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Should Curt Keilback be the Voice of the Jets?

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

There are a lot of people out there who believe that since the Winnipeg Jets have returned, the Voice of the Jets should return with them.

It’s impossible to avoid the groundswell of support for Keilback, the one time big voiced play-by-play caller of Winnipeg’s “old” professional hockey side. It’s everywhere. So many Winnipeggers are convinced that Keilback is the best and he should be the team’s play-by-play voice once again.

A week or so ago Keilback told me that there was no interest from any of the radio stations in Winnipeg that were preparing to bid on the broadcasting rights to Jets games. Those rights will be expensive so one would think those stations would want to have the best available play-by-play man in the country calling the games. Not so, we’re told.

Still it’s quite likely Keilback will be on the air in Winnipeg this winter, calling the play-by-play of junior hockey games. It ain’t the Jets, but it’s still Curt keilback calling hockey and that’s pretty special.

Not long ago, Curt and I sat down and talked about the past – and a broadcasting future that is still uncertain.

*   *   *

For more than 30 years, Curt Keilback has been known to his close friends as “Sod.” But even though he’s from Yorkton, Sask., the former Voice of the Winnipeg Jets doesn’t look much like a “Sod.” Unless, of course, you know the story, a story that will be even more intriguing if, by some strange aligning of the planets, Keilback becomes the NEXT voice of the NHL in Winnipeg.

It was a lovely day in Atlanta (How’s that for a coincidence?), a November morning in 1980, when the Winnipeg Jets were about to return home after playing the old Atlanta Flames at the Omni in Atlanta, Ga. As the players were boarding the airplane, someone mentioned that the team’s newly hired play-by-play announcer, Curt Keilback, was no where to be found. The late Friar Nicholson, Keilback’s boss at the time, asked the team if it would request that the pilots to hold the plane for just a moment. Nicholson had seen Keilback in the airport and wondered what happened to him.

After a brief search, Nicholson found his 31-year-old charge and got him onto the flight amid laughter and derision from the Jets players, the team’s management and other members of the media.

“For a boy from Yorkton, Atlanta had an awful big airport,” Keilback recalled with a laugh. “I got lost. Simple as that. When they found me and got me on the plane, I took a real beating from the players and the other media guys. Patty Doyle – who has since had a sex change and become Patti Dawn Swanson – called me ‘Just a big sodbuster from Saskatchewan.’ The name was shortened to Sod and it stuck. Everybody started calling me Sod.”

“I have so many great memories as a broadcaster it’s hard to put my finger on just one of the them,” said Keilback, a recent inductee into Manitoba’s Hockey Hall of Fame. “It was great to be part of Teemu Selanne’s rookie season when he scored 76 goals. It was great to be part of that 1984-85 Jets team that really had a chance to go a long way, but just couldn’t get past the Edmonton Oilers. I guess maybe my best memory was that day in 1979 when I got a call from Friar (Nicholson) asking me if I’d like to leave Yorkton and come and call the Jets’ games in Winnipeg.

“Of course, it was pretty nice getting that call last week telling me I was going into the Hall of Fame. That’s a nice memory, too.” Curt Keilback, who was born in Brandon and raised in Yorkton, followed his father into broadcasting. His dad, Jim, gave him his first radio show on CJGX in Yorkton, called “Minor Sports Corner,” back in the days when local radio was really local.

“I started doing my first play-by-play of a hockey game when I was 12,” Keilback remembered. “My dad was calling the senior games in Yorkton and on Minor Hockey Day in Canada, I got to call the second period. I fell in love with it and did that every year as I was growing up. When I was 20, I was hired full-time at CJGX and along with my other sports casting duties, I did hockey, baseball and curling play-by-play. Then, in my early 30s, I was doing TV in Yorkton and I got the call from Friar in Winnipeg. The Jets had just joined the NHL and I jumped at the chance.”

Keilback was wonderful as the Jets play-by-play man, but a contract dispute in 1994, signaled the end of his career in Winnipeg. But when the Jets moved to Phoenix in 1996, he caught on with the Coyotes and did radio and TV play-by-play in Phoenix until 2008. This past winter, he was the play-by-play voice of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League on NCI FM, right across the province of Manitoba.

He also picked up a part on the movie “Goon,” as, what else(?), a hockey broadcaster. Filmed in Portage la Prairie, it’s scheduled to be released this fall. “I absolutely enjoyed calling the junior games on NCI and hope to be able to do more next year,” Keilback said. “But if somebody gives me the chance to do NHL games again, I’d be behind the microphone in less than a heartbeat.” Keilback has had an amazing career in Winnipeg and he’s still one of the most copied hockey broadcasters in Canadian history. In fact, so many of his signature lines (Hawerchuk, with the wr-a-a-a-p-around!) have been stolen by so many broadcasters that it’s as if he was the first and only hockey play-by-play man.

However, he’ll be the first to tell you he had a couple of iconic broadcasting heroes himself.

“My dad, of course, because he was the first broadcaster I ever heard,” Keilback said. “And Danny Gallivan the long-time play-by-play guy with the Montreal Canadiens. I always thought Gallivan was the best and I could listen to him all night long.”

I’m one of those people who could listen to Curt Keilback all night long. It’s too bad we won’t hear him calling the new Winnipeg Jets.

 

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Winnipeg Hockey Fans Were Right. They Almost Had The Coyotes Last Year.

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Last February, when Joe Aiello and I started talking about all the hockey rumors on 92-CITI-FM, it was intriguing to watch the response. The local mainstream media instantly crapped all over us.

Joe and I were expressing our interest in all the chatter that had been emanating from MTS Centre where more than one employee talked openly about the changes that were planned for the building, the employees and the future of hockey in Winnipeg.

At first, it was thought that there was an opportunity for True North Sports and Entertainment to acquire the Atlanta Thrashers, but as we looked and listened more closely, it was apparent there was an even greater chance, at the time, that the Phoenix Coyotes might move north. The rumors did not stop circulating until mid-May and by then, it was clear that while most MTS Centre employees were convinced something was happening, by the middle of May, all the talk had died.

We thought we were right. We thought Winnipeg hockey fans and MTS employees were right, but unless True North ever admitted it piblicly, no one would know for sure.

Then, this past week, Mark Chipman, president of True North, admitted during a speech to the Chamber of Commerce that he and his partner, David Thomson were only minutes away from acquiring the Coyotes last May.

In fact, according to Chipman, if the City of Glendale had not committed to a guarantee of $25 million toward any monies lost by the Coyotes operation during the 2010-11 season, the Phoenix hockey franchise would have been heading back to Winnipeg on May 10, 2010.

“We literally came within 10 minutes of acquiring (the Coyotes) in May 2010 when the City of Glendale met a 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time deadline to wire the funds necessary to pay for the league’s losses for the (2010-11) season,” he told the Commerce gathering at the Fairmont.

“We left somewhat disappointed, but uplifted by the fact that the league had taken us so seriously and, as a consequence, had indicated it would just be a matter of time before we would actually acquire a team.”

That turned out to be true, too.

Although it really doesn’t matter now whether or not True North was close to acquiring a team 13 months ago, it’s nice to know that the time Joe and I spent chasing all the talk, wasn’t in vain. The fact is, True North was close to bringing the NHL back to Winnipeg, despite the protests of the major media. And, in the end, our first instinct, the Atlanta Thrashers, turned out to be correct. At least, it became correct on May 31, 2011.

I now feel I can look back on what I wrote at www.citifm.ca and rest secure in the knowledge that we were right — and so too, were the hockey fans of Winnipeg.

 

 

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Lots Going On. Some Good, Some Bad and Some, well you know…

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Another week in Toyland and another week of good, bad, and very, very ugly.

THE GOOD

1) On the good side, there was Ben Dartnell. As a young kid, Ben was a Winnipeg Goldeyes bat boy who used to play catch at Shaw Park (old Canwest Park) with anyone who happened to have a glove. He was a great kid who always seemed to be better than the other youngsters  his age.

This week, Ben Dartnell was selected in the 34th round (1,042 overall) by the Boston Red Sox on Day 3, of the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. A 6-foot-3, 210-pound lefthanded throwing fireballer out of Vauxhall Baseball Academy in Alberta, Dartnell has been a Red Sox fan all his life.

“This is a kid who owned Red Sox underwear,” said his dad, Goldeyes director of security, Paul Dartnell.

“I can’t complain,” young Ben said via Facebook. “I’m part of Red Sox Nation!”

It doesn’t get a lot better than that.

2) According to Forbes Magazine, this past week NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told Research in Motion founder, Jim Balsillie, he could still acquire an NHL team as long as he “didn’t create any more bad publicity for the league.”

Interesting comment considering that very few people have created more bad publicity for the NHL than Gary Bettman.

In fairness, however, that’s a big turnabout for Bettman who refused to allow Balsillie to buy the Phoenix Coyotes out of bankruptcy. Now, it’s apparent that with the instant success of the Winnipeg franchise that maybe Balsillie could bail the NHL out of that mess it has created in Phoenix.

The fact that another Canadian-based NHL team could be on the horizon makes Bettman’s reluctant kind-of-apology to Balsillie intriguing.

3) On Saturday,  the Winnipeg Blue Bombers held a day of training camp at Brandon’s Vincent Massey High School. Practice ran from 11:30 to 1:30 and autographs followed soon after the workout.

For no profound reason, that’s just good.

4) Ichiro. Watched him play against Detroit this week. Ichiro is good.

5) Nyjer Morgan. Because the guy is certifiably wonderful. Watch him here: http://ca.deadspin.com/5810810/the-week-in-deadspin?skyline=true&s=i

THE BAD

1) The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat 112-103 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

The Mavericks had another big run to the finish. This time they outscored the Heat 15-3 down the stretch. Dirk Nowitzki led Dallas with 29 points, but the dagger was a long three by Jason Terry, over a lazy LeBron James, with 20 seconds left. The Mavs shot 56.5 per cent from the field, 68 per-cent, 13-of-19, from three-point range. LeBron had a triple double, 17 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists but only two points in the fourth quarter.

The Mavs lead the Heat 3-2 heading back to Miami for Games 6 and 7. Miami can still win this championship and LeBron can win the first of all those championships he vowed to win when he decided to “take my talents to South Beach.”

But here’s what can make this still fluid situation bad: the Heat do proceed to lose the series. This was a team that celebrated its 2011 championship BEFORE it held its first shoot-around. It’s as if the Heat are supposed to win.

They aren’t. And if they don’t, the entire season was a failure and the stupid TV show last summer looks even more outrageous.

2) The reports of an “imminent (there’s that word again)” deal to end the NFL lockout was apparently premature. The Eagle-Tribune of Lowell, Mass., reported that the players and owners were close to a deal to end the work stoppage but spokesmen for both the players and owners said otherwise.

NFLPA spokesman George Atallah posted this 54-character comment on his Twitter account: “There’s a report that the lockout is over. Umm…no.”

It’s bad that the lockout isn’t over. It’s good, however, that there is at least some discussion about ending it.

3) So we’re told LeBron and Dwyane made a snotty remark about Dirk Nowitzki’s case of the flu this week and while Dirk seemed a little hurt by it, the American media blew right up.

“I just thought it was a little childish, a little ignorant,” Dirk said. “I’ve been in this league for 13 years, I’ve never faked an injury or an illness before, but it happened.”

To that, Wade’s response was as follows: “First of all, it wasn’t fake coughing. I actually did cough. And with the cameras being right there, we made a joke out of it because we knew you guys were going to blow it up. You did exactly what we knew. We never said Dirk’s name. I think he’s not the only one in the world who can get sick or have a cough. We just had fun with the cameras being right in our face about the blowup of the incident, and it held to be true. You blew it up.”

No matter who is right or wrong — the two Heatles or the U.S. media — the whole stupid little joke was just bad.

THE UGLY

1) The track at Belmont Park on Saturday.

2) LeBron’s shot … on both Tuesday and Thursday.

3) Colby Lewis’ fastball against Detroit on Monday and Minnesota on Saturday.

4) Roberto Luongo on Monday and Wednesday in Boston.

5) Shane Carwin’s face on Saturday night.

 

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The NHL Returns to Winnipeg.

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I spent lunch hour at the Forks yesterday and it was invigorating. Hundreds of people converged on Winnipeg’s meeting place to celebrate the return of the NHL to Winnipeg.

Perhaps I should make that a little clearer: “Return of the Jets.” Some kids who were barely out of diapers when the Jets played their last game in 1996 were sporting Jets jerseys at the Forks yesterday. Although it’s likely this team will not be the Jets — we’ve heard Manitoba Somethings, maybe Falcons or Polar Bears –it’s pretty definite now that 75-80 per cent of Winnipeg hockey fans WANT the team be the Winnipeg Jets.

But yesterday, the name argument took a back seat to the simple realization that the National Hockey League would once again have Winnipeg as a member.

Mark Chipman, David Thomson, Jim Ludlow and, yes, Gary Bettman (looking like a guy who just got punched him the stomach) made it official. The National Hockey League has indeed, returned to Winnipeg.

At a news conference yesterday at the MTS Centre, True North Sports and Entertainment announced that it had completed a deal to purchase the Atlanta Thrashers and the team would begin play this fall at Winnipeg’s downtown arena. Through it all you got the feeling Bettman did NOT want this to happen. His Southern U.S. experiment has started to crumble and his body language suggested he was pained by the fact he had to move a team out of the seventh-largest TV market in the United States and into a city of 700,000 on the Canadian prairie.

There was some talk that if Winnipeg’s owners didn’t sell 13,000 season tickets by June 21, there was a chance the NHL’s board of governors would not allow the team to move to Winnipeg, but that just seemed outrageous. Yesterday, Chipman said that True North had signed off on a deal to purchase the team from the Atlanta Spirit Group and while Winnipeggers were partying at the Forks, the rich guys who own ASG were doing cartwheels in their executive offices, having dumped the Thrashers, a team that has allegedly lost $130 million in five years. One suspects those guys aren’t about to take the team back so if True North doesn’t sell 13,000 season tickets, what’s the NHL going to do? Move the team to Portage? Winnipeg is the ONLY alternative to Atlanta and I’m sure that with the use of some brilliant legal term there was a “no give-backsies clause” in the final sales contract.

Meanwhile, it appears Moose GM Craig Heisinger will play an important role with Winnipeg’s new franchise and last night Atlanta’s president Don Waddell said he would not accompany the team to Winnipeg. Head coach Craig Ramsey was in Winnipeg yesterday and will likely keep his job.

And just to make everyone happy, Bettman said yesterday, if the new owners decide they want to use the Jets name, the NHL will give it to them.

The NHL is coming back to the ‘Peg. Just as we wrote last year, it was the Atlanta Thrashers, not the Phoenix Coyotes who wound up moving to River City.

It made for a very nice day. Of course, so did getting my picture taken with Ab McDonald, Bill Lesuk and Thomas Steen.

 

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Thrashers Still Not in Winnipeg. So?

Posted on May 28, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

It would appear that the National Hockey League’s cranky old owners are doing everything they possibly can to delay the sale and move of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg.

It’s not that there is much the league can do. At worst, it can hold up the deal to sell the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment and make it more difficult to sell tickets and corporate sponsorships in Winnipeg.

After all, the Atlanta deal isn’t the Phoenix deal. In Phoenix, the league owns the team and essentially all the revenue from the arena. Any legitimate owner would have that same luxury. In Atlanta, an owner would own the team and not the arena and therefore would not have the ability to raise revenues from the building outside of hockey nights. It’s a bad business model and the NHL knows it. In Winnipeg, True North has the rights to the building and the hockey team and all the revenues. This deal and move is as much about real estate as it is about ice hockey.

However, while Gary Bettman and his bosses continue to claim that the Thrashers-to-Winnipeg deal is not done, there is reason to believe that the main portion of the sale agreement is completed and that the rest is just legal-eze. After all, Atlanta Spirit Group, the current owners cutting the deal to sell to Winnipeg said earlier this week that the deal “is 80 per cent done.”

More than a week ago, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, the newspaper owned by David Thomson, the major financier of the deal to buy the Thrashers and move them to Winnipeg, announced that the deal was done and the announcement would be made on Tuesday, May 24.

The story was written by Stephen Brunt, one of the country’s finest sportswriters and columnists, but also a gentleman who breaks very few stories. In fact, if Brunt breaks a story, one figures that it’s broken. Period. He’s not the kind of guy who turns up two days later and apologizes for being wrong. And to Brunt’s credit, he went on radio shows right across Canada to stand by his scoop.

Now, here we are, four days after the announcement was supposed to have been made and still… insert sound of crickets chirping here. In fact, True North Sports and Entertainment has said without hesitation that the deal is not done and there will definitely be no announcement before NEXT Tuesday.

However, if one studies Brunt’s story, the insider leaks from Atlanta and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s almost angry response to anyone who suggests, “the deal is done,” it’s clear that the buyers and sellers have a deal, but the NHL itself is doing everything it can to delay the sale in an effort to (a) find a local owner in Atlanta immediately(?) or (b) hold up the move until the beginning of the 2012-13 season (?) or what?

What, could mean the NHL’s by-laws. Thrashers fans in Atlanta (yes, there are some) dug up the following from the league’s own constitution and posted it on SB Nation Atlanta:

36.1: Investigation

(a) Any Member Club seeking consent for a transfer of its franchise and club to a different city or borough in accordance with Section 4.2 of the Constitution, shall file a written application for such consent with the Commissioner of the League.

(b) Such applications shall be filed no later than January 1st of the year prior to the year in which it is proposed the Club will commence its first season in the new location, unless a majority of the Member Clubs consents to a later filing date.

(c) The application shall include a statement as to why the applicant seeks such transfer. It shall also include a statement of reasons why the applicant believes consent to the proposed transfer should be given and shall be accompanied by such documentation as the applicant deems appropriate, in light of the provisions of this By-Law Section 36 and Section 42 of the Constitution.

The aforementioned could be a big reason why many American owners have no desire to see the Thrashers go anywhere in 2011-12. They want more answers.

And that’s probably why Commissioner Gary Bettman went on his radio show on Friday and ripped anyone who believes the Thrashers are moving. That would include me, who believes the Thrashers deal has been in the works for more than a year and is so close to done, it’s done.

“Maybe at some point there will be a deal, maybe there will never be a deal,” Bettman said during the NHL Hour With Commissioner Gary Bettman on NHL Radio. “But there isn’t one now.”

Bettman claimed there is no deal yet. and that the owners in Atlanta were only “exploring their options,” (that’s a festering pile of excrement).

“If the team gets sold, and if the team gets moved, then there will be a press conference,” Bettman told his radio listeners. “If you keep saying it enough, you might ultimately be right. But the level of accountability, in terms of the willingness to just put anything out there in terms of a news story, is really just ridiculous.”

Bettman took calls from fans on Friday’s show and when a fan in Atlanta asked him about the move, the commissioner said that the team still hadn’t gone anywhere (oh, how observant).

“Well nobody has decided to do anything yet,” Bettman said. “There isn’t a deal. If there is a deal, it has to go through the usual processes and procedures that we have. But the issue, if there’s a problem that’s unsolvable, despite the grass roots hockey, despite all of the corporate headquarters, is there somebody, if it gets to this point where the current owners don’t want to own it anymore, is there somebody who wants to own this franchise in Atlanta?

“The threshold has always been for us, when we’ve had to move a franchise, (nobody wanted) to own the team there anymore. It would be one of those head scratchers where you say, ‘Look at all of this great corporate opportunity, look at all of this grass roots hockey, why doesn’t somebody want to own a team here?’ And that would be a difficult, but unfortunate situation to be dealing with if it has reached, or does reach that point.”

It’s getting late. Every day that the deal is not done is another day the NHL’s board of governors have to debate the legality of this move and vote not to allow it. It’s also another day that True North loses to sell tickets and corporate sponsorships.

One senses this deal has been “done” for some time, but there are, apparently, some things in the way. Those things relate directly to the NHL’s concern about moving a team from the seventh-largest TV market in the United States to a city of 700,000 in the middle of the prairie. They relate directly to the NHL’s concern that Winnipeg can be reached from only two cities in the United States on a regular airline schedule – Minneapolis and Chicago. They relate directly to the fact Winnipeg does not have a five-star hotel for teams to bunk in. They relate directly to the fact Winnipeg would have the smallest arena in the NHL — by a long shot. They relate directly to the fact that if Winnipeg sold out every ticket for every single game the team would be 24th or 25th in league attendance. They relate to the fact that they would be moving a team from a city of six million to a city of 700,000 and from a city that has already lost an NHL team to another city, in a different country, that has already lost an NHL team.

The owners are nervous about all of this and Gary Bettman just happens to be the angry face of that nervousness.

 

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AJC Gets Scoop. Everyone Else Watches.

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It was exactly 15 months ago that I wrote on www.92citifm.ca that the Atlanta Thrashers was the NHL team likely to move to Winnipeg if any NHL team ever moved to Winnipeg.

The reasoning was simple. For one thing, anyone who had spent any time around the MTS Centre knew that True North Sports and Entertainment had asked the folks in Atlanta about the availability of their hockey team. At least, that’s what more than a dozen True North employees were telling people. For another, the Thrashers had a problem that other teams didn’t.

Unlike the Phoenix Coyotes who would own the building in which they played and would, as a result, generate and collect all the revenues from that building — just like the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Nashville Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets — the Thrashers would be an orphan if the current owners, Atlanta Spirit Group, ever sold them to another local owner. In other words, the Atlanta Spirit Group would still own Phillips Arena and the Atlanta Hawks but someone else would own the Thrashers and would likely have to pay rent to the ASG folks just to use the building.

That doesn’t work. Period.

So if the Thrashers were going to be sold, they’d have to be sold to somebody who was going to take them away from Atlanta — to a building that was available and was owned by the buyer.

That’s why Winnipeg made sense in February of 2010 and it makes sense now. And it’s why the Phoenix Coyotes were NEVER moving back to Winnipeg.

When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution got assistant NHL commissioner Bill Daly on tape, saying there was no guarantee that the Thrashers would still be in Atlanta in 2011, one can understand why. It would be virtually impossible to own the Thrashers on your own and pay rent, — or even get free rent, but no revenues — from a building that belongs to somebody else.

The Thrashers are very likely to move. And it’s also likely that Winnipeg is the only reasonable destination.

However, before anything happens, the NHL will make certain that it has exhausted every possible scenario in an effort to keep the team in Atlanta. Even if there is no guarantee that Atlanta has a legitimate future as a home to an NHL team.

* * *

STATEMENT FROM THE COMMISSIONER

Commissioner Gary Bettman made the following statement on his radio show this week:

“I think everybody needs to take a step back because I think there’s been a fair amount of speculation, supposition and even hysteria in the media, which has been largely fabricated,” Bettman said, according to NHL.com. “I wish I had a dollar for all of the reports a month ago that said the Coyotes were definitely moving, and it was going to happen in a matter of days.

“I mean, people who are reporting on this stuff are simply making it up, and that’s unfortunate for our fans. It’s unfortunate for the fans who have a club they don’t want to lose, and it’s unfortunate for building up expectations in other places.”

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A Week in the Trenches

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It is Saturday night, April 30 at 6:40 p.m. CST. Neither the Phoenix Coyotes nor the Atlanta Thrashers have moved to Winnipeg yet. We provide this is a public service considering that we were told on national television on March 5, that the Coyotes move to Winnipeg was “imminent.”

The length of “imminent” is now eight weeks. Just for those who were wondering why their dictionary definition of imminent (which is: “likely to occur at any moment.”) is so incorrect.

That’s not to suggest that either team — or both teams plus three or four others — won’t be moving to Winnipeg. It’s just that “imminent” is now eight weeks in length. Who knew?

Here’s another week in the trenches:

1) LeBron James told ESPN this week that he “didn’t quit” on the Cleveland Cavaliers last year. Like “imminent,” I guess it’s how you define the word “quit.”

2) While watching the NFL draft this week, I really thought that maybe, just maybe the greedy owners would come to their senses, open their facilities and lift the lockout voluntarily. They would still make grossly huge profits on their license-to-print-money franchises if they simply continued to do business with last year’s CBA.

However, the 8th Circuit Court in St. Louis, a court made up of two Republicans and one Democrat, voted 2-1 to give the owners their lockout back. That’s what I love about Republicans. If greedy rich people need more money, they can always count on Republicans.

The NFL owners, remember, are the same people who threaten to move your favorite team if you don’t build them new stadiums with taxpayers’ money. Then they ask for as much money as possible in a clawback from the bottom guys on the players’ totem pole, guys who barely have enough money at the end of their short careers to pay their medical bills. What they do to peanut vendors, cabbies, beer hawkers, small businessmen and football fans in general is a whole different argument.

NFL owners are people that you always hope have nice dark spots in hell reserved for them.

3) On Fox News this week, Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville criticized U.S. president Barack Obama for having shown the world his birth certificate three years ago.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t just step up and say, you know, ‘Here it is.’ Obviously there’s gotta be something on there that he doesn’t want anybody to see,” said Tuberville, a man who is so stupid, he shouldn’t be allowed to work at a major university. Obama released his long form birth certificate three years ago.

Sadly, Tuberville is another one of those bat-shit crazy birthers who simply can’t handle the fact that there is an African-American person in the White House.

Why a black football player would ever play at Texas Tech is a mystery to me. Then again, why a person with a discernible IQ would play at Texas Tech is a mystery.

4) I loved No 1 pick Cam Newton’s first comment after he was selected by the Carolina Panthers No. 1 in the NFL draft this week.

“Everybody is not just going to stop and say, ‘That’s Cam, the No. 1 pick, and we can leave him alone,’ ” Newton said of his critics, as he met the press after his selection ”If anything, the floodgates have officially opened.”

Poor kid. He’s 21, he’s a great football player and the American media will never let him alone. There will be more garbage fabricated by the media about Newton over the next decade (because always remember, that’s what the media does, fabricates things) than any human on the planet. Even Barack Obama.

5) On Streetz 104.7 FM in Winnipeg on Friday morning, I picked Georges St. Pierre to beat Jake Shields and Jose Aldo to beat Mark Hominick at UFC 129 in Toronto tonight.

We’re only a few hours away from the Hominick fight and I’ll stick with both predictions.

 

 

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The Coyotes Deal is Really This Crazy.

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I have a friend who wants to sell his MacPro. It’s a five-year-old $2,000 computer that he has up for sale for $800. His roommate, a friend and a person he likes, has offered him the $800, because he wants to keep the computer in the apartment they share, but instead of just writing him a cheque, the roommate wants my friend to negotiate with his girlfriend.

Seems the roommate likes the computer, but doesn’t believe it will last more than a year (it is, after all, five years old) and so he’s talked his girlfriend into buying it for him. Trouble is, the girlfriend’s pals have been trying to convince her not to fork over the money for some guy she dates, so she’s been hesitant.

My friend told his roommate to just get him $800 and he can have the computer, but the roommate is adamant that the girlfriend is going to pay for it, even though my friend has been waiting for a few months for the two deadbeats to come up with the dough. Now, the roommate doesn’t even want to talk to my friend about it.  He wants my friend to deal with his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, my friend has an offer from a  complete stranger who is prepared to take the laptop off his hands for $800 cash. He’ll come by the house, pay cash and pick it up tomorrow.

Sound familiar?

The NHL should just tell the two deadbeats, Glendale and Matthew Hulsizer to bugger off and let the complete stranger buy the Coyotes and take them anywhere he wants to take them.

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Is It Just a Couple of Guys or are Hockey Players Really Stupid?

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Dustin Glant is a 29-year-old pitcher from Indiana who now makes his home deep down in the Florida Keys at Marathon, Fla. He lives so far away from Winnipeg that he’s actually closer to Cuba than Miami.

Glant is in such a hurry to get to Winnipeg to pitch for the Goldeyes this season, he’s already driving north. One of the best pitchers in the now-defunct Northern League last season, Glant won 25 per cent of the games played by the Schaumburg Flyers. He was in-demand this off-season and said he only wanted to sign with one of three teams — Gary, Fargo or Winnipeg.

“Winnipeg was always at the top of my list and fortunately Rick (manager Forney) had a veteran’s spot open,” Glant said. “I’m 29 and my days of being signed by a team in organized baseball are probably behind me. So I want to win. I haven’t even been to the playoffs since 2004 so I was looking to play for a winner. I know that Gary, Fargo and Winnpeg all have great teams and I would have a chance to win on any one of those teams, but Winnipeg was my first choice because Winnipeg is such a great place to play.

“I’m good friends with Wes Long and he just raves about it. He says it’s great to be able to play in a place where you’re treated like a big leaguer. And it’s such a great city. There is so much to do.

“I know, when we played there with Schaumburg I always wanted to have the Friday night start so I could enjoy my weekend. Nobody wanted that Sunday afternoon start because you had to watch yourself. If I started on Friday night, I had the chance to start my weekend early and enjoy everything Winnipeg had to offer — the prettiest girls anywhere in the world, great night life and Kokanee Beer. That’s why I’m driving to Winnipeg. I want to have my car when I’m up there so I can enjoy Winnipeg on a day-off. I get the best of both worlds, a chance to play for a winner and a great place to play.”

This might be an unfair comparison because Dustin Glant is a professional athlete who has actually been to Winnipeg. He’s a smart guy who speaks well and actually knows what he’s talking about.

Then we get hockey players. First it was Eric Belanger and this week it was Ilya Bryzgalov.

According to Sun Media on Thursday, if it turns out that the Phoenix Coyotes do move north to Winnipeg, free-agent Bryzgalov says he won’t go.

“You don’t want to go to Winnipeg, right?” Bryzgalov told Sun Media on Wednesday. “Not many people live there, not many Russian people there (more than in Phoenix, Ilya). Plus it’s cold. There’s no excitement except the hockey. No park, no entertaining for the families, for the kids. It’s going to be tough life for your family.”

Bryzgalov is a free-agent so he has the right to play anywhere he wants. And frankly, I’d prefer to spend my winters in Orlando or Tampa. But to ‘diss a community when you’re absolutely ignorant about it — Winnipeg has always been known as “a great place to raise kids” — and you’re not the only one, is frightening. I really didn’t think hockey players were that stupid. I was wrong.

Can’t wait for Dustin Glant to arrive here in the ‘Peg. Ilya Bryzgalov? The last thing our community needs is another really ignorant rich guy.

 

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What Happens if the Coyotes Don’t Move to Winnipeg?

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

We here at www.rivercitysportsblog.com have been taking a bit of heat for our cynicism.

While I believe Winnipeg will eventually get an NHL franchise, I’m just not sure it’s the Phoenix Coyotes of right now. It might be next year’s Coyotes. Heck, they might show up in Winnipeg in 2013, who knows? It’s just that there are so many young Winnipeggers who so desperately want to believe the Coyotes are coming right this minute that it’s easy to understand why they get so damned defensive when you suggest that maybe the announcement won’t be made for a while yet.

I know NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and I know he is going to do everything humanly possible to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix for as long as he possibly can. That’s just his style. So on Wednesday, when Bettman did the rounds of the Toronto radio shows, I wasn’t surprised to hear him suggest that maybe we should just hold our horses.

I know we’ve been told the Coyotes move to Winnipeg was “imminent” and I know we were told that seven weeks ago on TSN, but based on what I heard yesterday, I would think there are still a few more weeks– and maybe even a few more years — left.

“It’s not days and it’s not years. Obviously, we have to have this resolved before we release next year’s schedule,” Bettman told James Cybulski on TSN radio.

“It’s ironic: I know there were a whole spree of stories on Day 1 of this series that we had a deal, and we were just holding the announcement until when they were done playing. If the Coyotes lose tonight, I assure you I have no announcement to make, we have no deal, other than our efforts are still focused on trying to make it work in Phoenix. We had it done at one point, but the Goldwater Institute blew it up. We’re seeing what we can do. We still have time. I’m not going to tell you when time runs out, but obviously, the more time that elapses, the closer we get to the end, but we’re still hopeful we can make it work.”

When Cybulski asked Bettman if the league was prepared to operate as the club’s owner next season, providing the sale to Hulsizer didn’t go through, Bettman called it “unlikely,” unless the city of Glendale would take care of the financial losses for another season.

“That’s not the plan,” Bettman said. “I know this gets misreported also: they talk about ‘oh, the owners must be so upset because of the money we’re losing’. People tend to forget the city of Glendale is paying this year’s losses, not the NHL, not the clubs so ultimately, for that to happen, Glendale would have to be willing to do that again. But I think at some point, if this doesn’t come together, everybody is going to conclude that everything possible was done and it didn’t work. We’re hoping not to get to that point. And I still think there’s a significant chance that we won’t get to that point.”

Read that carefully: “…a significant chance that we won’t get to that point.”

That’s why I don’t think Bettman is in any hurry to cut a deal with Mark Chipman and David Thomson and move the team to Winnipeg.

And then there was this:

“I don’t want to raise expectations (in Winnipeg), because it’s not fair to the fans,” Bettman said. “But if we have to move a franchise, there are places that have expressed interest that we would strongly consider and obviously, Winnipeg is on that list and probably very high on that list.”

Read that very carefully one more time. Bettman makes it clear that there are other cities involved in the bid to acquire the Phoenix Coyotes.

Frankly, at this stage, I don’t think Bettman’s bosses, the NHL’s American owners, are in any hurry to move a team from the United States to Canada. At least, not right now.

But then again, with the NHL, crazier things have happened.

 

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