Sporting Madness

One play. One mistake. That's all it came down to in one of the craziest endings to a football game I've ever seen . After Saskatchewan got stopped deep in their own end and punted, they still seemed to have a great chance to hang on and win. In fact, disaster almost struck for Montreal on the punt itself when Brian Bratton bobbled and then fumbled it, but Etienne Boulay saved the day, diving on the ball. Still, Montreal only had 40 seconds to work with, no timeouts and a starting position on their own 34. There were a few mishaps, but Anthony Calvillo completed two long passes and Montreal was in position to kick the winning field goal, but it was from long range and kicker Damon Duval had struggled all game. The ball was snapped, the hold was good, but Duval drove it well right of the uprights. Jason Armstead ran it out and took a knee, and it looked like the Riders had won. Not so fast. In a moment reminiscent of the legendary call that ended Don Cherry 's coac...

From McMahon Stadium, it's a live blog of the Grey Cup! Come join in! <a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;altcast_code=886ae2647f" >Grey Cup live blog!</a>

Today's Grey Cup clash between the Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders is all set to kick off in about 40 minutes, and I'm planning to live-blog it right here. I have a brief preview column up over at The Rookies , but I figured I'd use the last few minutes before the game to write a more detailed one here. Without further ado, here's some thoughts on what may be crucial parts of the game. Quarterbacks: On paper, this one looks like a bit of a mismatch. Montreal has Anthony Calvillo , who just won his second straight Most Outstanding Player award after a season where he completed an incredible 72 per cent of his passes and threw for 4,639 yards and 26 touchdowns while only being intercepted six times. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan has Darian Durant , who wasn't even guaranteed to be their starter this year. Durant has come on in the last few weeks, though, and led a tremendous comeback against the Calgary Stampeders in the West Final last week. Moreove...

Join me and the rest of the cast from The CIS Blog for a live blog of the Vanier Cup contest between Queen's and the University of Calgary. Kickoff is set for 12 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Mountain/9 a.m. Pacific. The Final Countdown! Vanier Cup live blog, Calgary vs. Queen's

I've been planning to bring back my regular Link Train feature for some time now,and the amount of great coverage of the Grey Cup out there provides an excellent opportunity. I'll throw in a few Vanier Cup links as well, as I'll be live-blogging that game (from my Calgary hotel room) with the rest of the gang from The CIS Blog tomorrow at 12 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Mountain, 9 a.m. Pacific. I'll be back to regular coverage of other sports as well after Grey Cup Weekend. Song of the Day: U2 - Mysterious Ways This has always been one of my favourite U2 songs. The rhythm groove of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. fits perfectly with The Edge 's guitar work and Bono 's vocals. Plus, it was played at CFL commissioner Mark Cohon 's press conference this morning, which gave me a great excuse to use it here. League links: - David Naylor of The Globe and Mail reports that Argonauts' owners David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski are ...

Tonight's Gibson's Finest CFL Player Awards were mostly about performances on the gridiron, but there was one off-field performance that was also recognized. Marwan Hage , a centre with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, picked up the Tom Pate Memorial Award. The award is presented annually to a CFL player who displays qualities that distinguish them from their peers, including sportsmanship and community service. Hage certainly did that this year ; he hosted food drives that fed over 2,300 families, brought 1,000 underprivileged youth to a July 18 game and regularly brought 40 local kids to each home game, giving them a meal and a t-shirt and meeting with them personally. That's really impressive, and it shows the true nature of the CFL and how much some of these guys do for their communities. "I always said that once I established myself as a player, I was going to establish myself in the community," Hage said. He's certainly done that.

Jesse Lumsden isn't here at this week's Grey Cup, but he's having plenty of sporting success this weekend. Lumsden, the former CIS star with the McMaster Marauders and current Edmonton Eskimos' running back, picked up a gold medal with Canadian legend Pierre Lueders in the two-man bobsled event at the European Cup in Koenigssee, Germany. This isn't quite as unusual as it sounds. Other athletes in individual team sports have made the transition to Winter Olympics events very successfully, many of them as bobsled brakemen. One example is the man who partnered with Lueders to win a silver medal at the 2006 Olympics, Lascelles Brown. The Jamaican-born Brown (insert Cool Runnings joke here if you like) was a stellar athlete growing up, but he didn't start his bobsled career until 1999. He raced for Jamaica in the 2002 Olympics and then gained Canadian citizenship in time for the 2006 Olympics. Even though he wasn't competing for Jamaica, he became the firs...

For Martell Mallett , his rookie season started with low expectations. "Coming in, I just wanted to make the team," he said. "I just wanted to get the opportunity." He got the opportunity thanks to the departure of Stefan Logan and injury concerns with Ian Smart , and he made the most of it, rushing for 1,240 yards and six touchdowns on 214 carries. He also caught 43 passes and added 432 receiving yards and two receiving touchdowns. Tonight, he was named the CFL's most outstanding rookie at the Gibson's Finest CFL Player Awards. "Coach Wally and the offensive staff gave me the opportunity, and I just took it and ran with it," Mallett said. Mallett played college football for the little-known University of Arkansas - Pine Bluff, so he said this award is one of the biggest milestones in his football career so far. "Coming from a Division I-AA school, you can’t even get a bowl beard, so to win this is great," he said. "I’m co...

Montreal Alouettes' guard Scott Flory earned his second-straight selection as the CFL's most outstanding lineman this evening at the 2009 Gibson's Finest CFL Player Awards. Flory had a great year; his line only allowed 35 QB sacks this year, third-lowest in the CFL, and he was effective in both the pass and run game. The Alouettes finished first in total yards, passing yards and rushing yards per game, with 390.3, 288.4 and 119.9 yards in each category respectively. Flory earned his seventh CFL All-Star selection as well this year. Flory passed much of the credit off to his teammates, though, naming each of his fellow offensive linemen (regular and reserve) in his acceptance speech and giving them most of the credit in his post-award media conference. "It's easier when you play with guys like that," he said. For Flory, a Regina native who played at the University of Saskatchewan, it's refreshing to see a lot of young Canadian offensive lineman excel...

It wasn’t all that long ago that Jason Clermont was tearing up the CFL statistically. In 2002, he was drafted fourth overall by the B.C. Lions and made an immediate impact, catching 46 passes for 735 yards and six touchdowns and earning the CFL’s Most Outstanding Rookie award. In 2004, he had a career year, recording 83 catches for 1,220 yards and seven touchdowns. He also put up 1,000+ yard seasons with B.C. in 2005 and 2007. In 2008, he was held to 50 catches for 640 yards and three touchdowns, still very solid numbers, but he was released by the Lions after the season ended. He signed a deal with Saskatchewan nine days later and played this year with the Roughriders. In terms of pure statistics, the move didn’t pay off. Saskatchewan has probably the best Canadian receiving corps in the league, so Clermont struggled to find time with the likes of Rob Bagg , Andy Fantuz and Chris Getzlaf competing for catches. He only recorded catches in 12 different games this year, and only had...

I’m in Calgary to cover the Grey Cup, and will be providing plenty of material on it all week. First off, though, I thought I’d address the importance of this event.As a writer covering both the CFL and NFL, and one who frequently writes for an American audience, I’ve faced my share of skepticism about the league and the Grey Cup over the years. Detractors of the CFL often try to diminish it by direct comparisons to the NFL, and on that playing field, the CFL can’t compete; it doesn’t have the resources to pay the NFL’s massive salaries or stage anything on the scale of the Super Bowl. Those detractors are missing the point, though. The CFL isn’t trying to be the NFL, and the Grey Cup isn’t trying to be the Super Bowl. Instead, both offer compelling alternatives. Despite having only eight teams, the CFL has a devoted following across the country, and it delivers exciting action that often goes down to the wire week in and week out. The three-down game makes for an interesting product...

Come join us below for the live blog of the CFL Western Final, between the Calgary Stampeders and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. CFL Western Final

It's an oddly-named Eastern Final this year in the CFL playoffs, as it features the league's westernmost team, the B.C. Lions. The Lions finished fourth in the West Division this year with a 8-10 mark, but earned a crossover berth thanks to finishing ahead of Winnipeg. They knocked off Hamilton last week, but now will take on arguably the league's best team, the Montreal Alouettes. Come join in at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific to see if they can continue their run! CFL East Final: B.C. v. Montreal

This year in CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport) football has seen some crazy games. The Ontario playoffs in particular have been excellent, and the Queen's Golden Gaels emerged as Yates Cup champions with wins over the McMaster Marauders and the Western Mustangs . Today, they knocked off the Laval Rouge et Or 33-30 (see my friend and former Queen's Journal colleague Mike Woods ' CP story here ) to advance to the Vanier Cup , the Canadian university championship. There, they'll take on the University of Calgary Dinos, who demolished the Saint Mary's Huskies 38-14 in the Uteck Bowl earlier today. In the wake of the Queen's game, Canwest News Service's Peter James made an interesting remark that served as the inspiration for this post. Tongue-in-cheek, he tweeted , "BCS supporters can point to the #CIS to show why their system works. Queen's upset prevented at No. 1 vs. No 2 Vanier Cup." That's true, as Laval ranked first and Calga...

I'll be live-blogging the Queen's - Laval CIS football showdown in the Mitchell Bowl tomorrow (Saturday) at 1 p.m. Eastern with the rest of the crew from The CIS Blog . Laval's heavily favoured, but as I said on Norman James ' radio show this evening, Queen's may be able to hang with them. Laval's taken a bit of a step back this year and the Gaels have really come on. In my mind, the key is winning the trench fights, and Queen's offensive linemen (particularly centre Dan Bederman and guards Vince DeCivita and Jonathan Koidis ) and defensive linemen (especially ends Osie Ukwuoma and Shomari Williams ) did just that last week against Western. If they can pull that off again, my prediction of Queen's by a field goal may yet come true. Come join in the fun at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. &amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=a5c5491660" ...

ESPN's decision to suspend columnist Bill Simmons from Twitter for two weeks [ Mediaite ] is the wrong move. The suspension wasn't highly publicized, but came out as the result of an investigation by Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead , which prompted ESPN.com editor-in-chief Rob King to write a blog post explaining the decision. Here's King's statement : "We have internal guidelines designed to inform how we discuss the topic of sports media. These guidelines are important us, because they help maintain the credibility with which ESPN operates. No one knows the guidelines better than Bill Simmons, and he customarily works within these standards. He also understands, as does everyone else at ESPN, that we regard these guidelines as being equally important when participating in social media. While it's unfortunate -- and sometimes painful -- that not everyone outside of ESPN chooses to play by such rules, we choose to hold ourselves to higher standards. R...

(Cell phone pics may not be impressive, but they're all I could get.) Last week, I bemoaned how many of us in the media often transform quarterbacks from a story into the story of a game. Yet, if you were to pick a game where quarterbacks were the story, Saturday’s Yates Cup clash between the Western Mustangs and the Queen’s Golden Gaels would be a pretty good one. With the head-to-head matchup of Michael Faulds and Danny Brannagan , two 10,000 yard passers and the top two guys on the CIS career passing list, many expected a passing shootout, and they were not disappointed. Faulds completed 25 of 38 passes for 509 yards and one touchdown in a losing cause, while Brannagan completed 27 of 47 for 515 yards and five touchdowns in Queen’s 43-39 victory and was named Yates Cup MVP. Both passers threw for over 500 yards, which is an incredible feat. There are only nine 500-yard passing games in the history of the NFL, and perhaps a few more in the CFL; I wasn’t able to find those...

Thanks to finally having a bit of time, I've brought back my The Whole 110 Yards CFL column over at The Rookies . My latest installment, a playoff preview, ran yesterday ; it might be worth a read if you're interested in looking at how my predictions compared to what actually happened. I'll hopefully have another installment up Tuesday breaking down yesterday's playoff games, and I'll be covering the CFL playoffs here and there all the way through the playoffs to the Grey Cup, which I'm headed to Calgary for. If yesterday's games are any indication, we could be in for a great ride!

Along with the rest of the staff from The CIS Blog and Arden Zwelling of the Western Gazette , I'll be live-blogging the Yates Cup at 1 p.m. Eastern today. Come join in the fun! &lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=8add9d124d" &amp;amp;gt;Yates Cup - OUA Finals - Western vs. Queens&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Today was Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day in the U.S.), so I've been doing a lot of reflecting on soldiers, wars and history. Ryan Gallivan has a good round-up of some excellent reading for the day, including this tremendous piece from Matt Ufford of Kissing Suzy Kolber fame on his experiences in Iraq, so I encourage you to check that out. However, there's one other story that always comes to my mind around now, and it's one that truly deserves to be remembered. If you haven't yet, I urge you to read Gary Smith 's excellent stories on former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman . If you have read them, go back and look at them again; they're well worth it. Tillman gave up a lucrative career in the NFL to go serve his country in the wake of the September 11 attacks and tragically lost his life doing so. What impressed me even more than his decision, though, was the outstanding person he was from all accounts. I love these pieces because Smith doesn...

I'll be discussing the Canucks' season so far over at Canucks Hockey Blog this evening with Richard Loat , Hosea Cheung and Guts McTavish . We'll kick it off at 10 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Pacific. Feel free to stop on by and check it out!

An omnipresent but under-discussed element of sports in our modern era is the significance of the story. We often tend to think of stories as just factual representations of what goes on in a game, but the sheer amount of action involved in sports means they have to be both more and less then that. A breakdown of every single play without any kind of cohesive narrative structure or context from the thoughts of players or coaches would accurately relate what went on, but it would be exceptionally long and tedious. Thus, we edit, and we try to relate what we saw in terms of some larger overall angle. This isn't just journalists or bloggers either, but every fan who talks about the game with their friends afterwards; the tendency is always to pick out certain aspects that struck you as the most important and build a cohesive framework of a story from them. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, as it creates much more interesting discussions than a dry blow-by-blow of every play, bu...

Join us in the live blog below! Thanks to Arden Zwelling of the Western Gazette for hosting! &amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=f1dd57622f" &amp;amp;gt;OUA Semi-Finals — Western vs. Laurier&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Join us in the live blog below! &amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=fcdeda428e" &amp;amp;gt;OUA Semifinal live blog: McMaster-Queen's&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Just a quick note that I'll be live-blogging today's OUA playoff football games with a cast of characters from The CIS Blog , Always OUA and The Western Gazette , among others. Queen's takes on McMaster at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m Pacific, and Western takes on Laurier at 4:30 p.m. Eastern/1:30 p.m. Pacific. Both games are on The Score , and both live blogs will be posted here. Hope to see you then!

It all comes down to this. The 8-9 Edmonton Eskimos and B.C. Lions face off for the third and final playoff spot in the CFL's West Division. The winner's in, while the loser has to hope Hamilton beats Winnipeg on Sunday. To add even more drama, this is the last game that will be played in B.C. Place until 2011. The action starts at 10:30 Eastern; 7:30 Pacific. Come join me then for the live blog! B.C. Lions - Edmonton Eskimos

I'm starting up a Yahoo! fantasy basketball league with some of my fellow bloggers from The Rookies . We still have a few spots left, so if you're interested in joining us, the league id is 360797 and the password is neilyoung. You should be able to join us here . Our live draft will be Friday, Nov 6 at 5:15 p.m. PST (8:15 p.m. Eastern), but you can also autorank players if you're not able to make the draft. Hope you can join us!

When I first heard about the Deadspin-ESPN war , I wasn't particularly impressed. Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio (who I previously interviewed here way back when ) is one of the top bloggers out there these days in terms of influence, and he's done a lot of great things with Deadspin, but I didn't think this would be one of them. From his initial post on Steve Phillips and subsequent ESPN horndoggery posts, it sounded like he was only slightly deceived by an ESPN PR guy and decided to go ballistic with unverified rumours as a result. I read the posts on the matter by Chris Littmann and Brian Cook and thought they made good points, particularly on how this might affect the credibility of the blogosphere. However, time does change some things. For one thing, there's been no all-out war against the blogosphere by the mainstream media. The organizations that have discussed the story ( ESPN itself , Time and The New York Times , to name a few) have mentioned Deadspi...

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Las Vegas for the Blogs With Balls convention and had a great time. There was so much that came out of it that was worth writing about, as evidenced by all the great pieces that have showed up in the blogosphere on the conference since then. You can find most of the recap pieces linked at the official conference site here , and you can also look at parts I , II and III of my series if you're interested. I've been working on a final piece from there since then, but haven't had time to put it up yet, and in some ways, that's probably good, as it gave me time to reflect on it. This is the last official part of the Feat, Loathing and Blogs series, but I'll certainly be touching on some of the panelists' remarks and some of the things that came out of the conference more briefly in future posts as well. This series isn't just about conference recaps, but rather where the sports blogosphere may be going, so I hope it's st...