In a week in which the Stanley Cup playoffs started, Jerry Reinsdorf was given an NHL franchise, Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez pitched a no-hitter, the Blue Bombers released one of the team’s best players and HD TV proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that baseball umpires aren’t very good, there was more talk about Atlanta heading to Winnipeg, Ben Roethlisberger’s transgressions and the city’s reluctance to just give David Asper a free pass.
1) The Blue Bombers released Sideeq Shabazz, a fan favourite and clearly one of the best players in the CFL last season.
The Bombers feel they have to get younger and that’s true. Shabazz is 29 and heaven knows, you’re just about done at 29, but more importantly, the Bombers have serious financial problems.
When Brendan Taman was running the team, he signed some contracts with players that he knew he was going to have to pay later. Last year, the Bombers started the season $460,000 over the cap. In other words, the only way the football club could stay within the $4.2 million Cdn that is the salary management system’s player payroll cap, was to keep costs down and still hope to be able to compete.
When Mike Kelly took over the club, he was in a bind. The team was still paying Kevin Glenn, Charles Roberts and Milt Stegall (among others) and it was going to have to make it on $3.74 million. It didn’t. Not quite anyway. In the end, the Bombers finished $44,000 over the cap and they were penalized.
So now, still in a financial quagmire, still paying former players, the Bombers have to dump as many veterans as they can — within some kind of competitive plan for 2010 — and try to make it with a load of kids. Especially if they intend to pay quarterback Buck Pierce and veterans like Terrance Edwards, Doug Brown and Fred Reid.
It isn’t easy running the Bombers these days. Last year, the club lost $1.2 million on operations. This year, the team still has cap trouble. If the Bombers go 6-12, fans can consider it a successful year.
2) Watched 12 hours of baseball on Saturday. From the Twins and Blue Jays, to the Indians win over Chicago, the Tigers loss to Seattle and seven hours of St. Louis and the Mets, my wife Sally and I also watched the final two innings of Ubaldo Jimenez’s no-hitter against the Braves. There is nothing better than MLB TV live to HD TV through your computer.
Through it all, I spent much of that time yelling at my gigantic, room-dwarfing HD TV. “Can’t anybody call these stining games properly anymore!!?”
In the Cleveland-Chicago game, the first base umpire called Cleveland’s Shin-Soo Choo out on an appeal play for missing first base while he legged out a double. The replay clearly showed that Choo touched the corner of the bag. It was a horrible call and the more I watched the replay, the more I realized that only a blind guy (or someone with a bet on the game) could call Choo out.
As the day went on, there were half a dozen bad calls at second base on attempted steals and even worse, the strike zone is now a moving, living thing that can be deciphered only by the plate umpire at hat exact moment. Players keep saying all they ask for is consistency. That’s just silly. There has never been consistency and there certainly isn’t any today.
Baseball desperately needs replay for every close play and technology should replace the homeplate umpire when it comes to calling balls and strikes.
3) In Winnipeg, it seems everyone is doing what it takes to make the new football stadium deal feel politically palatable. “Don’t give David Asper too much. Couch it so that taxpayers feel protected. Make sure anyone who criticizes the deal is marginalized. And if you’re a politician, don’t really give anyone the facts of the deal so that you can change it later.”
What no one seems to have grasped is this: Winnipeg needs a new football stadium, the old one is eventually going to fall down, the community-owned football team can’t make money in that old dump and at some point, somebody is going to have to spend some public money on a new building. The longer we wait, the more expensive it gets.
And frankly, I don’t have any trouble with taxpayers’ money being spent on a new football stadium — anywhere in Canada. I have no trouble honouring all the agreements made with Asper and even with the $90 million-plus loan that’s been offered.
That’s because I believe this: As long as $1 billion in federal taxes is GIVEN to the CBC every single year, the rest of the government’s spending is relatively unimportant. I’m forced to pay taxes to give $1 billion every single year to a broadcasting company that leans far to the left (not just left, but stunningly far, far left), refuses to tell the truth on its website even when its asked to make changes based on fact and hires people who turn into pompous, over-bearing Toronto-centric fools who have no concept of how Canadians live. It also sucks advertising money out of the economy and yet it still can’t balance its books.
Until the federal government stops funding the CBC, I believe they owe Winnipeg a football stadium. In fact, I believe the entire $135 million bill should be paid for by the feds. As long as the CBC exists in its current form, any argument over how federal taxpayers’ money is spent is just silly and distracting.
4) We tend to go on about small crowds and financial losses in non-traditional NHL markets, but who would ever have thought that the Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League was $500 million US in the glue.
This past week, Liverpool’s American owners formally put the club up for sale, as both Tom Hicks (who also has to sell the NHL’s Dallas Stars in order to pay his debts) and George Gillett Jr. admitted they no longer have the financial resources to improve the team or build a much-needed new stadium.
The fact the Bombers lost $1.2 million on operations last year (a lot of it to pay back former president Lyle Bauer for all the money he deferred over the years in order to keep the books balanced), is a pittance compared to the losses suffered by Liverpool.
When you consider that the operation of the NBA this season will fall $400 million short of break-even, it’s becoming apparent that all major professional sport — not just the shaky NHL and CFL — is in financial trouble. The recession is deeper than people think and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next decade.
5) I love all the talk about the NFL suspending Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Roethlisberger, 28, was not charged with any crime for a night at a college bar with a 20-year-old female. There are all sorts of nasty media stories about Roethlisberger’s behaviour that night. There are all sorts of pundits and commentators who like to call Roethlisberger names and, of course, want him punished.
But as the police and the district attorney’s office have made clear, he broke no laws. It appears that the media, and the media alone, have now admitted to something that many of us have known for a long time. The only thing the mainstream media does well is hurt people and that screaming for punishment, even for people who don’t break laws, is what the American mainstream media does best.
6) Speaking of the mainstream media, I wonder how they responded to Andy Sutton’s elbow to the head of Jordan Leopold on Saturday night. After screaming for months about increasing the severity of penalties to get head shots out of the game, the media watched as Sutton drilled an unprotected Leopold in the head with a vicious elbow on Saturday night.
No penalty was called and I haven’t heard any screaming today. In fact, many mainstream media members I’ve read this morning have called the check “clean.” Ouch.
It’s great to scream and yell about concussions and other injuries, but hockey is a collision sport and if you are going to play it, you sign up for danger. That was a dreadful hit by a man hoping to injure another player, a player who was in a vulnerable position, fighting off a check from one of Sutton’s teammates. However, it was no different than any number of hits in any number of games this year.
Sutton’s physical destruction of Jordan Leopold was a textbook case for creating special head-hunting penalties. But there was no penalty at all on the play and no one seems terribly concerned by that. The message was clear: Quit whining and play.
7) Walking through the Home Depot on Saturday morning, one of the store’s employees approached me and politely asked, “When are the Atlanta Thrashers coming to Winnipeg?”
He’d been at a family gathering and one of his family members happens to work for the Manitoba Moose. That family member said he had been told by Moose brass to prepare for the arrival of the Thrashers and to be ready to move with the AHL team. Perhaps even to Saskatoon.
This is not the first time a hockey fan in Winnipeg has been told this story by someone who seemed honest and sincere. While Moose brass don’t want to admit it, the rumours of the NHL’s return to Winnipeg are being stoked by people who are working at MTS Centre.
The rumours will not go away until someone at the top of the pecking order at True North Sports and Entertainment stands up and says, “The NHL is NOT, ever, returning to Winnipeg.”
Right now, I for one, just can’t escape the talk and frankly, I continue to find it fascinating.
