120 Days until Calgary and SMU

120 Days Until Calgary vs SMU

This year’s Uteck Bowl, the CIS football national semi final, will pit the Can West champions versus the AUS champions at Huskies Stadium in Halifax. The date is November 21, and in the land of Husky nation, anticipation is already building.

Saint Mary’s will be favoured to win another AUS title. After a two year hiatus a few years ago, the Huskies have reclaimed their place as the team to beat in the maritimes.

Out west, the Calgary Dinos were conference champions last season before being hammered by Laval in the Uteck Bowl played in Quebec City. A year older and wiser, the Dinos should be in a good position to win the Can West again.

If all goes as expectd (although getting through Manitoba, Alberta, and Regina is much harder than Acadia and Mount Allison), the Calgary Dinos will travel to Halifax to face the Saint Mary’s Huskies in what should be the most highly touted and anticipated Uteck Bowl in years.

Why?

Well, not because of any rivalry built on the field. Even the most diehard of Huskies faithful

would be hard pressed to recall a football game between these two teams.

This game will be discussed, analyzed, and hyped for two very significant things that happened off the football field.

First, the Head Coach of the Calgary Dinos is none other than Blake Nill. Nill was the boss of the Huskies from 1998 - 2005. During his tenure at SMU the school won 6 straight AUS championships, 4 Atlantic Bowl/Uteck Bowls, and back to back national championships, 4 AUS coach of the year awards, and a CIS coach of the year award in 1999.

Nill left the program to coach in his hometown of Calgary. The Dinos were a disaster when Nill arrived, three seasons later they were conference champions. They lost to Laval in the national semi final in a game that was close for about 2 minutes. The Dinos were young and Laval was the best team in the country, playing in their home stadium where 16000 fans dressed in red scream the entire game.

Nill expects his Dinos team to make another trip to Laval; this time in the national championship game.

Standing in the way will be the Saint Mary’s Huskies, coached by Nill’s friend and former offensive assistant at SMU, Steve Sumarah. During their years on the sidelines of Huskies stadium, Nill and Sumarah were a perfect team. Nill led the defence, while Sumarah mapped out the offence.

When Nill left for Calgary, Sumarah was named his replacement. After three seasons, Sumarah is beginning to build an impressive resume himself. Back to back AUS championships, a trip to the national championship game, and 2 AUS coach of the year awards.

The return of Blake Nill to Huskies stadium and the classic matchup of mentor vs student would be enough drama to heighten interest and sell tickets. But there is another, maybe more significant reason for a huge build up to this game.

Last January, Huskies star quarterback and former Hec Creighton trophy winner, (the award given to the best player in the country), Eric Glavic, announced he would be transferring from Saint Mary’s.

Where would he be going?

The University of Calgary.

By the time the media found out, Coach Sumarah had been told a few weeks prior by Glavic of his decision to play at Calgary. He would go west to play for the man who recruited him east just three years ago.

To his credit, Sumarah has taken the high road when broached on the subject. He says it’s disappointing but holds no grudges against Glavic or Nill, and that the team is ready to move forward.

However, Glavic’s departure has to be considered a blow to the Huskies chances of winning a national championship. Finally fully recovered from an injury that kept him out of the national championship game in 2007, and almost all of last season, Glavic will probably be most dynamic pivot in the game.

For Sumarah, a guy who loves the offensive side of the ball, the loss of a player of Glavic’s skill and creativity has to be heartbreaking.

These subplots could make for a very intriguing Uteck Bowl that should get a lot of attention across Canada.

So will we see the Huskies and Dinos on November 21st? Blake Nill and Steve Sumarrah sharing the same sideline once again, Eric Glavic scrambling around Huskies Stadium in a red Dino’s uniform.

This time tomorrow we’ll only have 119 days until we find out.

MLB All Star Game and CFL Misses Great Opporunity.

I love the Major League Baseball All Star game. Sure, it’s a bunch of millionaires playing an irrelevant game, regardless of Bud Selig’s attempt to heighten interest by giving home field advantage in the World Series to the winning league. The American League wins every year anyway.

Plus, Interleague play and free agency has watered down the importance of the classic substantially. I’ll admit, as the game ventures on into the later innings I tend to lose interest. I begin flicking around to the news and Seinfeld reruns. This past Tuesday night it was the Watchmen graphic novel on Space that garnered more of my attention as baseball’s all stars battled into the night.

You see, it’s the first 2 innings of the game that glues me to the television screen. On what other stage could you find the two best pitchers in the game dealing to baseball’s greatest and most revered hitters?

Last night the top of the 1st inning featured San Francisco Giants fire-baller, Tim Lincecum, pitching to a who’s who of American League talent. Lincecum is the reigning National League Cy Young award winner with a 10-2 record and three of the most dominant pitches in baseball.

First up...Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners. Ichiro has 1900 hits since he entered the league in 2001. That’s about 220 hits a year. This year he’s batting .362.

Batting second: Derek Jeter. Jeter is probably the greatest winner of our generation. 4 World Series titles; that incredible play against Oakland in 2002; crashing into the wall and flying backwards into the seats of old Yankee Stadium to catch a foul ball vs Boston. Jeter may go down as the most recognizable baseball name of the past 15 years.

Batting third.. from the Minnesota Twins..Joe Mauer! Mauer is already on pace to be the greatest catcher of all time. This year he’s hitting .371!

After all that, comes to the plate Mark Texeira, Jason Bay, Josh Hamilton, Michael Young, and the 8th place hitter, Aaron Hill. The Blue Jay`s second baseman has 20 home runs and 60 rbi’s at the all star break! He wouldn`t even be starting had Dustin Pedroia not dropped out due to personal reasons.

Somehow, Lincecum only gives up 2 runs, which could be attributed to an error by hometown favourite Albert Pujols (although, Pujols made about 4 stellar defensive plays after).

Pitching for the American League? None other than the greatest pitcher in baseball, Toronto’s Roy “Doc” Halladay. Halladay is 10-3 and still the most durable and reliable pitcher in the game.

Doc would set down in order; Hanley Ramirez, the best shortstop in the game. Chase Utley, the best second baseman in the National League, and Albert Pujols, the best player in baseball.

Wow.

It wasn’t until the 2nd inning when Yadier Molina, the weakest hitter in both lineups, had the big hit against Halladay to drive in a run. Prince Fielder, the home run derby champ from the night before, then drove in 2 runs with a double to give the NL a lead they would eventually relinquish.

The game played out from there and, of course, the AL won again. But watching two incredible pitching talents go pitch for pitch with that bevy of pure hitting talent is what make the MLB all star game so great, and so much better than the all star games of the other major professional sports.

It doesn`t hurt that baseball is still primarily divided by two leagues that feature two very distinct and different ways of playing the game. That is why it is essential that the American League never change the designated hitter rule, and why the National League never adopt it.

CFL Misses Great Opportunity

As a CFL fan, I find it frustrating that the league brass does not recognize it`s opportunity to promote the game. For example, not scheduling games the night after the MLB all star game. As much as I love the all star game, I loathe the night after.

I call it Black Wednesday.

It is the only single day of the year when there is absolutely not one game of interest being played anywhere in Canada or the United States.

Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

If I was the commissioner of the CFL, I would schedule a double header featuring teams with traditional rivalries, on the night after baseball`s midsummer classic. Games that get CFL fans excited.

With absolutely nothing else on, sports starved fans who don`t traditionally watch the CFL, may actually sit down and spend a couple of hours watching Canadian professional football. They may even like what they see.

If the CFL is ever going to grow, they have to start taking advantage of these types of chances to give the league greater exposure.

Dysfunctional Mike Kelly Press Conference
If you`re a fan of watching football coaches melt down in front of the media (see Denis Green and Jim Mora), make sure you catch Mike Kelly, head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, answer questions about one of his staff members getting caught spying on a Hamilton Tiger Cats practice. Kelly may find himself on TSN Top 10 lists for years to come.

Below is the transcript from the Winnipeg Free Press.

A look at the exchange between Bomber head coach and the media in his daily press conference on Wednesday, just after Director of Football Operations Ross Hodgkinson answered questions about their scout being ejected from Ticat practice:

Kelly (just after walking in with a grin on his face): “So, a whole pile of people decided to get paid today, huh? Lazy asses. Something happens and then you show up, right? OK.

Media: So something’s happened?

Kelly (pretending to be breathlessly interested): What? I don’t know. Tell me! Quick!

Media: Did you see anybody taking notes or drawing diagrams in the stands?

Kelly: Yeah, there was a group of Kindergartners out there and they had all their Crayolas and were writing feverishly.

Media: Did you have them escorted from the building?

Kelly: No, I like Kindergartners.

Media: Were you aware of the scout’s plans in Hamilton?

Kelly: Non issue. It’s handled internally. I’ve got nothing to say.

Media: It’s an issue. The CFL has sent a directive out, so...

Kelly: It’s a non-issue to me... a non-issue to me.

Media: The Tiger-Cats are accusing you of cheating. That’s not an issue, coach?

Kelly: I don’t care what anybody has to say about it. It’s a non-issue, it’s been handled internally and I’m not talking about it.

Media: You constantly tell us you’re the head of the football operations and responsible for everything.

Kelly: Right. Non-issue. Handled internally. I’m not talking about it. Now, what don’t we understand about that, OK?

Media: It seems a contradiction...

Kelly: Non-issue, handled internally. Not talking about it. There we go, we’re done. Next question.

Media: You mean handled internally with meetings...

Kelly: Do you understand what ‘internally’ means? It’s been handled internally. I’m not talking about it. It’s over with. Move on. Next question.

Media: What’s the normal procedure for pre-scouting, the relationship with your scouts, the normal operating procedure kinda thing for scouting a game?

Kelly: Sure, you tell me what ‘normal operating procedure’ is and then we’ll go from there. Next question?

Media: On a normal week would you have scouts at a practice...

Kelly: Did you not listen to anything I said. I’m not talking about this. It’s a non issue. It’s over with. It’s done. Now, unless you have something else to say I’m not talking about it. So you can take that and leave the building. It’s that easy. Do we all understand each other now? Good. Next question. Got nothing to say? Enjoy your day fellas, we’ll see you at Ivor Wynne Stadium.

Remembering Mike Bossy

I was recently asked which athlete or former athlete I would interview if I was given the choice. The answer came easy to me; Michael Bossy.

Mike Bosy won 4 stanley cups. He once scored 50 goals in 50 games. He scored over 50 goals every year of his career accept his last. He scored over 60 goals 5 times! Due to chronic back pain, he had to retire a young man in 1987 after only 10 years in the league.

Mike Bossy was my idol growing up in New Brunswick. When Bossy would take the ice during the New York Islanders cup run in the early eighties, I would jump off the couch and stand in front of the Television with hands on knees like a focused football coach. The only stick I would use was the Titan with Mike Bossy’s signature, while every other kid used the Wayne Gretzky model. I even insisted playing right wing, even though I was a left hand shot, because Mike Bossy was a right winger.

I’d love to find out if Mike Bossy is bitter for having his career cut short due to back injuries, incurred by taking so many cheap shots from defencemen in front of the net. A multiple Lady Byng Trophy winner, I want to find out what his thoughts are on fighting in the game of hockey, especially with the death of Don Sanderson and the increased debate on the role of fighting in hockey this year. I would ask him his philosophy on goal scoring. Bossy was one of the greatest snipers in the history of the game, but I don’t think anyone has ever asked him what made him such a great scorer.

Finally, I want to know if he has ever struggled since retiring in the late eighties. He currently has a job in the front office with the Islanders, but for years prior, the Boss was left to his own devices. I remember seeing an interview with him one time where he was a representative for a potato chip company in Quebec. There was the Hall of Famer, stacking chip shelves in a Quebec corner store. I want to know if he is resentful for the game turning its back on him, after forcing him to retire far too soon.

Bossy was a gentleman, and the most feared pure sniper of his era. A stanley cup champion who was taken from the game far before his time.

So here's to the Boss. We haven;t seen a goal scorer like him since his retirement, and we may never.

Roger Federer: The Greatest Tennis Player Of All Time.

Yesterday was an annual tradition at the Mclean household, as it is in homes across the planet.
It was breakfast at Wimbledon, and in what has become another annual tradition, it featured Roger Federer.

It was not a re-match of last year’s epic final with Rafael Nadal, Nadal missed the tournament due to a knee injury. No yesterday we welcomed back an old friend to the grass courts in London, American Andy Roddick, the new and improved Andy Roddick so were told. Although many sports writers had given Roddick a punchers chance of keeping Roger Federer from winning his 15th grand slam title, Roddick did push the French Open champion to 5 sets, including a 30 game masterpiece, culminating with Federer’s first break of the day to give the Fed his record breaking grand slam championship.

Roddick did show a great deal of improvement in his game and gained a lot of respect with his gritty effort, but in the end, the storyline of the day was focused on the champion.

Roger Federer: The greatest tennis player of all time.

How did he get there?

Well on this day he served up 50 aces.

That’s not a misprint.

50 aces!

Many of them at the most pivotal of times, in the first several sets when it appeared that Roddick just might have Federer on the ropes. Then when the 5th set went to extra games, Federer would string together 2 or 3 aces in a row with uncanny pinpoint control. As the match turned 4 hours long and Federer cruised through his service games, Roddick’s service began to fade a touch as he desperately held on against a determined Federer. It was just a matter of time, and as the shadows slowly crept over the Main Court at Wimbledon, they seemed to be taking the shape of a starving Federer, about to swallow up Roddick, his latest victim.

When it was done, the acclamations began. As Pete Sampras watched from the front row, Federer was crowned Wimbledon champion and anointed as the greatest player in history. Could anyone argue? I’m sure someone much smarter than I could raise some interesting debate points. But I’m happy and content to join the masses in feeling content that Federer is the man.

How can you not like this guy?

Federer has the broadest skill set of any player to ever compete on tour. He hits more shots better than anyone else and at the most critical of times. What’s more, he knows exactly when to use each one.

His physical fitness is superior to every other player on tour. It’s enough that he has more skill, but he’s also in better shape. That advanced conditioning was well on display yesterday as he danced around backhands and ran down balls at the net the entire match, while Roddick’s slow feet began to fail him in the latter stages.

Federer loves tennis. I’m sure they all love tennis, otherwise they would not be playing at that level. But Federer really, really, loves Tennis. Furthermore he loves to compete. He’s determined to win every match he plays. When he lost to Nadal in the final of the Australian Open, he literally broke down on the court during the awards ceremony. This guy has heart.

Federer is painfully humble. He is gracious in victory and defeat. Sure he wore a jacket yesterday with an “RF” logo and the number 15 on the back, but he does not think he is bigger than the game, and you could see that he genuinely felt empathy for Roddick’s pain, having beaten him for the 19th time (mind you, Andy still gets to head back to America with his wife; SI swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker).

Finally, Roger seems like a good guy. I don’t know Federer, maybe he is a jerk. But he seems like a nice man. He has a wife, a child on the way, and he is never in the headlines for wrong reasons.

So let the debate begin and awake the ghosts of tennis past; Borg, Sampras, Laver.
I’ll take Roger against any of them. You could throw in Andy Roddick and make Federer play the doubles lines and I’ll still take my chances with the “Fed”.

And if you’re getting tired of hearing about Federer, well the US Open is only about 7 weeks away, and he’s going to win that too.

What will the headline read on that fateful Sunday?

"The Fed wins sweet sixteen."

Holy Dieter Brock! The CFL is Back!

The CFL is Back! Is Anybody Watching

Trying to determine how many maritimers actually watch the Canadian Football League is a puzzling thing. I know most of my friends who are avid sports enthusiasts don't watch it. You don't hear a lot of people talking about it and the league certainly does not get a great deal of local media attention. On my radio show for CKDU I have a local pundit for all the major sports but I've never thought of getting a CFL "insider", and even if I tried I don't know who I would get. Honestly I don't know anyone who knows more about the CFL than I do.

I've always watched the CFL, even when I was a kid. I'm not one of those die hard fans who animantly maintain that it's a better game to watch than the NFL. Given a choice, I would watch an NFL or NCAA game before any CFL game outside of the Grey Cup. I'd even prefer a Huskies game on Cable 10.

But I'll sit in my living room with a CFL game on the idiot box while I putter away at tasks. As I'm writing this I'm listening to the Eskimos/Blue Bombers game ( a pretty dreadful affair so far ) from Edmonton's massive Commonwealth Stadium, a facility far too big for a CFL team to call home. When the Alouettes are playing I'll pay a little more attention and cheer a little. It's also nice to get home from work and fall asleep while watching a game in Vancouver (also at an oversized stadium...and indoors at that!)

The CFL benefits greatly from it's schedule, and the canadian weather. The season begins in the summer and plays the first 80 percent of its game through September. This is good for sports starved fans who do not watch any baseball. The CFL provides something to watch to help fill the void before the NFL returns. Sure you may not know any of the players, the scores don't make any sense (the Edm/Winn game is tied 9-9 right now), and the players are really small playing on a field that's way too big. But hey, it's football! It's something....isn't it?
Then the fall comes and the league begins playoffs and they start playing some classic canadian cold weather games. Face it. If the Giants are beating the tar out of the Cincinatti Bengals and the Patriots are killing the Jets, you'll sit back and watch the Western Semi Final between Calgary and Saskatchewan in a november snow storm. It's fun! Of course the game is a puntfest...two downs-punt, two downs-punt. But it's fun to watch guys playing football in horrible weather in front of thousands of hearty canadians cheering with watermelons on their head and drinking Tim Hortons. It's a part of who we are.

Well, maybe not maritimers. But if they ever were to put a CFL team in Halifax I bet you'd go to at least 1 game. So would a lot of other people. Football games are events. No other sport is able to market itself as a weekend long celebration like football. At the very least, the canadian game is unique. The rules may have been created by a couple of drunken fraternity brothers on the campus of U of T sometime at the turn of the century for all we know, but it is unique.

No Yards.

Rouges.

Racing stripes on the football.

25 yard End zones!!'

No wonder it's the only football that Kramer watches.

If you care, I'll have more on the CFL in future updates, including what the league has to do to stay successful (yes, the CFL is actually a success in every city except Toronto and Hamilton), and what teams are the teams to beat. Which is another neat thing about the league; heading into the season nobody knows who is good and who is bad. Well, except for Hamilton. Everybody knows they'll be comically bad.

CFL Notes

Classic examples of how good and bad the league can be in the first week. Last night's re-match of last year's Grey Cup between Montreal and Calgary was a great game. Tonight's game with Edmonton and Winnipeg is awful. When the offences are clicking the CFL can be a lot of fun to watch. But when the offences are stagnant, watching the CFL is painful....Jesse Lumsden, making his debut for the Eskimos, was injured on his first play in green and gold and taken to a local hospital. Lumsden was a CIS posterboy several years ago and nearly made the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL after his career at Mcmaster. He spent the last 2 seasons playing in Hamilton and became the symbol of all the dissapointment fans feel in Hamilton, as he was ravished with injuries.......Speaking of horrible games, last night's contest between Toronto and Hamilton featured two teams that do not look good at all. Toronto prevailed 30-17. Looks like it will be Montreal again in the East and 4 great teams battling it out in the west.