THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY LOPSIDED GAMES.

and then not really get interesting until Thursday or Friday.

“Then there will be three or four games you want to watch on each sheet and you can only watch one on TV.

“I’m sure when we get there,therearealotoffans who are going to feel the same way. There are going to be people wondering why they couldn’t have watched all those games throughout the week,” he said. Lopsided games? In the first dozen draws alone, these were some of the scores: 9-3, 12-7, 10-2, 9-2, 8-3, 9-3, 12-5, 9-4, 14-3, 9-2, 8-2, 8-3, 10-5, 12-6, 10-3, 11-4, 10-3 ...

And that was before the final Pool B draw where Prince Edward Island’s Eddie ‘Spuds’ MacKenzie finally got to put the boots to somebody. P.E.I. 14, Nunavut 2. The final indignity.

Those were just the games where Velcro was ripped, handshakes exchanged and an ‘X’ put up on the scoreboard after incompleteends.

That’s the statistic that probably said it best. In the first 12 of the 14 draws of pool play, 36 of 48 games failed to finish a 10th end and most were over after the eight-end minimum. In five complete draws, all four games failed to make it to the 10th.

As a sports columnist, allow me to state that many of the pretenders turned out to be terrific stories and were embraced. It’ll be sad to see themgo.

The bottom line has been if you didn’t watch the actual curling, this new format Brier has been terrific so far.