Football Finale

So did you watch the Grey Cup game? Ya, neither did I.

Congratulations to the Saskatchewan Roughriders for winning their first title in however-many years, but honestly, we don’t care. The battle of the Prairies sounds about as boring as Bob Cole’s voice.

I watched the highlights of this match, and maybe it was an entertaining showing by both teams, but who am I to judge since I didn’t even watch it, right? Let’s ask those who actually tuned in to the game. Anyone?

Maybe besides the Toronto fans, who showed up to watch Lenny Kravitz perform, and of course, the loyal supporters of the competing squads, there wasn’t much generated interest. It just wasn’t appealing.

Call me bitter, call me sour, it doesn’t matter. A majority of CFL fans will tell you that they would prefer to watch the league’s best B.C. Lions take on the “supposed” home team, Toronto Argonauts. But unfortunately, both teams were eliminated last week in the Conference finals. 

So here we have it, this Sunday, the Grey Cup final. The CFL Glory.

And Canadians across the country were presented with a Winnipeg – Saskatchewan match-up. Maybe I’m not the right person to say it, but it seemed like just another ticker headline. 

Still on the subject of football, I was really impressed while watching the Kansas City Chiefs game today. I don’t know why but I’ve always been a big fan of K.C.’s running backs and Kolby Smith was no exception. Priest Holmes has always been one of my favourites and Larry Johnson is unbelievable as well. Smith had a great game today, and scored two TDs while producing some potential highlight reel runs.

Nice to at least see some form of good football today. 

Finally, One More Week Left.

I tried to give the CFL a chance this year.

It failed.

Yes, the rules can produce an astoundingly exciting game, but when a team isn’t playing particularly well the results can be disastrous. The end game sequence especially.

The game’s final three minutes can draw comparisons to a basketball game. There’s simply no conceivable way to run down the clock. Of course you can run the ball twice and force the other team to use two timeouts but that doesn’t offer much of a chance towards getting a first down.

I just can’t stand orange penalty flags or yellow coach’s challenge flags. I hate no yards penalties and calling delay of game, a “time clock violation“.

There’s no use for the wider field or the twelfth man and ditto for 20-yard endzones.

If I have to hear another announcer talk about two and outs … let’s say I’m welcoming the apocalypse.

This part isn’t exclusively to the CFL or even just to football but if another sports analyst uses something that rhymes for his keys to the game I’m going to snap.

Then I’ll never have to write about this disgrace of a game again.

What’s the point of scoring a single point? (when it isn’t the PAT)

Common Theme in Sports This Week?

There seems to be a recurring theme in the sporting world this week.

Trash talking.  Seems to be what all the members of the sports media want to talk about and all that the athletes and fans want to do to their opponents or rivals.

The latest case of talkin’ smack happened in Toronto, where Argos linebacker Kevin Eiben came out in a Winnipeg newspaper and stated that the Blue Bombers offence wouldn’t score more than 10 points against the Argo’s stingy defence.  That is the ultimate beak.  Talking like that makes for good headlines and an incredible tension going into the game.  If you’re from Winnipeg or a Winnipeg player, you say “wow, that mo**f**r, he wants to talk like that then we’ll throw it right back in his face.”  If you’re an Argo or an Argo fan, you might say “wow, he seems confident, but are you sure you want to awake the sleeping giant?”

Let’s face it.  Reading quotes in the paper or seeing clips on television of a player just come out to the media and outright belittle the other team is awesome because it’s entertaining.  That’s what makes sports and question period in Parliament so interesting. 

The only problem with talkin’ smack is backing it up.  Talking the talk is one thing and if you can’t do it, well then sports and politics may not be for you.  But if someone talks some trash, they better be willing and able to back it up, otherwise they look like a fool.

Blue Bombers quarterback Kevin Glenn declined to comment on what Eiben said the other day.  Okay, so it’s not nearly as entertaining as it could’ve been had Glenn slung some mud back in Eiben’s face, but it was smart. 

Here’s why.  Had Glenn commented and then rifled back some smack of his own and then gone out on Sunday and been dismantled by the Argos defence, then he would like a fool.  A complete and utter fool.  If he keeps his mouth shut and let’s his play on the field do all the talking and absolutly stomps on Eiben on the scoreboard, then he looks like a focused, determined hero.

So he didn’t bark back.  We in the media were a little upset he didn’t, because then we could write article after article on the drama that is said in the dressing room leading into the game, ultimately our job.

The one good thing about the Lions and Roughriders not beaking off to each other is that they seem quite focused to do their talking on the field, the way it should be.  These are two titans were the two best teams in the CFL this year, so why lip off each other.  It would make for an interesting story line into the game, but the fact that it’s Saskatchewan and their mascot Gainer the freaking Gopher and 98% of all Saskatchewan-born-residents-turned-Vancouverites are still part of Roughrider Nation is story enough.

Ahh trash talking.  The most entertaining aspect of sports leading up to a big game.  Hopefully for Kevin Eiben and the rest of the Pinball Clemons-led Argos, they can back it up.

Sunday To Be Vancouver’s Best or Worst Day Ever

Sunday will be the best or worst day of 2007 in Vancouver.

The Lions are taking on those peskie Saskatchewan Roughriders and the rest of the wheat farmer bunch that make up ‘Rider Nation’ to move onto the 2007 Grey Cup. The Canucks are taking on the Minnesota Wild shortly after the Lions game in another key Northwestern Division contest, which will prove to be a muck-and-grind kind of game. The Giants are taking on the Kelowna Rockets at the Pacific Coliseum on Sunday as well in WHL action.

This weekend, as mentioned at the beginning of this blog, can go one of two ways. Excellent or disasterous.

Needless to say, if the Lions lose, then Vancouver will be an interesting place as over 50,000 people are expected to be at the Lions game. Don’t kid yourself, more than 10,000 people (be them Saskatchewan or B.C. fans) will be upset and that should make for an interesting four hours while the Canucks do battle.

The Canucks, coming off of a hard-fought, 1-0 shoot-out loss to the Edmonton Oilers, will be determined to beat the Wild. Having said that, Minnesota has had the Canucks number the past few years and it is quite possible the Canucks will lose to the Wild. Could you imagine going 0-2 in the first two, big games of Sunday? This city would go nuts and there would be an awful lot of angry, drunk Vancouverites. Combine that with hated Saskatchewan fans and Minnesota Wild fans then we have the makings for a riot. God forbid.

The Giants, who are arguably the best team in the Canadian Hockey League, will defeat Kelowna. The Giants are coming off of an impressive victory in Kamloops and the Rockets aren’t nearly the team of the early part of the decade. Only problem is that the Giants won’t garner a huge crowd because almost everybody will be downtown.

Just a side note from the sports. Beer sales at every restaurant, pub, bar and liquor store promise to rise 1000 per cent from last Sunday and drunkeness and rowdyness will be at an all time high. Bring it on!

But let’s put a different spin, a more celebratory spin on this Sunday coming up.

It’s a huge weekend. This weekend promises to be a good weekend for sports in Vancouver. The last time there were over 50,000 people in B.C. Place for a Lions game was against Saskatchewan in 2004. The Lions won in overtime on a field goal, while now Lions kicker Paul McCallum missed an 18-yard field goal attempt to give Saskatchewan the lead in the overtime. The game notes aside, the atmosphere in that stadium on that day was incredible. Nothing compares to 50,000 fans making as much noise as humanly possible for a football game. 50,000 people doing the wave is pretty sweet too.

This weekend has the potential to be the greatest sports weekend in the City of Vancouver … unless the Canucks win the Stanley Cup, but that might not happen for a good, long time.

West Division Championship Preview: Lions and Roughriders

Once again, it’s going to be the Roughriders from Saskatchewan doing battle against the B.C. Lions for the right to represent the CFL’s West Division in the Grey Cup.

Getting sick of the rivalry already? Ha ha, of course not!

Being a west coast team, the Lions don’t really have a geographical rivalry so we had to adopt the Saskatchewan Roughriders as our rival team.

After all, 98 per cent of all Saskatchewan born residents move to B.C. to pursue something other than wheat farming and other things that revolve around wheat.

Enough joking around. This Sunday, the two most dominant teams in the CFL will do battle for the West Division Championship and what a game it promises to be. Both teams have a dynamic offence and the Roughriders have been the beneficiary of the cast-aways from the now defunked Ottawa Renegade franchise, as well as beleaguered players from the CFL’s worst team, the Hamilton Tigercats.

Riders quarterback, Kerry Joseph, has been the most improved of all pivots that have come through the CFL in the past five seasons and was rewarded for his efforts by being named the West Division’s nominee for Most Outstanding Player. Not only has Joseph impoved as an individual player, he has made others around him better.

Even with the injury to their top receiver, Matt Dominguez, Joseph found new targets like Andy Fantuz and D.J. Flick and on top of that, the star quarterback rushed for over 730 yards (737) and ran the ball in for 13 touchdowns.

So not only can Joseph hurt you through the air, but he can hurt you on the ground as well. The Lions defence is going to have to work for every stop against the Roughriders, who embarrassed B.C. on home turf in August, handing down a 21-9 defeat to a, at-the-time, struggling opponent.

The Lions, to their credit, have been the best team in the CFL for about 85 per cent of the season. As Roughriders general manager Eric Tillman said on TEAM 1040 yesterday, “good teams always find a way to win.”

The Lions did just that for most of the season.

Having said that, don’t mistake finding a way to win with pure luck. Luck had little or nothing to do with how the Lions won games this year.

It can’t be luck when the third-string quarterback, Jarious Jackson, can come in midway through the season and find a way to lead a highly touted offence that includes the likes of Joe Smith, Geroy Simon and Regina native, Jason Clermont.

Like the Riders, the Lions can hurt you through the air and on the ground. Joe Smith exposed many defenses this season and led the CFL in rushing yards, running for over 1,500 yards on the season.

But offence beware. As good as both teams are when it comes to putting up points, both teams are equally effective when it comes to keeping the other team off the scoreboard.

For Sunday, count on the following.

A large group of green coloured Roughrider fans, otherwise known as Rider Nation, will be attending. There will be good football, big hits and another close finish as these two titans will go head-to-head for the right to go to the Grey Cup in Toronto.

Lions The Top of the Food Chain.

The B.C. Lions can inch closer towards something that, at times this season, looked as improbable as nice weather in October.

That goal that looked seemingly out of reach in August was to win the West Division and secure home field advantage in the Western Championship on November 17th.

Two losses in a row to division rival Saskatchewan in B.C. Place on Aug. 2 and a loss to the best team in the East, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (22-21) had many around the city of Vancouver questioning the character of this football club, and a home field playoff berth looked very much in question during the middle of summer.

Dave Dickenson had been sidelined since July 13 with a concussion after getting crunched by Saskatchewan’s Fred Perry and quarterback number two Buck Pierce had been sidelined with a shoulder injury. This left the Lions nation to get their first real look at Jarious Jackson, the big third-string quarterback who had seen most of his CFL playing time on short-yardage situations.

Well, let’s say that the first few games for Jackson weren’t his best. In the 21-9 loss to Saskatchewan, Jackson threw three interceptions in the fourth quarter and couldn’t establish much of an offence through the entire game.

But a lot has changed since the middle of August. The Lions have roared their way back to the top of the CFL food chain on the heels of an 11-3-1 record and some gutsy efforts that included a topsy-turvy victory last weekend against the fourth place Edmonton Eskimos, 24-18.

But what brought this change on? Surely, Wally Buono does not have a designated light switch that he just decided to flip on one day in the Lions dressing room in B.C. Place Stadium. Since the loss to Winnipeg in August, the Lions offence has looked as dynamic as it has been in the past five years, and it’s been led by third-stringer Jackson.

Jackson has kept it simple though. It sounds cliche, but that’s really what he has been doing. He has been making smarter decisions and reading the defence better than he was when he first took over from Pierce and Dickenson. Every receiver is seeing the ball, which includes more passes to Geroy Simon, the team’s biggest playmaker.

Not only has the Lions passing game been solid, the running game has been harder to stop than a Dodge pickup truck on the Trans Canada Highway. Joe Smith and Ian Smart have done a remarkable job splitting the duties at running-back and has given the running game a new look that includes sheer power in Smith, and quickness and finesse in Smart.

When you have a solid passing game and a deceptive running game, it can cause major problems for defences around the league.

Enough offence. The defence ain’t bad either. In fact, if it weren’t for the Lions defence in the late stages against the Eskimos, B.C. may have been handed their fourth loss of the season. But, with the peskie Eskies knocking on the Lions den, the defence put up the wall and forced numerous incompletion with Edmonton in prime scoring position.

A stifling defence and a powerful offence can be a lethal combination and the Lions have that, which is why they have been on a tear for the past month and which is why they will no doubt be a strong candidate to repeat as Grey Cup Champions.

Dave Dickenson to Dress Saturday Vs. Esks

What is Dave Dickenson trying to pull, and how selfish can he be?

The Leo’s offense is clicking, and clicking better and more efficiently than it was early in the season when Dickenson was under center, and was repeatedly pulled in favour of Buck Pierce.

Dickenson is obviously announcing that he’s ready to dress because in his mind, he’ll most likely play. News flash, Dave. Jarious Jackson is playing twice as well as Dickenson was earlier in the season, and has finally gotten reigning league MVP slotback Geroy Simon back into his usual form.

With Jackson running the Lions’ offense, he brings a stronger arm, a more mobile presence, and is on the right page with his receiving core.

Going into week 16, the Lions own top spot in the league and have basically wrapped up their chance to host their fourth straight western conference final, so why would Buono even consider playing Double D down the stretch?

All it will do is mess around with the chemistry of receivers and even league rushing leader Joe Smith.

Jarious Jackson has the offense in sync right now – and has two very capable backups in Dickenson and Pierce – and this situation is giving the Lions the best chance to win back-to-back Grey Cups.

We all know how smart Wally Buono is, but we also all know how his relationship is with Dave, which was shown when he started Double D over league MVP Casey Printers in the Grey Cup three years ago, which costed B.C that championship.

Let’s hope he doesn’t make that mistake again, because with this team the way it is, it doesn’t look like there is a team in the CFL that can beat them, especially when the dome is rockin’ with 55,000 strong come conference final time.

It’s Just One Of Those Saturday’s

Do you ever have one of those Saturday’s where you just get up out of bed at the crack of noon, walk sorely to the couch in the television room, turn on the T.V. and realize that today is going to be a great day for watching sports?

Well, if you haven’t had one of those days in a while than you are in luck, my friends.

Not only is there a load of sports on the tube, but many of the games being played today have playoff implications. The New York Yankees are trying to keep pace with the Boston Red Sox in the American League East, as they take on the Toronto Blue Jays in the second game of a four-game series. The Jays have been officially eliminated from the playoff race, but have won four games in a row and have played a role in deciding who wins the A.L. East.

Just so you know, the Bo Sox are playing the Tampa Bay Devil Rays today as well.

Then there is college football. Maybe the game to watch will be the Penn State Nittany Lions taking on the Michigan Wolverines. Now, if you want far superior coverage of college ball, consult my colleague Thomas Miller. Needless to say there are a lot of college games on television today, and if you remembered, then you’ll have a six-pack and about three bags of chips and dip ready just for this special occasion.

Now, baseball and college ball obviously are the big sporting events of the day. But we cannot overlook the Canadian Football League. Perhaps the game-of-the-year will be on T.V. tonight. The B.C. Lions will take on the Saskatchewan Roughriders in a battle for first place in the West Division from the often hostile and intense confines of Mosaic Stadium in Regina.

The Lions sit atop the west with a record 7-3-1, while the Roughriders sit at 7-4-0 and just one point back of the Lions for first place in the division. The two teams have clashed twice this season, both contests resulting in rather uninteresting blowouts for each team. In July, the Lions dismantled the Roughriders 14-12, but the win came at a price as Lions quarterback, Dave Dickenson suffered a concussion. The second game of the season between the two came in August, as the Roughriders got their revenge, suffocating the Lions to a 21-9 game at B.C. Place. Replacement quarterback Jarious Jackson threw for less than 50 per cent (16-38) while tossing three interceptions.

Perhaps third time is a charm, as these two western titans will deliver a memorable performance for the Rider Nation and Lions fans on this Sporting Saturday.

Finally, there will be Vancouver Canucks hockey on television. Yes, that is right. The reigning Northwest Division Champs will play their fourth exhibition game of the season as they take on the Sharks in San Jose. Do not be fooled. Although it is exhibition, thousands will tune in for their weekly fix of Canucks hockey, even though most in the line-up will not be on the opening night roster come Oct. 5. Just remember, if hockey is on Canadian television, people will watch it. That rule is as certain is death and taxes.

So there you go. There are still more sporting events taking place today than what has been covered in this blog. Those beers in the fridge, the chips and dip and copious amounts of chicken wings are just calling out your name. Get comfy on the couch, dust off the clicker, gather some snacks, and enjoy all the sport on television you possibly can.

We don’t get these days all that often.