Monday Headlines

BUT WE'RE STILL GOOD AT HOCKEY.....RIGHT?

Timmy, for the sake of this country, you'd better hope so - 'cause Canada is sure not winning anything in basketball anytime soon. Now I'm not here to rag on the Canadian men's basketball players in the FIBA America's Championship, because I appreciate that they're out there trying hard every night. And Canada is ranked 16th in the world, which sounds pretty impressive until you look up the rankings and see that Angola is ranked 14th. In doing some research this morning, I found out that Basketball Canada is not federally funded - how is that possible? Every other sport in Canada gets some federal money but the national basketball team has to rely on Nike, Hilton Hotels and Molson. The federal government needs to get involved immediately. But not just with monetary sponsorship, we need to start a cloning program. Apparently the only way Steve Nash is going to play for Canada is if we make our own copy of him. Then the original Nash can play full-time in the NBA and the government's copy can play full-time for the National Team. I think this is the only solution to stopping 50 point losses to the U.S.

BUT WE'RE STILL GOOD AT RUGBY.....RIGHT?

No Timmy, turns out we're not. The Rugby World Cup starts September 7th and unlike soccer, Canada can actually qualify for this World Cup. But the success probably ends there. The Canadian Team finds itself in a pool with: Wales and Fiji, both of whom are apparently better than Canada (ok, Wales I can see but Fiji - c'mon!), Japan, the team in the pool Canada can beat, and Australia, who will beat Canada so soundly it will be over in the first 10 minutes - anything less than a 60 point loss to the Aussies will be considered a win for Canada. I didn't bring this up just to rag on one of Canada's national teams again (see above) - I put it up because New Zealand is playing and is obviously one of the favorites, so it gives me an excuse to put up a clip of The Haka. Avid readers will know the only clip I love putting up more than The Haka, is Dennis Green - see how I just worked that in there?

NOSTALGIA FOR NOSTALGIA'S SAKE....AND CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP DOLLARS

In what can only be described as a sadly transparent attempt to capitalize financially on people's nostalgia for 1972, Canadian hockey players begin playing Russia today to "celebrate" the 35th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series. Ok, first of all the 35th anniversary is ridiculously arbitrary. Is it important because it ends in a 5? Celebrating the 35th anniversary of an event is like celebrating a 3 month anniversary in a relationship - it just doesn't make any sense and doesn't really mean anything does it? And not only that, but it's junior hockey players that are playing to "celebrate" this anniversary. So not one of the players was actually alive when the original Series took place. And, depending on the age of some the players, their parents might not have even been alive in 1972. Don't be fooled by catchy tag-lines like, "Renewing the Rivalry" and other crap like that, this has nothing to do with history and everything to do with money.

BYE WEEKS = NO PROBLEM FOR LOCAL SPORTS MEDIA

By now it's fairly evident that the Regina Pats training camp was scheduled to coincide with the Saskatchewan Roughriders bye week so that the local media would have something to talk about. It's a good thing that the CFL season and the WHL season make up almost an entire calendar year, otherwise people around these parts would be lost. I'm also starting to think that Eric Tillman traded for Corey Holmes and pulled the plug on the lights at Taylor Field just so that his team would be in the news during their bye week.

WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT TSN?

First of all, it looks like I may not be able to watch Monday Night Football tonight because TSN is moving the game to their Alternate Feed (which I do not get, thank you very much SaskTel) so that the network can broadcast the first day of the U.S Open tennis tournament. To the marketing geniuses at TSN - thank you very much. Of course the most popular sport in North America should be preempted for the opening day of a tennis tournament that will last 3 weeks. Nobody actually watches Monday Night Football anyway, do they? But as if that wasn't enough, according to TSN.ca the network will show the best of Chris Benoit on Off The Record today. This has to be an obvious ratings grab by one of the worst shows on television (I've said for years that I want to see the ratings numbers TSN gets for Pardon the Interruption and Off the Record - to see how big of a drop-off there is from PTI to OTR). Should any network anywhere be giving air time to a man that killed his wife and son and then himself?