight of its last 10 regular-season games for a 7-11 record overall. And last weekend the club fired general manager Eric Tillman, who had been under tremendous fire in Alberta for trading Ray.

Joseph struggled in his first playoff game since leading Saskatchewan to victory in the 2007 Grey Cup game in Toronto and was replaced by youngster Matt Nichols to start the second half.

However, Joseph returned late in the third. Nichols guided Edmonton to a field goal on its first possession of the half but was carted off with a dislocated left ankle on the second, finishing 3-of-9 passing for 50 yards.

Joseph had a 16-yard TD run before finding Fred Stamps on the two-point convert at 11:08 of the fourth. He then hit Nate Coehoorn with a 39-yard touchdown pass and two-point convert to Cary Koch at 14:37 to finish 12-of-25 passing for 192 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.

Toronto travels to Olympic Stadium in Montreal for the East final next Sunday, with the winner advancing to the Grey Cup at Rogers Centre. The Alouettes won the season series 2-1 but the Argos’ lone victory was a 23-20 decision at Molson Stadium on July 27.

It will be a homecoming of sorts for Milanovich, who spent five seasons as an assistant on Montreal head coach Marc Trestman’s staff before coming to Toronto.

“They’ll be confident, they play well in that stadium, they’re rested and they too have a great quarterback,” he said. “Certainly we can’t get off to the same kind of start as we did tonight.

“This is not going to be me versus Marc or Anthony (Alouettes’ starter Anthony Calvillo) versus Ricky,” Milanovich said. “It’s going to be two football teams, it’s going to be a hard-fought, tough battle for 60 minutes.

“I think our guys are up to the challenge.”

Kackert finished with two touchdowns for Toronto. Swayze Waters added five converts, two field goals and a single.

Koch had Edmonton’s other touchdown. Shaw added a convert and field goal.

Notes: A moment of silence to commemorate Remembrance Day was part of a classy pre-game ceremony that also featured former Blue Jays star Roberto Alomar performing the opening kickoff. … The Eskimos and Argonauts were first and second in creating turnovers during the regular season, forcing 49 and 43 takeaways, respectively. … Three of Edmonton’s losses this season were by just one point.

Stampeders advance to CFL West final

By The Canadian Press - Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 10:37 PM - 0 Comments

CALGARY – Quarterback Drew Tate recovered from getting his “bell rung” to marshall the Calgary Stampeders to their first CFL playoff win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders since 1994.

Calgary’s 36-30 victory over Saskatchewan in Sunday’s West Division semifinal propels the Stampeders to the division final against the B.C. Lions. The victor in Vancouver next Sunday advances to the Grey Cup Nov. 25 in Toronto.

Tate hit Romby Bryant on a 68-yard touchdown pass with 20 seconds remaining in the semifinal. A two-point convert attempt failed, Stampeder kicker Rene Paredes booted the subsequent kickoff 90 yards and the visitors conceded a single point.

“I knew no one was going to catch him,” Tate said. “I was just hoping the ball was going to be a good ball.”

The Roughriders had taken a 30-29 lead just 32 seconds before Bryant’s heroics on a Darian Durant 24-yard throw to Gregg Carr.

Tate says he didn’t remember much after taking a late helmet-to-helmet hit from Saskatchewan’s Tearrius George early in the second quarter.

“I don’t even remember the first half,” Tate said. “I got my bell rung. All I remember is the second half.”

Tate rose to his feet slowly after the George hit. He was flattened later on the same drive by Shomari Williams, who was called for roughing the passer as George was.

Calgary’s starting quarterback remained in the game and completed 22 of 36 pass attempts for 363 yards and two touchdown throws.

In his post-game comments, Stampeder coach and general manager John Hufangel said he unaware of Tate’s mental state after the George hit. Tate insisted after the game that he wasn’t concussed.

In the East Division, the Toronto Argonauts head to Montreal and meet the Alouettes in the division final Sunday. The Argos were 42-26 winners over the Edmonton Eskimos in the semifinal.

Calgary receiver Jabari Arthur scored his first career playoff touchdown and Calgary third-string quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell finished short-yardage plays for a pair of touchdowns. Paredes was good on attempts from 50 and 40 yards.

Stampeder running back Jon Cornish, a finalist for the CFL’s most outstanding player award, finished with 109 rushing yards on 18 carries.

Kory Sheets and Carr each collected a pair of touchdown catches and Sandro DeAngelis added a field goal for the Roughriders.

Saskatchewan’s Durant was 24-for-37 for 435 yards, four touchdown throws and two interceptions.

“Darian had a phenomenal game,” Saskatchewan head coach Corey Chamblin said. “He gave us a chance to win that game.

“At the end we just had a defensive breakdown. We handed it away and that should never happen.”

Saskatchewan was a post-season stumbling block for the Stampeders in recent years, with four playoff wins over Calgary in five seasons between 2006 and 2010, and another back in 1997.

“If they were banking on history, they had another thing coming,” Calgary defensive back Keon Raymond said. “It also feels good because out here, they beat us in 2009 and 2010. I was a part of that team and it’s heartbreaking.

“It’s always good to know we can win against them at home. If we can get that monkey off our back, try and make a run, that’s who you want to go through.”

It was looking like another Roughrider post-season win at McMahon Stadium until Tate aired the ball out to Bryant.

The temperature at kickoff at McMahon was -2 C. Attendance was announced at 30,027.

The first and second halves ended with bunches of points — 14 with 52 seconds remaining in the second and 13 with 12 seconds to go in the first.

In the wild conclusion to the first half, Calgary’s Fred Bennett ran 96 yards back for a rare defensive two-point convert after Raymond blocked a Saskatchewan convert attempt. A 50-yard field goal from Paredes on the last play of the half gave the hosts a 19-16 lead.

Hufnagel announced earlier in the week that Tate would be his playoff starter, even though the Baytown, Texas, quarterback was sidelined 14 regular-season games with a shoulder dislocation and subsequent surgery on his non-throwing arm.

Backup Kevin Glenn went 9-5 in Tate’s absence. Hufnagel went with Tate because of his athleticism.

Despite his foggy mental state, he scrambled out of trouble to make plays, including a 17-yard pass to Maurice Price in the third quarter when Tate was surrounded by green and white jerseys.

The University of Iowa product went 5-for-5 in passing for 68 yards on that scoring drive in the third quarter to make it 26-16.

“He managed the game well,” Hufnagel said. “You saw some things he can do, making some plays out of nothing. We all need to play better that week and Drew is one of them.”

Calgary won some tight games this season en route to a 12-6 record and second in the division. Three ended with the opposition missing field goals on the last play. The Stampeders won another in overtime in Regina.

“How many games have we won within the last minute, clutch field goals and things like that?” Raymond asked. “That’s the kind of team we are. A team of character.

“If there’s time on the clock, we still have an opportunity and we showed that tonight.”

The Roughrider season was one of high highs and low lows. They opened this season 3-0, lost five in a row, went 5-1 and then finished on a four-game losing streak to finish 8-10.

“It’s a young team. We have to come back stronger next year,” Chamblin said. “Sometimes those lessons turn you into a veteran team.”

Good news, bad news: August 25-31, 2011

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 5, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

Manish Swarup/AP

Safe passage

Plans to build a 4,300-km pipeline between the Alberta oil sands and refineries in Texas will have “no significant” environmental impact, according to a U.S. State Department report. Although the controversial conclusion sparked a mini-protest outside the White House (a NASA scientist was among those arrested), the report confirms the obvious: America needs Canadian oil, and the Keystone XL pipeline is the safest way to get it there. The project will also create thousands of jobs on both sides of the border—an economic benefit that, unlike the environmental fears, is very real.

Tweaking social networks

Facebook beefed up its privacy settings last week, giving its 300 million users more streamlined control over who gets to see their personal photos. Britain, meanwhile, dropped a controversial proposal that would have granted police the power to arbitrarily shut down social networking sites in times of crisis. (The short-lived plan came after rioters in England used Twitter and Facebook to coordinate their mayhem.) Taken together, the decisions strike a fine but necessary balance in this age of tweets and pokes. Privacy is a right, but so is free speech.

Continue…

The choke artist who shall not be named

By Michael Friscolanti and Charlie Gillis - Monday, November 30, 2009 at 6:33 PM - 13 Comments

When a sports team chokes, the choke in question doesn’t usually require much explanation. The Boston Red Sox lost that World Series game to the Mets because Billy Buckner let a slow groundball dribble through his legs. The Buffalo Bills blew their first of four Super Bowl chances because Scott Norwood was wide right. And the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s probably would have won five straight Stanley Cups had rookie defenceman Steve Smith not passed the puck into his own net.

The 97th Grey Cup featured its own memorable choke: the underdog Saskatchewan Roughriders lost to the Montreal Alouettes by one measly point because someone wearing a green jersey was on the field when he should have been on the sidelines. But unlike Buckner and Norwood and Smith—whose gaffes were instantly obvious—we still don’t know who actually screwed up. The coaches are not saying and, to their credit, the culprit’s teammates aren’t throwing him under the bus either.

Here’s what we do know. With five seconds left on the clock and the Als down by two, Damon Duval attempted a 43-yard field goal that didn’t even come close to the uprights. But to the horror of Rider Nation, penalty flags flew as soon as the ball was snapped. Saskatchewan had 13 men on the field—one too many—and Duval was granted a do-over from ten yard closer. He didn’t miss. Alouettes 28, Riders 27. Game over.

Fingers were quickly pointed at Jason Armstead, the Rider receiver who was standing in touchdown territory when Duval missed kick number one. “It looked like somebody ran on late into the end zone,” said TSN broadcaster Chris Cuthbert. It certainly did seem strange that the Riders—desperate to block the field goal attempt—would waste a player in the end zone when an extra body would have certainly helped on the line of scrimmage. Even if the Als missed the kick and the ball traveled through the end zone, the resulting single point would not have cost the Riders the Cup. (At least one fan is convinced that Armstead is to blame. Just hours after the final whistle, some semi-literate soul altered the receiver’s Wikipedia profile to say he “was responsible for a crucial penalty during the final play of the 2009 Grey Cup” and “ultimately put the Montreal Alouettes in field goal position”).

In the locker room, Armstead proclaimed his innocence. “What kind of question is that?” he told reporters. “Come on, ask a smart question. Don’t do that. Ask a smart question.”

What he should have said is: “Check out the replay.” Because the video footage of those final, critical moments raises an interesting question: If Armstead is the goat, why was he on the field not just for the first, penalized play, but for both of Montreal’s field goal attempts?

That’s right. Look closely at TSN’s pictures of Duval’s second kick, and you’ll see Armstead still in the Roughriders’ end zone (at 1:22 of the clip, directly behind the official on the right hand side). Surely if he was supposed to be on the line of scrimmage—or off the field entirely—he would have been gone from the end zone for the Mulligan.

Yes, the Toronto Star’s Damien Cox makes a good point about the redundancy of having a returner in the end zone if conceding a single point wouldn’t have cost Saskatchewan the game. But it’s possible the Rider coaches worried that something would go wrong with their attempt to block Duval’s kick. Montreal might somehow recover the ball in the air after it had been blocked, in which case having one last man to prevent an Alouette ball-carrier from entering the end zone might have come in handy.

And look at the CFL Rulebook’s section on scoring: if the ball goes into the end zone “as a direct result of a kick from scrimmage being blocked in the field of play or goal area,” it says, and the player in possession takes a knee, the result is not single point, but a safety touch, which is worth two points. Two points would have tied the game.

Would a tipped ball that wound up in the end zone qualify as a “direct result” of a block? Hard to know. The rule was likely written for scenarios where a team is punting from deep within its own territory yet gets stuffed by defenders.

In the end, the Saskatchewan coaches might simply have made a big mistake, putting a man in the end zone when they didn’t need to. But put him there they did. Twice. Which suggests their heads fit the goat horns about as well as Armstead’s—if not nearly as well as the mystery player who stayed on the field when he was supposed to come off.

Maclean's Interview: Warren Moon

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 3 Comments

Warren Moon quarterbacked the Edmonton Eskimos to five straight Grey Cups before going on to a 17-year career in the National Football League, retiring in 2001 at the age of 44. He is the only black quarterback in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He recently published a book, Never Give Up On Your Dream.

Q: You’ve said that playing in the CFL was one of your greatest career moves, but it must have been tough showing up in 1978 after winning the Rose Bowl with the University of Washington but getting no interest from any NFL team.

A: It definitely wasn’t a goal of mine to have a great college career and then go to the CFL to play. My dream had always been to play in the National Football League. But I also looked at the CFL as a great opportunity for me to keep playing football and to develop my game. I never thought I would have as much success as early as I did in the CFL and I never thought I’d enjoy it as much as I did.

Q: A lot of people in your situation would have been bitter about being ignored by the NFL.

A: I was disappointed, but so much disappointment had happened to me even before I got to that point, like the fact that I had to go to junior college to prove that I could play quarterback before I could go to a major college. Even in high school, my sophomore coach wouldn’t let me play because he didn’t think I could play quarterback. I understood rejection early and as I got older I just accepted it a little more and said, this is the way it’s going to be. Continue…

Coupe Grey, 2008

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, November 21, 2008 at 3:29 PM - 3 Comments

Eat pigskin!

Oh, to be in the Sexy City when the Als are playing in the Grey Cup. Wait, I will be there! As a fan, not an official blogger…

Just as well, because it is sad and disturbing to see an accredited member of the press screaming obscenities at Stampeder fans, as I will no doubt do at some point this weekend (can’t help it, lived in Edmonton for seven years, Calgarians are hicks, etc, etc).

Meantime, Commissioner Mark Cohon tells us the CFL is in pretty good shape all things considered, with the notable exception of the put-a-team-Ottawa initiative, which has been put off until, er, 2011. All in all, buddy’s doing a great job, though.

So it says here, Als by five—and I don’t give a fig about the season series. They have the best QB in the league. They’ve got Ben Cahoon (aka the Big Cahoona), who can haul in a passing seagull if he wants to, never mind the damn ball. They’ve got a young phenom in Jamel Richardson. They’ve got a super-tough D to run against.

Red Horse, beware.

The Little General: 1938-2008

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 3:03 PM - 0 Comments

CFL legend Ron Lancaster has died of lung cancer at 69. As a quarterback, he was a true lion, turning the Saskatchewan Roughriders into a perennial contender and leading the team to a Grey Cup championship in 1966. As a coach in Edmonton, he was equally formidable, compiling an 83-42 record with the Eskies. He also saw Canadian football through some of its darkest days, never shrinking from a challenge: in 1998, he signed on with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats despite their chronic financial instability, and coached them into two Grey Cup games, winning in 1999.

The tributes are already popping up everywhere—many of them from people with longer memories than mine. As a former Eskies season-ticket holder, I’ll always think of Lancaster as coach who could adjust his game on the fly. A two-TD half-time lead was never secure against Edmonton, because he would read the opposition’s defence; by the third quarter, he’d have his boys back in the game. Lancaster also understood quarterbacks intuitively, having played the position. “I know how stubborn they can be,” he once remarked in an indirect reference to the ageless Danny McManus, one of many players who profited from Lancaster’s unwavering support. This may explain why Discount Dan, a QB of limited physical gifts, became one of the most prolific passers in league history. Continue…

Labour Day at last! (twang, twang)

By Charlie Gillis - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 5:17 PM - 0 Comments

And they say Saskatchewanians are inbred

**CCTED version (see comments below)

The Banjo Bowl, Saskatchewan’s annual tilt against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers , is normally worth the trip from Dauphin to Winnipeg, or the deck to the couch. This year, however, both it and its Labour Day prequel in Regina looked to be a bust. The Bombers had stink-stank-stunk all season, while the Roughriders seemed every bit the Grey Cup champs. Sure, they’d lost both head coach Kent Austin (to the U.S. college ranks) and starting quarterback Kerry Joseph (to the salary cap). But they were seriously cruising, stuffing opposing rushers and eating up ground yards like a combine harvester. If you’d roused me from my torpor in late July, I’d have told you the Bombers were sure to be the Bomb-ees in the battle Troy Westwood gave us. Better to watch the Antiques Road Show.

No more. The ground has shifted. The stars have re-aligned. The CFL funhouse has come back to life, as it always does in the fall. And if Winnipeg remains the longshot both this weekend and next, the game itself has implications for the rest of the season. Here’s why: as fans will recall, Kerry Joseph landed in Toronto after Regina decided he would cost them too much, which in turn ignited a QB controversy that almost had Bay Streeters paying attention to the CFL. Michael Bishop, a journeyman who sometimes seems capable of greatness, was supposed to be the Argos’ top pivot, having begun the previous season with an 11-1 record. Suddenly he was fighting for his job, and the soap opera dragged on all summer. Finally, last week, the Argos decided Joseph had won the bake-off. And just where did they find a home for our boy, Bish? … (remember, this is the CFL…) You got it. Saskatchewan. Continue…

Megapundit: John McWho?

By selley - Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Colby Cosh on the NFL invasion; John Ivison on immigration reform.

Welcome to silly season
Has Parliament lost its mind? Or just the people running it?

Between Vic Toews’ “politically charged” and “personally insulting” remarks about Louise Arbour and Stéphane Dion’s “rush to Conservative rescue” with his ill-timed carbon tax plan, the Toronto Star‘s James Travers believes Ottawa’s “mental machinery” has “slip[ped] out of gear.” The Commons committee that is Canadian politics is a few members short of quorum, one might say. And while Dion’s woes have been well-documented, Travers is particularly struck by Toews’ illustration of “this government’s view of Canada’s place in the world”—we’re “back on the world stage,” they constantly assure us, and yet they have no interest in a seat on the UN Security Council, they backed “the Bush administration candidate” for head of the International Organization for Migration over the Canadian candidate (Sergio Marchi, that filthy Liberal), and they dismiss anyone who doesn’t share their unequivocal support for Israel as a “disgrace.”

The Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe agrees the Tories desperately need to “get their mojo back,” but she argues that none of these scandals, affairs, peccadilloes and contretemps would be so serious if the government hadn’t managed to “run out of governing projects” at precisely the time “Canada is experiencing serious economic challenges.” If no new “governing projects” are forthcoming, however, she suggests adding some “neglected players” to the Cabinet lineup—Diane Ablonczy, perhaps, or James Moore—to soften the focus on Harper’s disastrous “deny everything and evade the media” tactics.

Continue…

Weekend Notes (Vol. 1, No. 19)

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 2:57 AM - 0 Comments

In the print edition this week there are two pages under this byline on the enigmatic Peter Van Loan, thus marking the 376th time I’ve referred to the government House leader in print in my short time with this magazine. This time though there’s further commentary from Ralph Goodale, Michael Ignatieff, historian Ned Franks (who confesses he can’t watch QP anymore) and Senator David Smith.

It is perhaps an under-reported fact that Mr. Van Loan and the Senator, the party stalwart presently charged with running the next Liberal campaign, go back a ways and remain good friends—Senator Smith is quite sure he was the only Liberal at the House leader’s wedding not so long ago.

That there isn’t yet a wild-eyed conspiracy theory about the close association between the Prime Minister’s right-hand man and one of Mr. Dion’s primary election advisors is, suffice it to say, somewhat disappointing. Surely some enterprising blogger should have connected the dots by now. For shame. Continue…

Small Balls: Monday June 9, 2008

By Charlie Gillis - Monday, June 9, 2008 at 12:58 PM - 0 Comments

La première étoile: Leon Powe. Forget Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. The Boston Celtics benchwarmer was the difference in Game 2 of the NBA Finals last night, dropping 21 points in only 15 minutes of floor time. His dunk in the final seconds of the third quarter was the highlight of the night (nice pass, Rajon Rondo). It was almost as pretty as this one a few seconds earlier. Even if you hate basketball, you can’t help but cheer for a player—and a person—like Leon Powe.

Two minutes for … Overplaying your hand. Sounds like the CFL thinks it doesn’t need an operating agreement with the NFL. Reports say the CFL has ditched talks about a working agreement with the NFL as a “sign of strength” because many CFL owners are cheesed off about the NFL playing some games in Toronto over the next few years. Perhaps somebody should remind those owners that the NFL does not need anybody’s permission to come to Canada. If the CFL wants to protect its weaker franchises, the best place to do that is at a bargaining table. Continue…