Sporting Madness

It's Friday Night Football in the CFL, and the early game should be a great one tonight. I'm live-blogging the match between the 1-3 B.C. Lions and the 2-2 Hamilton Tiger-Cats starting at 7:30 Eastern. It should be a fascinating one to watch, as the Lions will try and rebound from a 48-10 thumping last week at the hands of Calgary. That loss was bad enough to prompt owner David Braley to issue a rare public apology [ Lowell Ullrich , The Province ] for the team's dismal performance. It was possibly the worst loss head coach Wally Buono had suffered in seven years [ Jeff Blair , The Globe and Mail ]. However, all is not lost yet , according to Vanya Tucherov of the great BC Lions Den . Now, the Lions are underdogs against the Ti-Cats for the first time in a decade. Can they rebound, or will their nightmarish season continue? Find out tonight! B.C. Lions v. Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Apologies for the lack of content around here lately. I've been working full-time for the past couple of weeks, filling in for editor Kurt Langmann at the Aldergrove Star , and have been swamped with other writing in my downtime, so I haven't had a lot of time to blog here. Don't panic, though; today's my last day, so things should hopefully return to normality soon and anything you still can't cope with will then be your own problem ! Anyway, I'll hopefully have a real post up before the end of the day. I'm also planning to live-blog the B.C. Lions - Hamilton Tiger-Cats game tomorrow (7:30 P.M. Eastern) and the Vancouver Whitecaps - Cleveland City Stars game Saturday (7 P.M. Eastern) but until then, here's a few links to some of the other pieces I've been writing. - A report on the BC Peewee and Bantam baseball provincials coming up this weekend. [ The Aldergrove Star ] - The second part of my list of annoying fan traditions. Everyone's favo...

It should be an action-packed evening in North American soccer. I'll be covering the Toronto FC - Columbus Crew game at 7:30 Eastern (4:30 Pacific) and the Vancouver Whitecaps - Puerto Rico Islanders game at 10:00 Eastern (7:00 Pacific), but there's also plenty of other MLS action, including New England at Houston at 8:30 ET, the L.A. Galaxy at Kansas City at 9:00, the New York Red Bulls at Colorado at 9:30 and D.C United at San Jose at 10:30; some of the other guys at Epic Footy will be reporting in on those games as well. Come join us for what should be a great evening of soccer! Soccer Saturday live blog

It's getting close to the end of the work week as we know it, and that means it's time for one of my favourite moments each week in the summer; a B.C. Lions game. The Leos are hosting the Calgary Stampeders tonight in the second game of TSN's Friday Night Football doubleheader (the early game is Toronto against Winnipeg). I'll be live-blogging the B.C. - Calgary game here and at Out of Left Field . Kickoff is at 10:30 Eastern/7:30 Pacific. This should be a good one. Both the Lions and the Stampeders got off to poor starts, and they both sit at 1-2 after three games. That's not what many had expected, as the Stampeders are the defending Grey Cup champions and the Lions went to the West Final last season. Still, they've both struggled early on, so both sides will be eager to get back on track tonight. Calgary may be in good shape to do that. After a 40-27 thumping by Montreal in Week One and a 42-30 defeat against Winnipeg in Week Two, the Stampeders responded wit...

There will likely be plenty of angry rants about this Jay Mariotti blog post popping up in the sports blogosphere over the next while, and deservedly so. I've complained about Mariotti before thanks to his embodiment of the absolutist shock journalism principles heavily promoted on Around the Horn , where he's a frequent cast member. However, this is a new low even for him. This time around, Mariotti used a tragedy (the Erin Andrews incident, which I discussed with James Brown and First Derivative in The Phoenix Pubcast Monday (episode 2) and also talked about briefly on Twitter over the past few days) to restart his anti-blogging crusade. That's reprehensible in and of itself. What makes it worse is that he didn't offer any valuable points in his column, as mainstream journalists such as Erin Nicks , Chris Zelkovich , Michael Rand and Bruce Arthur did. They offered thoughtful criticisms of the blogosphere, and I agree with some of the points they made; they ...

For a while, it looked like the Wesley Charles - Charles Gbeke incident had been completely settled. The Whitecaps' long break helped, and the two even took a pre-game lap of the stadium together before the team's next home match. Today, though, another incident happened and the Whitecaps immediately released Charles. Here's the press release sent out this morning by Nathan Vanstone , the Whitecaps' manager, broadcast and communications: "WHITECAPS RELEASE WESLEY CHARLES VANCOUVER, BC - Vancouver Whitecaps FC announced today that defender Wesley Charles has been released by the club. During Tuesday’s training session, Charles took exception to a tackle by fellow defender Jeff Parke and attempted to strike Parke. Charles was immediately dismissed from the grounds and training resumed. 'This is the second incident between Wesley Charles and a teammate in just over a month, and as a result, we have decided to release Charles outright,' explained Whitecaps p...

It's Friday night USL action on Fox Soccer Channel and USLlive.com! Join us in the live blog below for the Vancouver Whitecaps - Carolina Railhawks game: USL First Division: Carolina - Vancouver

It was rather exciting to see former Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell sign with the Saskatchewan Roughriders yesterday [ Murray McCormick , Regina Leader-Post ]. Harrell, the NCAA Division I career leader in touchdown passes, is one of the most impressive quarterbacks I've seen. As I wrote a while ago , there's a great chance he would have been able to succeed in the NFL if not for the groupthink that determines the evaluation of NFL quarterbacks. Harrell had a far better season and career statistically than first-overall draft pick Matthew Stafford or fifth-overall pick Mark Sanchez , but went completely undrafted and then failed to catch on with the Cleveland Browns as a free agent. The logic behind passing Harrell over? Well, it isn't especially convincing. NFL evaluation of quarterbacks has long placed college numbers below such things as height and arm strength. The NFL also consistently passes over "system" quarterbacks who run pass-heavy offences i...

I managed to make it down to Seattle yesterday to catch the Mariners knock off the Rangers 5-3 [ Lookout Landing ], and thought I'd present a few thoughts on the game in classic GBU style . They follow below: - The Good: - Ichiro Suzuki : Ichiro was impressive as usual, going two-for-five while making several outstanding plays defensively. He scored from first with an impressive burst of speed around on a Jose Lopez double, and pulled off a nice unusual slide at home to boot, staying away from the tag while throwing his arm out and catching the corner of the plate. However, perhaps his best moment of the day was his RBI single; he took a swing and didn't get much on it, hitting the ball lightly to the pitcher, but managed to beat the throw to first with an impressive sprint. He's having an incredible season so far at the age of 35, with a career-best .480 slugging percentage, .873 OPS and 133 OPS+, a .362 batting average (second-highest of his career), and .393 on-base p...

I'm on the road down in Washington State this weekend, so posting will be a bit scarce. Catching the Mariners - Rangers game later today, though, which should be a lot of fun. Anyways, I did manage to complete a Canuck Puck take on the Andrew Raycroft signing: check it out ! I'll be back with plenty more sports coverage here in the next few days.

I'll be live-blogging the second game in the CFL Friday Night Football lineup tonight, which features the B.C. Lions hosting the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Both teams lost their opening games last week, so they'll be eager to pick up their first win of the season, but that's going to be a difficult task for the Tiger-Cats. For one thing, despite an appalling showing last week against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, B.C. had plenty of chances to win the game, including on the last drive. That's not too bad against a pretty solid Saskatchewan team, especially one playing in their home fortress of Mosaic Stadium. Meanwhile, Hamilton got their clocks cleaned at home by the lacklustre Toronto Argonauts. The final score was 30-17, but the Tiger-Cats looked worse than that to this observer. Moreover, as Globe and Mail football reporter David Naylor relates on his blog , the Tiger-Cats are 2-22 in June and July since 2005, and no team from the Eastern time zone has won in B.C. since...

Quite a while ago, I wrote about the commenting purges over at Deadspin and interviewed editor A.J. Daulerio about them. There have plenty of other developments in the sports world and the blogosphere since then, so I haven't returned to the subject; Andy Hutchins has a good breakdown of the new commenting system over at The Arena (and one that sparked a rather interesting response , plus substantial further debate ) if you're interested in that. However, some further material came to light today, which I felt was worth briefly addressing. Hutchins passed on a link to a Mediaite piece on Gawker Media czar Nick Denton 's reinstatement of pageview bonuses to Gawker Media writers and potential willingness to pay for tips or photos, and that piece in turn linked to a fascinating interview with Denton at the Nieman Journalism Lab (a great site, by the way). There's a few tidbits in this one that are worthy of note. Most interesting is an internal memo Denton passe...

I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s game between the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Minnesota Thunder from the Swangard Stadium press box. It should be a good one; both teams are down towards the bottom of the USL First Division table, so they’ll be eager to get full points. Join me for it at 10:30 P.M. Eastern; 7:30 P.M. Pacific! Vancouver Whitecaps - Minnesota Thunder

Today's loss to the Tampa Bay Rays (47-39) dropped the Toronto Blue Jays (43-44) below the .500 mark for the first time this season, which, sadly, is probably a more accurate reflection of this team's ability than their 22-12 start that gave them the best record in the American League [ Jerry Crasnick , ESPN.com ]. That early start was largely piled up against weaker opponents, and was also aided by some incredible performances from unlikely pitching stars. Since then, the Jays have fallen back to earth. This still isn't a bad team, though. The Jays aren't the best team in baseball by a long shot, but they are a bit unlucky and have a knack of losing close games by a run or two, as this most recent sweep by Tampa Bay has demonstrated; the Jays fell 3-1, 10-9 and 3-2 in a series of very winnable games that dramatically hurt their record and their playoff chances. Their Pythagorean win expectation (which suggests what a team's record should be based on runs scored an...

I recently read Malcolm Gladwell ’s latest book, Outliers , and was quite interested in some of the ideas he brought up. Gladwell discusses how it is almost impossible to predict who will succeed at certain jobs, such as quarterbacking at the NFL level, teaching and giving financial advice. The implications of this idea for the world of sports are myriad, but what really jumped out at me was what these theories and conclusions might mean for the world of sportswriting. Gladwell’s general thesis in the book seems to be that the success attained by remarkable individuals is not due to their innate abilities alone, but also to the supporting infrastructure they have and the environment they operate in. At first glance, this would seem to run against the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches dream that still epitomizes much of North American society. However, when you closely examine the situations involved, this isn’t necessarily true. For example, perhaps the most poignant example in Gladwell’s...

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I'm taking off for a few days to go camping, so things have been somewhat light around here due to preparations for that. I do have a lengthy essay on sportswriting and Malcolm Gladwell scheduled to go up tomorrow morning, though, and I should be back with fresh content Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Until then, here's a few links to tide you over: My work: - A post on the Canucks' acquisition of Mikael Samuelsson [ Canuck Puck - A piece on the death of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair [ The Phoenix Pub ] - A piece on the Sedins returning and a few other signings [ Canuck Puck ] Other good pieces: - James Mirtle sees the Canucks as a team with cash still to spend [ From The Rink ] - Joe Posnanski on the Royals' lack of speed - Neate on the Raptors picking up Turkoglu [ Out of Left Field ]

The CFL's always a good option for CIS football diehards looking for offseason entertainment, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders are one of the teams to watch. As Neate pointed out with his list of CIS players in the CFL the other day, Saskatchewan is well ahead of the rest of the league in terms of CIS content. The Roughriders, who start their season tonight against the B.C. Lions, have a league-high 21 CIS-trained players on their roster. I'll be live-blogging the game here tonight; kickoff is at 9 p.m. Eastern. Saskatchewan's Canadian-trained talent is perhaps most evident in the receiving corps, where the Riders have two players who are already stars (slotback Jason Clermont from the University of Regina and wide receiver Andy Fantuz from Western) and three more with serious star potential (wide receiver Rob Bagg from Queen's, who I profiled here , slotback Chris Getzlaf from the University of Regina and wide receiver Adam Nicolson from the University of Ottawa...

I haven't written much about the "Zidane and Friends" series of charity exhibition matches being played across Canada this summer, as they really don't appeal to me. Sure, there's some interesting players supposedly involved, including the legend himself, but at the heart of it, it's just "an oldtimers' game", as my father referred to it in our conversation this morning. There's much better and more interesting soccer going on in MLS and the USL, and that takes more of my attention. The Toronto match was interesting , but still lacked many of the promised names [ Larry Millson , The Canadian Press ], so I wasn't overly concerned about following the Vancouver one set for July 4. However, some interesting news came out today. Reports spread across the Vancouver media landscape today that Zidane hurt his back [ Full Time: Vancouver's Soccer Show in town while watching the Canada Day fireworks with his kids and might not be able to pla...

Apologies for the horribly long absence; I had to spend most of the past week preparing for a move and then flew across the country yesterday. I'm back in the blogging saddle now, though, and have plenty of stuff planned here for the next few days. Until then, here's a link to two of the pieces I've managed to write in the meantime and some other pieces I've enjoyed reading recently. - A piece I wrote Monday at Canuck Puck on the Canucks' involvement in free agent rumours and laying out my blueprint for Vancouver's free-agency moves. - A piece analyzing the top 10 picks of the NHL draft I co-wrote over at The Rookies . - An interesting piece by First Derivative over at The Phoenix Pub on why the acquisition of Marian Hossa may hurt the Blackhawks thanks to the length of his deal. - Neate has a breakdown of the CFL players from the CIS ranks over at Out of Left Field . - A great piece from Joe Posnanski on the Royals' problems handling injuries. Th...