- Acadia wins Loney Bowl by default; or, drop-kick that last shred of credibility through the goalposts of life. People putting the game last has led to the last game of the season being cancelled, make no mistake.
Atlantic University Sport, in it infinite wisdom, has decided the best remedy for a bad situation is to cancel the Loney Bowl and declare the Acadia Axemen the conference champion. Taken on face, it makes no sense. The only bit of adult perspective one can scrounge is that the regional association made a power play against U Sports, and Saint Mary's, but particularly U Sports for letting this drag out for so long. Drag your feet on an eligibility issue and cast a shadow over our big event? Bring lawyers in? We'll show you, even if it means cutting off our nose to spite our face.
It manages to be bold and craven all at the same time. To a certain way of thinking it seems audacious to shut down a championship game, but on the other hand, it also betrays a deathly fear that a little controversy might actually draw more eyeballs to an athletic contest.
That has prompted Saint Mary's to bring out the hole card it's had up its sleeve the entire time: "SMU signed a binding, written agreement with U SPORTS on Oct. 27, which 'cleared all players to play.' " (Laura Brown, CTV.)SMU was in a TO courtroom filing an emergency motion today. @CTVAtlantic— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 9, 2017SMU Associate VP says the university was in court today, making sure a "binding agreement with U SPORTS" is enforced. @CTVAtlantic pic.twitter.com/HUkGN2p4YG— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017Margaret Murphy says SMU signed a binding, written agreement with U SPORTS on Oct. 27, which 'cleared all players to play.'— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017She says they're in front of the Ontario Superior Court, making sure that agreement is enforced.— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017She said court resumes tomorrow, and they're hopeful for a decision at that time.— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017So in the meantime, are the Huskies still practicing? Murphy says yes: @CTVAtlantic pic.twitter.com/0xqUrSEh5w— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017Why take it to court? Murphy says they want assurance. @CTVAtlantic pic.twitter.com/f9m8Sp3oxu— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017
No one wins with this decision by AUS. All four teams are hurt in some way. Fans are also screwed over by this; they just wanted to watch a good football game. Seriously. This should have had a pin stuck in it until the off-season, when it could be fully investigated and then a decision could be made on whether there was professional misconduct.
As unfair it was to Acadia to go all week without certainty of what opponent it was getting on Saturday, the decision essentially says:
a) Saint Mary's is guilty even though there has been no formal ruling that wide receiver Archelaus Jack is ineligible, and Saint Mary's claims it is has a ruling to the contrary (and, again, would not have continued to let Jack play if it didn't think it was OK);
b) St. Francis Xavier is vindicated but gets no reparations, in the form of a berth in the championship game.
I hate to throw around 10-dollar words; right now I'm eschewing it because I cannot pick just one. This is far from over when it never should have been allowed to reach this point.
Roughly 48 hours to kickoff and we still don't know who is playing for the AUS championship. Did they bring back Friday Night Lights and not tell anyone? This seems more like fiction than reality at this point.— Mike Hogan (@tsnmikehogan) November 9, 2017
Status update on 2017 AUS Loney Bowl football championship game - https://t.co/5iMg0Z7Fwi pic.twitter.com/BkvTLs3FWD— AUS_SUA (@AUS_SUA) November 9, 2017
Canadian University Sport is flawed and will not grow until the ineptitude at the top is removed. #DrainTheSwamp— Jordan Henry (@Jor_Henry) November 9, 2017Given the ruling on not playing the #LoneyBowl, "leadership" proved to be cowardly, placing the game LAST. At this moment I fear promoting the values of CIS Football a waste of time since breaucrats are killing the game thru ineptitude and selfishness.— Jim Mullin (@Jim_Mullin) November 9, 2017
As for the rule itself ... how is it fair, as Jim Mullin pointed out, that a player drafted after his fourth season can have the benefit of playing CFL preseason games and practising with a team until Aug. 15 and then play his fifth year while according to one bylaws interpretation Jack was expected to lay out for a full year and let his football skills atrophy before playing university ball? Sounds rather classist.This week's #KCURadio features an in depth discussion on the @SMUHuskies situation with @GARandall. The Canadian Boxscore features @UConnHuskies @BigPlayHm + National Roundtable with @shelbyblackley. @USPORTSca @NCAAFootball 🇨🇦 https://t.co/Tjv59Cgi5T— Krown Countdown U (@KrownCountdownU) November 9, 2017
Moreover, no matter what, a league that wants to be credible has to play its championship game. Sounds weird, but corporate sponsors are very insistent that when they pay to have their name associated with an event, that the event takes place.Feared it from the start. No Loney Bowl. The worst outcome. Everybody is a victim. Acadia will have a month off now before facing OUA.— monty mosher (@justplainmonty) November 9, 2017Would have voided semifinal and sent X (or Mount A) to Acadia; declaring a champ just doesn't work for anybody; sad end to an AUS season.— monty mosher (@justplainmonty) November 9, 2017Sports season should always end between the lines. Bureaucracy cost a lot of people a chance to play for a title. Black eye all around.— monty mosher (@justplainmonty) November 9, 2017
Meantime, presuming the decision stands, Acadia will end up with three bye weeks before the Uteck Bowl against OUA's champion. And that's the least absurd part of the story.
You can't make this up. This happened on the 20-year anniversary of the Montreal Screwjob. True story.20 years ago today: The Montreal Screwjob. Wait, it was something else than this, no? pic.twitter.com/XuV4mnY4FH— Marty (@martinrkipp) November 9, 2017 - If there is any good to come out of this? The aptest comparison for this argle-bargle is probably Yellow Sunday in the NHL about 30 years ago. For those among us not old enough to remember, New Jersey Devils coach Jim Schoenfeld confronted referee Don Koharski in the hallway after a Stanley Cup playoff game. The game was on ESPN — yeah, ESPN covered hockey once — and the visuals, along with Schoenfeld shouting, "You fell you fat pig, have another doughnut," was in continuous loop.
The game was on Friday night. The NHL handed down a suspension to Schoenfeld without allowing the Devils to present their side of the story — which seems loosely analogous to barring Saint Mary's from a championship game before their player was even ruled ineligible now that I think of it.
The Devils obtained a court-order injunction against the suspension, so when Schoenfeld appeared to coach, the game officials staged "what amounted to a walkout strike." (Sports Illustrated, May 16, 1988.) But they had to play, and they eventually did, with a crew of amateur officials that included linesmen wearing yellow practice jerseys and borrowed pants, hence the term Yellow Sunday.
In all of this, NHL president John Ziegler was AWOL — the head of the league didn't work weekends, even during conference finals. There might not be a direct line from that saga to the modernization of the NHL that, for good or ill, took place when Gary Bettman was hired as its first commissioner in 1993. It was a moment of clarity that showed the NHL had fallen behind the times with meeting its commitments to its players and to its fans.
It never happened again.
It will happen again in U Sports, probably before the end of the fall season at this rate, because it still depends on self-reporting and whistle-blowing.
With properly funded enforcement that could root out a problem in August or early September, it never gets to this point. The national office owns some of this too for being ill-equipped to address this promptly. And Graham Brown admitted as much on Friday when he said they get "220 questions of eligibility interpretations in a given year." Did anyone ever to think that, instead of hiring another marketing person, maybe they should hire people whose skill-set involves answering those questions? At some point, being swamped with demands isn't sympathetic when you refuse to advocate that you have the proper tools for the job.CEO says they get 220 questions of eligibility interpretations in any given year. @CTVAtlantic— Laura Brown (@LauraBrownCTV) November 10, 2017 - Where is this season's Grey Cup again? Oh right. The first reaction upon reading CEO Graham Brown's comment "It just makes sense for us right now, from a business standpoint, to try to realign the Vanier Cup back with the Grey Cup and hold both games on the same weekend," was a self-admonishment to not spike the football. Nobody likes an I-told-you-so'er, but the Grey Cup is in Ottawa, and Ottawa interests have kicked the tires on hosting a Vanier Cup, and someone said after the 2016 debacle Ottawa should get the '17 game. It would have worked, kind of/sort of, apart from the whole having to play on Friday night.How U Sports fumbled the Vanier https://t.co/RRUwmynPm3— Argos End Zone (@ArgosEndZone) November 6, 2017
The hard reality is that the Vanier will never be paired with the Grey Cup as long as the pro game and university game are on opposite battle lines in the Canadian Telco Wars. That needs to be resolved before anyone can figure out how to stage the game.
One observation: less is more. In 2012, the last time the Vanier piggybacked on the Grey Cup, both the attendance figure (37,000 at Skydome for Laval and McMaster) and the media audience somewhat smacked of artificial growth. .
U Sports' need for validation and frankly, for funding, is why it wants that crowd of 20,000 to 30,000 at the Vanier Cup. But it's also fighting currents beyond its control; generally, that mass audience is harder and harder to attract for anything that isn't considered big-time entertainment.
Total blue-sky thinking, but would it be feasible to use a university facility within the Grey Cup city when one is available? Bring in temporary stands to create a pop-up PEPS and try to pack in 12,000 people or so on Saturday afternoon. - And the whims whisper, Marshall. Three deep before even talking about anything occurring between the lines seems about typical for sports in 2017.
If the Western Mustangs and Greg Marshall cannot win a national championship after a season where they have an average margin of victory of 37 points and have outgained opponents by a factor of two (and then some), then what has this been all about? Just go get it done already.
The weather forecast for Yates Cup Saturday is "not as cold with sun through high clouds," which doesn't seem like strikingly anti-passing game weather. Western certainly grades out higher than Laurier in being constructed for bad-weather November football, but the Golden Hawks have a fairly decent defence and a puncher's chance if QB Michael Knevel returns after missing three weeks. A field with some snow on it could actually work in the offences' favour, since receivers know their routes and defenders move with them.Western Mustangs shovel snow and ice off home field for tomorrow's 110th Yates Cup. #oua # yatescup pic.twitter.com/U7tGznMp63— Mark Lee (@MLeePxP) November 10, 2017Western Mustangs shovel snow and ice off home field for tomorrow's 110th Yates Cup. #oua # yatescup pic.twitter.com/U7tGznMp63— Mark Lee (@MLeePxP) November 10, 2017
I would say there's a much greater likelihood of Western winning handily than Laurier pulling an upset. But they said that last year.
Foreshadowing much? At the women's soccer nationals, Western knocked out No. 1 seed Laval on Thursday.Here’s the story on @WesternMustangs women soccer team upset of No.1 ranked team in Canada. #ldnont https://t.co/Re0HFeec1V— Morris Dalla Costa (@MoDaCoatLFPress) November 9, 2017 - And then there were two other championship games outside Ontario. At least one road team wins every year on the antepenultimate Saturday of the season. UBC has won a Hardy Cup on Calgary's field (in 2015); ditto Montréal at Laval (in 2014).
Calgary has betrayed more signs of regression than Laval has during the past few weeks. Based on that, there's probably more potential for UBC to pull a stunner than Montréal. Prove me wrong!Andrew Buckley on tomorrow's Hardy Cup final between the Dinos and Thunderbirds:— Danny Austin (@DannyAustin_9) November 10, 2017
"I love seeing UBC lose as much as I love seeing U of C win"
By the way, a feel-good story that's definitely needed involves retired U of Calgary employee Jack Neumann ponying up to buy football jerseys. One also has to love the insistence that black be minimized in the design: "As long as it was scarlet and gold, that’s the Dinos colours, I didn’t want any black in them or third jerseys. I’m not into that kind of stuff." Can Neumann be in charge of designing Canada's international hockey jerseys, please?Retired Dinos communications director donates football jerseys in perpetuity @UCDinos https://t.co/uBg5yPcuZK #UCalgary #GoDinos pic.twitter.com/RzYLREpiqk— U Calgary (@UCalgary) November 8, 2017 - Ptaszek back. The rule of thumb is leave for the right opportunity, which Stefan Ptaszek never got with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the CFL's long-running gong show. It bears asking whether the greater good, in the hypothetical, is best served by Ptaszek returning to McMaster. McMaster might not be the world-beater of 2011-12, but it seems ensconced in the upper third of OUA. Ptaszek could have more impact keeping Guelph at the big kids' table or helping someone else be the next Waterloo that achieves respectability.
- Edmonton Energy? Edmonton Evergreens? The higher road beckons with the Edmonton CFL team and its dated moniker. Apologists can play the prevent defence of what-abouts, strange this only comes up in the playoffs, there are bigger issues and not all Indigenous people are offended all they wish. Those are just arguments in favour of reinforcing Otherness. To torture the football analogy, though, prevent defences don't work for a reason.Edmonton mayor urges Eskimos to move quickly on name change https://t.co/nlEVPxvsO2 pic.twitter.com/moIc5Dlfx9— CBC Edmonton (@CBCEdmonton) November 9, 2017Calls from Winnipeg for the #Esks to change their name has reignited the debate in #yeg. @AngelaJungCTV asks @doniveson, @EdmontonEsks & @ITK_CanadaInuit for their thoughts tonight on CTV News @ 5 & 6: https://t.co/VMpbWHlN6i #GreyCup #OneEmpire pic.twitter.com/BUpiAXRTFN— CTV Edmonton (@ctvedmonton) November 9, 2017This is easily the worst (?best?) take on the Eskimos name change. Never change #SportsFacebook pic.twitter.com/q2wr9Aicwc— Tyler Yaremchuk (@tyleryaremchuk) November 10, 2017
We only get so much energy and, not that anyone asked me, that could be better spent on a name change that, while mostly symbolic, is more in the spirit of inclusion and that whole Diversity Is Strength campaign the CFL launched.I love the @CFL, I love tradition - but it’s time to change the name “Edmonton Eskimos.” It’s not as heinous as “Washington Redskins”, but it’s on the spectrum. https://t.co/AVrLvoXsec— Steve Hayman (@shayman) November 10, 2017I got your low-impact change right here: “Edmonton Eskers”. An Esker is a long ridge of gravel and other sediment, typically having a winding course, deposited by meltwater from a retreating glacier or ice sheet.— Steve Hayman (@shayman) November 10, 2017
(It’s not worse than “redblacks” :-)"I call on all media to stop using the term Eskimos in your reporting so as to respect Inuit" https://t.co/6aySx4RyBc
— Aylan Couchie (@AylanX) November 13, 2017
Playing defence against a greater woke-ness is just wasted energy.'This is why athletes kneel': CFL players and alumni speak out https://t.co/iv9V10jfZb via @macleans— CFL Headlines (@CFL_Headlines) November 9, 2017 - December duel. Under the heading of "yes, please," currently No. 2-ranked Brock and eternally No. 1 Carleton are moving their Dec. 2 matchup to the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines. Who doesn't have a travelling Jones after learning of that matchup?
— Satbir Singh (@SatbirSingh_) November 9, 2017
Canada’s top two basketball teams to clash at the Meridian Centre https://t.co/ONE68He9iG @OUAsport @USPORTSca @BrockBadgers @CURavens @CUSNetwork— Brock Badgers (@BrockBadgers) November 9, 2017A look at how close @JvMukama and @RyersonRamsMBB was to knocking off @BrockMensBall in regulation last night: pic.twitter.com/IjyrFqypJv— Jordan Henry (@Jor_Henry) November 10, 2017
Seriously, I'm asking; my straight job doesn't let me get out to as many games as I'd like.
Of course, the team that should be everyone's darling is Lethbridge. How about a steal and a buzzer three from DeJon Burdeaux to finish off Mount Royal on Thursday. By the way, Pronghorns coach Mike Hansen, with 280 characters you could have worked in that Burdeaux took only 12 shots while getting his 28 points.Burdeaux returns in 4th quarter after hyper-extending his knee and guts out a great performance (28/10/3/2) with a game winner. @UofLPronghorns @cishoops @mattbattochio @windcitysports @GlobalLeth @DWoodardHerald pic.twitter.com/oHk0ZDCxCO— Mike Hansen (@PronghornHoops) November 10, 2017 - Roy Halladay, 1977-2017. Nine is the number of completion and fulfillment. Harry Leroy Halladay, requiescat in pace, embodied those concepts so very thoroughly.
My best stab at an original thought about the deceased Toronto Blue Jays pitcher is that he imparted that baseball in its purest form is in the individual craftsmanship and, for the fan, in learning to identify and appreciate it. What differentiates baseball is it always has some nuance or nook or cranny that will find its way to you and can often be completely ancillary to whether your favourite team has legitimate World Series chances.Hey #BlueJays fam. Folks will be gathering tomorrow evening at 7pm outside gates 5/6 of the SkyDome as a tribute to Roy Halladay. Please join us. #RIPDoc https://t.co/8GwCR6mSf9— Jenn Smith (@Baseball_Jenn) November 9, 2017
The Toronto sports fan needed someone to deliver that lesson in the aughts, since let's face it, to be a Blue Jays fan from 1985-93 was to be spoiled rotten. I began cheering for the Jays as soon as I could, but it was not until I was 18 years old that they had a going-nowhere-fast season. In that sense, Halladay perfectly was suited for a fanbase that had to re-learn how to love a game for what it is.
To me at least, the Jays might not have been worth an emotional investment 100 per cent of the time, but you had to be completely engrossed when Roy was pitching. The bond felt real. One Toronto columnist, apparently not realizing why so many people were mourning Halladay's death, wrote, "The sad truth of Halladay’s Jays career, of course, is that not a single one of those starts truly mattered."
False. Every one mattered. - Separating art and artist. It is a terrible time to be an abusive man, unless you're protected by a congressional majority. A reckoning for people who made life miserable for multiple humans, well, who would not get behind that?
It is discomfiting, though, that there is an automatic response that the work of the latest disgraced performer — Louis C.K., whoever — should be erased. That's not a call to binge-watch all of C.K.'s comedy specials. But it's another form of enabling — enabling people to forgive themselves without thinking of why they did not take action against men whom they knew to be treating other people badly.
Fading people from memory can reduce the urgency to learn from it.Let’s discuss solutions. How can we prevent this? We must look at what happened more deeply and learn. https://t.co/defJkwlfAo— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) November 11, 2017
Getting back to the point, scrubbing entertainers from existence is unhealthy. I've gone along with that, but it was selective and based as much on personal taste as disgust. Woody Allen? We get it, you have neuroses. Kevin Spacey got overexposed in the 1990s and American Beauty was a bad film, a deal-breaker. Jian Ghomeshi was a fine interviewer but always carried on like he had been asked to solve the world's problems. And so on.
That erasure, can removes the possibility of examining why we were taken in, seduced. On Slate, Willa Paskin wrote of C.K.'s HBO comedy series, "the only bad option is not to think about it. The revelations, as damning as they are, don't make the show worthless, though they do make it a very different kind of document."
Why does the abuser get the benefit of the doubt, always, while the willingness to hear from abusers goes up and down? - Lest we forget. Don't read just one article about a Canadian war hero, but do read the piece that Joe O'Connor crafted about Passchendaele veteran Cecil Kinross:
Heroes, the lucky ones, come home, where their life stories — unlike their war story — continue. Kinross took out that German machine gun in a profound act of bravery, but at a profound personal cost. Passchendaele changed him. It made him the hero he was, but less of who he had been, or might have hoped to be. (National Post, Nov. 9)
At the end of the day, that's what's left after all the commemorations, the poppies, the "thanks Grandpa" posts. Sensing that is why I usually chose to be alone in quiet reflection on Nov. 11. That's classic avoidance, no doubt, but it also feels like the message has shifted within my lifetime.
In the '80s, when more Second World War veterans were around to impart the message there was a much strong sense of "never again" when it came to war, an idea that such a conflict must be avoided at all costs. I do not see that as much at a grass-roots level or at a global level anymore, since everyone plays Call of Duty and global capital loves funding a war.Cecil Kinross VC: The tragic life of a Canadian war hero. https://t.co/0Gj9YVh4ai pic.twitter.com/zzuUYSuj6u— Joe O'Connor (@oconnorwrites) November 10, 2017Surely #LestWeForget is meaningless unless we genuinely try to prevent war and conflict, unless we elect leaders who reject violence as a policy, unless we look to a radically different path. #RemembranceDay must be more than mere words.— Michael Coren (@michaelcoren) November 11, 2017 - The final word, the best word, just a tremendous word for 2017. Voilà !
— worddiction (@worddiction) November 6, 2017
Apanthropinization.
That takes in everything. Donald Trump sides with Putin over the U.S. intelligence community who risk their lives getting sensitive information, on Veterans Day no less, and some Americans still support him? Let it go. Religiously minded voters in Alabama are insistent on voting for a child-molesting Republican instead of his Democrat opponent who prosecuted people who, wait for it, bombed a church during the Civil Rights era? Que sera, que sera.Donald Trump's chemistry with the truth pic.twitter.com/VcEoePrT3n— Curtis Harris (@curtismharris) November 12, 2017
In For A Dozen: AUS cancels Loney Bowl in craven decision, awards Acadia league title, but Saint Mary's takes it to court
Due to exceptional circumstances, this week we'll publish one-by-one.
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