Too cold for football - Play Cup indoors

Image via Wikipedia

By Terrance GAVAN
The CFL needs to reset their thinking.
First we need to get the grey cup back to an afternoon start
And then we have to get it to venues that can support an influx of idiosyncratic fans from across Canada.
Some of us don't use anti-freeze.
And it gets effin cold out in Edmonton.
This time of year.
The cup should be played indoors.
Period.
I will be in Edmonton this year.
Freezing ..........
Because they mandate a 4 pm start and the sun is down.
So even when we luck out with weather like we did in Calgary last year ... We still lose to the nite sky.
BC, TO and Montreal should rotate until Winnipeg gets a dome.
And no.
This is not a wimp blog.
It's a frank indictment re the length of a season that could end in October.

Related articles

• CFL playoff underdogs have history on their side - but not the Argos (thestar.com)
• Deja Vu, All Over Again! (ethelthefrog.com)
• Riders get Grey Cup rematch (theglobeandmail.com)
• Winter weather to hit Edmonton for Grey Cup (calgaryherald.com)
• Surprising Riders set up Grey Cup rematch (thestar.com)
• Saskatchewan upsets Calgary in frosty CFL West final (ctv.ca)
• Riders' Morgan, Simpson eager to face Stamps (canada.com)

The NHL is right – No one gets hurt in a hockey fight –Doh!

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Pardon my Eruption ... but let's get real

Terrance Gavan

Apropos of a recent dust up between New York Rangers forward Sean Avery and Edmonton’s Lav ‘The Impalee’ Smid, fans, pundits and players are gabbing.

   “Avery’s gutless,” says one player.

   “He’s a worm,” says another.

   “Lemme at him … lemme, lemme at him … I’ll moider da’ bum,” spits Sylvester the Cat.

   “Edmonton Oilers defenceman Ladislav Smid didn't skate Monday morning at Millennium Place in Sherwood Park after taking a sneak punch flush in the kisser from New York Rangers antagonist Sean Avery Sunday,” writes the Edmonton Journal’s Jim Matheson. “He might not play against the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday.

Image via Wikipedia

   “While the Oilers aren't throwing out the ‘concussion’ word, Smid did take a ripping blow to the head from Avery and had to be helped off the ice at Madison Square Garden.”

   First, I couldn’t give a tinker’s diddle about Avery.

   Take a close look at the wording of the pundit.

   Matheson whispers the “concussion word” almost as if he’s trading freemason secrets.

   Grab a pair Jim.

   I saw it six times and I’ll guarantee that Smid has a concussion.

   The Oilers won’t open it up because of new rules instituted by the NHL to take care of players who suffered head trauma in the line of duty.

   Duty in this case should not include the delivery of an unimpeded haymaker thrown at the head of an unsuspecting combatant.

   It’s odd.

   The NHL policing concussions while supporting legalized pugilism.

Who CARES about the Cobwebs? Let's Talk about Beausejour Curling!!

Gimme a break, Shameless O' Braggart:

 

Who CARES about the Cobwebs?

 

Focus on teams that matters in leagues that matter. 

 

For instance, in the Beausejour Men's Thursday night curling league, the Pierce rink is poised to win its first game of the year tonight at the SunGro Centre in Beausejour.

 

That this is considered news of importance is rooted in the build-up of tension that has occured the past four Thursdays (not to mention a good portion of the last half of the 2009-10 season). "If I could just get my sweepers to listen to me, we would be fine," stated the skip, who appeared to be in a slightly metacognitive mood last Thursday after a last-shot loss to the Versluis rink.

 

"I make all my shots," he said, "but it's really hard to find good help nowadays."

 

The team's press manager also reported that two of the four curlers will be away, "indefinitely due to stress-related causes."

 

More on this tomorrow morning.

 

-30-

 

A weekend of yadda yadda yadda

By Terrance Gavan - PTE Managing Editor
Okay so how does it feel to be Jason Garrett the erstwhile interim coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
You've won your NFL debut over a pretty fair team - New York Giants - and from William Rhoden in the New York Times some timely speculation about who's ultimately going to coach this team.
Is it Bill Cowher (former Steelers knock) or will it be the booth guy John Gruden.
Or, says Rhoden, it could be - and should be - former Colts' honcho Tony Dungy.
Yeah, so take the W while you can coach Garrett.
Cos apparently you don't deserve no frickin' respect.

Fighting should be banned in the NHL - Period

Another Youtube NHL hockey brawl - ain't it all just effin grand?
By Terrance O'Gavan - PTE Managing Editor

The Sean Avery sucker punch and the crap that follows is a disgrace and an embarassment.
So much said ín the space of this two minute video is exasperating and embarassing.
In no other sport in the world is such bullshit behavior rewarded  in such frozen terms.
Soccer?
Gone!
Football?
Gone!
Basketball?
Gone!
Baseball?
Gone!
Hockey?
Apparently it's just another day at the rink.
Sucker punches. Fights.
Kunckle-dragging pissant pugilists getting $1.5 million per annum for doing nothing.
Except answering the bell when another pissant knuckledragger like Sean Avery gets outta' hand.
Disgusting.
Uninteresting.
No talent.
Boring.
Humiliating.
And just plain ugly.
This is why hockey is not regarded as a sport.
More likely to be viewed as trailer park trash.
By the rest of the world.
We have removed fighting from all other organized sports.
In Canada we treat our youngsters to the You Tube extravaganzas seen below.
It's batcrap crazy.
I'm sick, tired and flummoxed by a sport that feels the sheer beauty of the game is not enough to draw fans.
So the league refuses to deaL WITH IT.
SPOUTING TIRED OLD DOGGEREL LIKE: We need it.
Players need it.
It stops the cheap shots.
It's fan friendly.

Yard Darts and Relative Dysfunction - Rev Donald Francis Gavan

By Terrance O'Gavan - PTE Managing Editor

Oh my .. what an awesome discovery - alcohol and
yard darts don't mix. Not my cousin Tom Proulx ...
but it could have been!

Reprinted from the Highlands Communicator some time ago
Okay, so some of you may remember yard darts.
It was a lovely little “fun for the whole family sport” which raged round backyards in the late seventies and early eighties. It was a staple at many family parties.
Yard Darts are 12 inches long with a weighted, pointy metal tip on one end, and three plastic fins on a rod at the other end. The darts were tossed underhand toward a horizontal ground target, where the weighted pointy end hits first and sticks into the ground. The target is typically a plastic ring. Less typically, but more or less frequently, dependant upon the level of alcohol consumption, the heavy, piercing, two pound projectile would find other, more entertaining, places to land. The family heirloom crystal punch bowl, Aunt Neddy’s unsuspecting 18-year-old Siamese cat, the windshield of Uncle Tony’s 1965 vintage Porsche or the newly installed $5,000 bay window on cousin Edwina’s solarium.
For those of you too young to remember the fun – since Yard Darts were banned in Canada in 1989 – it goes something like this. Picture a yard filled with a dozen or so semi-toddlers, 26 scrambling teenagers on summer hiatus from strict Ritalin regimen, eight doddering seniors, twenty to thirty middle-aged adults in erratic and various states of inebriation, three dogs, two cats and two teams of three twenty-something cousins, each with beers in hand, at opposite sides of the rambling yard. Now picture a brightly colored fire-engine-red projectile with a heavy metal sharpened tip whistling with whispered finality toward earth, from a 93-foot orbit, and into this cacophony of oblivious humanity.
Hasbro, or Mattel or whoever made the Yard Dart version of the game suggested placing the target hoops about 50 feet apart or “further dependant upon skill level.”

Vitamin-fortified junk food – hallelujahs for techno cuisine

This is a deep fried Mars Bar - invented in Scotland
that hotbed of haute cuisine. It can now be fortified
with vitamin a, b, c and d ... anti-coagulants and anti-
cholesterol stuff. Also on the way - friendly gravy!

Bonbons, butts, buckshot and bullets – on becoming consumer friendly
By Terrance Seamus O’Gavan
Health Canada is investigating the efficacy of adding vitamins to junk food.
About time too.
Good stuff like potato chips, double-dipped chocolate covered cheese-puffs, and cotton candy have been taking some hard knockin’ raps of late.
Woebegone naysayers in Canada’s meds profession are already manning the ramparts, and calling on the organics cognoscente to fight this trending toward totalitarian technology.
“I think that almost certainly what it will lead to is the fortification of junk food, of highly processed food, that really we should be discouraging the consumption of,” says Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa.
Horse hooey. What a namby-pamby.
Relax and abate good doctors. The people like it.
Forget all that useless claptrap about apples and oranges, broccoli and carrots.
Forge ahead. Get with the program. It’s 2009 for god’s sake.
Your kids hate parsnips and pomegranates. They love Pringles, Pez, peanut brittle, and popcorn. Add a bit of Vitamin D, some Human Growth Hormone, a spackle of Vitamin C, B12, garlic, and testosterone to that 550 gram Mars bar, and voila!
Your compost and rubbish diet is fundamentally fortified with a mélange of anti-aging, cancer-battlin’, weight-wackin’, cold-crunchin’ and swine-flu fightin’ agents.
Win-win. Junk food crunched to healthy living.
The paradigm spins. Mottos move. A 21st century campaign is borne.
“A Snickers a day keeps your doctor at bay.”
And why stop there for god’s sake.
The good news is spreading.
The gun lobby is on board. Like Season Shot, an ammo supplier. Years ago they came up with bird shot made from oregano, garlic, onion, pepper and other spiced treats.
Check out Season Shot’s startling new ad: “Ammo with Flavor! Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact … When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird.” Whoeeee! And it comes in a wide array of flavors.
Now, gun makers are jumping on board this techno train.
National Rifle Association stalwarts Remington, and Smith and Wesson, are even marketing a safe bullet. You heard me.
A spokesman for Remington, Cleveland Gusto, says that all of their bullets –even those flak-jacket piercing, cop-killing, tightly-wound titanium-alloy 44-aught loads – will now be injected and fortified with vitamins C, D and E, a broad-base antibiotic, and a full 100-milligram dose of Anti-Inhibitor Coagulant Complex, an agent that speeds clotting in trauma victims.
“Drive-by deaths are on the rise in North America,” says Gusto. “In an effort to help appease this upward trend in senseless carnage, we will now be using a beneficial clotting agent to give innocent bystanders, cops, firemen, and other collateral damage victims some extra time after receiving a typically fatal gunshot wound.”

Rambling Rosie D - tortured logic and shivered squawks

Pardon MY ERUPTION!
Hockey Hall of Fame awards engenders spit and drizzle from an unlikely source
By terrance gavan - PTE Managing Editor
Okay I get it.

Sorry for the pic Rosie. From her Guelph Mercury days.
For a beautiful story by Rosie Click Here:
http://news.guelphmercury.com/opinions/article/266364
Dynamite piece! 

The TorStar’s Rosie DiManno is a girl stuck in a dude’s world.
A terminally bright and wonderfully talented columnist, she cut her teeth in sports and has moved forward to produce eye-popping correspondence from some of the world’s hot spots.
Her reportage from the gawker backdrop of the Afghanistan elections was gutsy, edgy and raw.
I like Rosie. She’s a formidable talent.
I have always been drawn to her sports writing, simply because she’s a stretched envelope in a twitter-cheep, dumb-downed world.
Cantankerous when she needs to be. Seldom reclusive with her opinions.
No surprise then that she was front and center in the Star’s coverage of the induction of the first women – Angela James and Cammi Granato - to the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday (Nov 8) night.
That Rosie was a bit less than genteel or politically correct in her assessment of the landmark event was de rigueur.
“The first woman to have her name engraved on a Stanley Cup was Marguerite Norris” writes DiManno. “The year was 1954 and her Detroit Red Wings had just won the NHL championship. Ditto the next year.”
Norris was the eldest daughter of deceased owner James Norris and oversaw the Wings until a palace coup removed her.
“If any female deserves recognition by the Hockey Hall of Fame — and I’m not convinced that moment has arrived, despite Monday night’s induction of (James and Granato) as estrogen trailblazers enshrined in the Yonge St. tabernacle — it should probably have been Marguerite in some builder or executive category,” says DiManno.