Linking the country...

Football

• Saturday's Montreal-Sherbrooke game will be on radio-canada.ca, but the airwaves have been taken over by the second match of the USL-1 championship between the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps.
  
  
• Newly minted B.C. Lions running back (not fullback) Jamall Lee is being likened to former CFLer Casey Printers, in a good way.
  
  Lee will be on the roster for the Lions' game at Winnipeg next Sunday. (Vancouver Province)
  
  
• Western coach Greg Marshall has high praise for Queen's ahead of Saturday's Rivalry Game, noting "the CFL is looking at five or six of the players" off the Golden Gaels defence alone.
  
  Morris Dalla Costa is calling the Mustangs-Golden Gaels game, "The showdown in the penitentiary town." The game at Richardson Stadium should be so well-played. (London Free Press)
  
  
• Saskatchewan Roughriders slotback Jason Clermont (Regina) is having more fun with the media than on the field, one might say. (RodPederson.com)
  
  
• Western Mustangs QB Michael Faulds will be a guest on London AM 980's The Hook on Friday at 8:15 p.m. (Norman James Sports)

Basketball

• cishoops.ca is surveying the competitive QSSF. Defending champion Concordia will have a new look, Bishop's might be a darkhorse with an overhauled backcourt which includes frosh guard Onnex Blackwood and Laval has challenged itself with a tough non-conference schedule (they'll head out to UBC this weekend to play last season's Final 8 runners-up).
  
  
• Canada's senior women's team qualified for the worlds, but is still keeping fans updated on their activities at canadaball.blogspot.com.
  

Hockey

• St. Thomas Tommies winger Jason Cassidy writes about CIS road trips for The Hockey News. Nothing scandalous, but it will sound familiar:
  

  "It’s hard to miss 25 tired, hungry and scruffy, Grizzly Adams-looking guys and their posse roll into town. Within minutes, they’ll generally clean out the restaurant’s supply of free salad and bread. Lord help the couple who picked that restaurant as their date venue, because you know they aren’t getting any complementary salad or bread.
  
  "In a flash, we will consume 2,000 calories, a mound of carbohydrates, about 16 pitchers of ice water and be gone. The same can be said the next morning at the continental breakfast – we apologize in advance."

  Oh, and there are pranks for the memories:
  

  "The shoe check: Team meals are a great opportunity to strike a guy. One crafty player will take a cream-like substance such as butter or jam and sneak underneath a table. He'll squeeze an honest amount onto someone’s shoe, while the rest of the team taps its glasses to indicate someone got shoe checked. The attacked player will honorably smile and clean it off without an uproar."

  Attacked players, maybe. There's an alumnus of CFRC 101.9 in Kingston who has yet to get over someone squirting mustard on his shoe at the post-game meal following a Queen's playoff win in 2000. He had to colour over the stained area with a magic marker. Who that person was is lost to history (by unspoken agreement).