If you want to blame Chris Jones, the general manager of the Saskatchewan Roughriders for their deplorable season, that’s fine. But you can’t blame Jones the Coach. Jones, consistently, put his players in a position to succeed on Sunday during the Labour Day Classic, but you can’t coach people to make field goals or extra points. You can’t coach quarterbacks to not throw interceptions, and you can’t coach execution. For years, I have listened to Rider fans gripe and whine about the lack of creativity with the play calling. I don’t see that with this team. Instead, I see a team that, simply, doesn’t have the ability to do what the coach wants them to. Now, if you want to say Jones is terrible when it comes to determining when he should and shouldn’t throw his challenge flag, yeah okay. I’m on board with that. But, herein lies the problem with challenges: when you use them all up, the officials then have a free pass to screw up the calls for the rest of the game. Wouldn’t it be better if the coaches couldn’t challenge, but rather there is an eye in the sky who doesn’t have a vested interest for either team and he can decide whether or not a play call should be reversed. Yes, the Riders were hosed late in the fourth on a phantom pass interference. I think, in hindsight, the referee would like a do-over. Taking the power to challenge calls out of the hands of coaches and into an all-seeing non-field official would make it much better. I’ve always said that if you need to spend considerable time reviewing whether or not the right decision was made, then you already have your answer.
The whole video review, in all sports, is a joke. Think about it. We can analyze an offside in hockey to see if a portion of a skate blade is over the blue line prematurely on a play where nobody stopped trying and it had no bearing on whether or not a goal is scored. But, we can’t review a check from behind that could end someone’s career. Does that make sense to you? The idea, when it first surfaced about 20 years ago, was a good one. But, it’s gotten out of hand and is no longer used the way it was intended.
Speaking of hockey, the World Cup is a couple of weeks away and there are already a smattering of news reports concerning players who have to bow out because of injury. I’ve never seen so many players drop to the sidelines without ever having played. The reality is the World Cup is a gimmicky tournament that has nothing to do with national pride, but rather using a player’s place of birth is a means of making teams, that’s it.
I did some research on the weekend and discovered there are over 1.1 million police officers employed in the United States. How many are bad? I haven’t any idea. Obviously, there are some but the force isn’t ripe with corruption like the media and Black Lives Matter would have you believe. Assuming all the media reports of alleged police abuse are true (and I won’t even agree that they are), what’s the percentage of ‘bad’ cops in America? 1%? Less than 1%? That’s what we are going to protest? Colin Kaepernick is going to disrespect an entire country’s values over 1% of the police in America? While it’s noble to try for 100% ‘good’ for police forces, the reality is that it just isn’t possible and the focus, instead, needs to be on harsh enough penalties for those who are caught abusing their power so that it acts as a deterrent for others. Think about it: if the penalty for abuse outweighs the reason for being abusive, that in itself will put an end to most corruption. Making people mad by sitting down during an anthem does nothing but generate more hate. It’s counterproductive.
Here’s why you only need to read the headlines of some of the newspapers in our country: Is the air show in Toronto a display of skill, courage, and teamwork? Or is it a glorification of the tools of war? How long did it take a writer to try and enrage less than intelligent Canadians with that idea?
I don’t like to give Justin Trudeau credit, but I will this week. He’s, perhaps, the best I’ve ever seen at avoiding ideas on how to fix the economy, a growing debt, decaying infrastructure, and increasing unemployment. He’s able to do this by glossing through interviews with generic sentences on social issues that almost any of us could summon from the grey matter we have. Taking a few phoney pictures with his wife and child (I’m assuming the nannies have the other children as it’s difficult to fit them all in when jumping over cracks in the pavement) is what keeps him popular with us all. This is where Stephen Harper went wrong. The guy needed more staged photos. That’s what we, as Canadians, want. I can’t believe how many of us fall for it.
Nice people this week: Gord Lees, Arlene Griffiths, Brendan Wagner, and Candace Tendler.
