I’ve long contended that unlike the NFL, where big plays on both sides of the football tend to lead to victories, in the CFL, it’s all about mistakes.
Saturday, depending entirely on your point of view, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers forced seven turnovers (the Argos pissed away the football seven times) and beat the Toronto Argonauts 13-12 (the Argos picked up a delay of game penalty with 30 seconds left to push Jason Medlock out of field goal range and lose 13-12).
I was at Minnesota Vikings training camp during the game, but the guy who invented the PVR should be knighted. This morning I was able to watch the game and, let’s not lie, that was as bad as professional football can be. That, me hearties, was the “beauty” of the Canadian Football League — just one screw up after another.
For Winnipeg fans the outcome was much more important than the way in which the victory was achieved (the Bombers still don’t have much offence, even with Michael Bishop at quarterback) and for Blue Bombers’ head coach Mike Kelly, it was the most important win of his young head coaching career (Michael Bishop was certainly an improvement over Stefan Lefors). In Winnipeg, where the Bombers are now 2-3, all is well. At least, this week.
But in Toronto, that loss was so ugly, so horrible, that somebody needs to fired. Not sure who, but somebody should lose his job over that (By the way, you can announce any attendance figure you like, but were there actually 15,000 people inside Rogers Centre to watch that thing?).
It might have been one of the worst football games ever played. And yet it very well could have turned around the struggling Blue Bombers’ season.
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FRIENDS GET THE AX
It’s been suggested (right here) that old media is dying. Frankly, there is little need for journalism courses anymore if the professors are teaching skills that will get graduates jobs on TV stations, radio stations or in big daily newspapers.
This past week, two friends got the pink slip: morning show host Bryn Griffiths at The TEAM 1260 in Edmonton and reporter Tony Ambrogio at The Score in Toronto.
The TEAM didn’t have great numbers (not bad, but not great), but that could probably be chalked up to the fact the Edmonton Oilers didn’t have a great year. When there isn’t a lot to talk about it, it’s pretty hard to just make it up.
Meanwhile, I haven’t watched The Score in so long that I couldn’t provide an intelligent, critical opinion of the network’s problems.
Apparently no one else has watched it either, but somehow, I don’t think it was Tony Ambrogio’s fault. Owner John Levy has very little idea about what makes for compelling television. Never did. It’s just too bad that good people have to suffer from Levy’s inability to run a half-assed TV sports network.
I’m convinced Griffiths and Ambrogio will do well. Both have talent. Trouble is, I worry that they will have no place to go. Or at least no place that pays the way old media paid.
Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? The old media’s business model doesn’t work. It pays huge amounts of money to people who don’t deliver the news any better than most bloggers. Especially here in Canada where dull is rewarded.
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