CRACKS OF DON
If it does go away, even for a season, the CFL would be missed ... Florida opens itself up for any sports team ... It’s a great time to be buying ads in newspapers!
OTTAWA — Nobody is wishing for the CFL to skip a season.
Too many are indifferent, but no one hopes for a summer without pro football in Canada.
But what if it does happens? What if the coronavirus forces the cancellation of the 2020 campaign, which is looking to be a strong possibility?
Well, it might be the best thing to happen, provided that the stoppage doesn’t actually kill the Canadian game. Like Joni (no relation to former CFL commissioner Doug) Mitchell sang: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone ...”
Such would be the case with the CFL.
“I say to people, my favourite movie of all-time is It’s A Wonderful Life and (like
Jimmy Stewart discovered when shown by his guardian angel what things would be like without his existence) we could get a chance to see what the world be like without CFL football,” said Roger
Greenberg, managing partner of OSEG, the group that owns the Ottawa Redblacks. “It is so much more than what goes on between the white lines. The game itself is important, for sure, but the impact that the Redblacks can have on the city, the impact the CFL has on the country, is so, so, so much more, with all of the community activities we do ... all the good stuff we do.
“I just can’t imagine all of that would disappear.”
Greenberg admits he isn’t up to speed on the most recent discussions held at the league level. Commissioner
Randy Ambroise has reduced the number of board members and the Redblacks are now represented only by his partner, John Ruddy,a former player himself.
“The last thing I want is to get my knuckles wrapped by the commissioner because I said something I heard two weeks ago that’s not current,” Greenberg said. “I’m smart enough to know what I don’t know, and to leave it to the football guys like John. It’s a fast-changing environment and I don’t want to say something that’s out of date.”
But it’s also fine and fair to state the obvious.
“This pandemic is not something we ever, ever contemplated in our wildest dreams,” Greenberg said. “So I know we’re hoping to get federal government support and we’ll see what happens.”
You really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. But if it happens for a year, the CFL would come back bigger and better than ever.
Unless they pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
TOP OF THE ORDER
Come on down, says Ron
DeSantis. “All professional sports are welcome here for practising and for playing,” the Florida governor stated at a news conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday. “What I would tell commissioners of league is, if you have a team in an area where they just won’t let them operate, we’ll find a place for you here in the state of Florida.” Sounds like a great idea. The trouble for Canadians, however, is getting across the damn border ... So a universal designated hitter rule is expected to be approved by the Players Association as part of a proposal from the league to start the season, eh? Well, you know what they say, better 47 years late than never ... What’s probably a parody, but slightly humorous nonetheless, is a tweet from what appears to be a Jose Altuve verified Twitter account: “The players union should not accept the MLB’s proposal for a shortened season. It’s too dangerous!”
PERSONALLY SPEAKING
Word that the border to the U.S. will be closed for another month means different things to different people. To me, it delays a trip to Baldwinsville (just outside of Syracuse) and my favourite ‘cheap’ golf course, Foxfire. Great layout and they used to charge us $35 (CAD at par) to play 36 holes, with a cart, while throwing in a beer and a burger for lunch ... My friend J.R. has found a seven-day forecast that calls for 26C in Ottawa next Wednesday. The one I’m looking at shows 21C. Mine is fine, but I like his source better ... If I owned a business or was just trying to sell something, I’d think this would be the perfect time to buy an ad in the paper. People have all sorts of time on their hands and are reading more than ever to find out the latest of what’s going on in our world. Just sayin’ ... Saw Major League on Tuesday and A League Of Their Own on Wednesday, but the one old favourite I haven’t watched in a while is Groundhog Day. That’s because I’m living it.
ON THIS DATE
Unless I’m forgetting something, I’ve been fortunate enough to cover games in 39 NHL arenas (every current city in the league except Vegas, plus Atlanta, two in Pittsburgh, two in Montreal, two in New Jersey, two in Philadelphia, two in Detroit, two in Toronto, two in Edmonton, two in Ottawa), but I never did get to the old Boston Gah-den or Colisee Pepsi, home of the Quebec Nordiques. Exactly 25 years ago the Bruins and Nords played their final official matches in their longtime homes. Adam Oates scored the last goal in the Garden, a 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils, while the last goal scored in Quebec was an empty-netter from Scott
Young that sealed the Nords 4-2 win over the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference quarterfinal. The “Rags” won Game 6 back at Madison Square Garden, while the Nords moved to Colorado and won the Cup the next season.
FINISHING TOUCHES
The Hockey Writers website has a piece listing five possible replacements for
Claude Julien should he get fired as Habs coach. They are:
Dom Ducharme (the former national junior team coach who is a Julien assistant), Joel
Bouchard (coach of the Habs AHL team in Laval, and GM of the Team Canada team Ducharme coached), Stephen Julien (QMJHL coach of the year as bench boss in Sherbrooke), Guy Boucher
(former Senators coach) and
Pascal Vincent (head coach of the AHL’s Manitoba Moose, and the league’s coach of the year in 2017-18). Yes, this is what we do with too much time on our hands ... The wishy-washy NHL promises to make a decision this week (or next, or the one after that) on the June draft. Best bet is they announce something before July … I messed up — with the end of her collegiate career at the University of Arkansas, Ottawa golfer Grace St-Germain is becoming a club pro, primarily to coach golf. Comparing her career in any way to Brooke Henderson’s was dumb. Tomorrow I’ll be better.