CBC Sports Plus delayed indefinitely

William Houston reported the other day that the long-anticipated CBC Sports Plus digital sports channel not only won't be launching this year, it may not launch at all. Houston cites carriage issues as one of the major problems, which makes sense considering the difficulties TSN ran into trying to get Rogers to carry TSN2 (and TSN2 had much more high-demand programming when it started than CBC Sports Plus was anticipated to have).

This is disappointing news for Canadian sports fans as a whole, as more channels tend to mean more sports events are available. However, it may be particularly damaging to CIS fans hoping to see more televised university sports content. I've been following the CBC Sports Plus saga for several years now, and first spoke to CBC Sports head Scott Moore on the subject for a Queen's Journal piece on CIS TV coverage in March 2008. At that time, he seemed quite optimistic that the CIS might have a plcae on the new channel, commenting, "I think it’s a great product that’s underexposed at the moment."

In September 2008, I took another look at the channel (see the factbox at the bottom of the page) and some other university sports initiatives, including some of The Score's new initiatives and Streaming Sports Network's expansion of its coverage. The other two networks were already in existence and thus had much firmer ideas about their coverage of CIS events, but Moore still sounded very positive about CBC Sports Plus and the chance to televise amateur sports content such as CIS sports. As I mentioned in my CIS Blog companion piece, CIS made a lot of sense for CBC, as the CRTC mandated them to carry at least 30 per cent amateur content per week and 80 per cent amateur content per year. CIS sports fit both of those criteria very nicely, and the timing of many CIS games on weeknights and weekend evenings would have been perfect, seeing as much of the other potential amateur content (skiing, curling, swimming, etc) generally takes place on weekend mornings.

The really disappointing thing about this is that it seems the Canadian Olympic Committee's proposed amateur sports network (which I also wrote about in the first piece) is also dead in the water; its website hasn't been updated in over a year. Both networks seemed quite promising and very interested in televising CIS content, and their interest alone might have convinced the other existing networks to see CIS programming as more valuable. Even the success of one of them could have made a substantial difference given the amounts of amateur sports content they were talking about carrying. For the moment, though, it looks like the status quo will prevail.

There is some reason for hope, though. Houston's report makes it clear that CBC Sports Plus hasn't been officially written off yet, and it could still launch in the future. If the CBC is able to acquire some high-end sports properties (more NHL content, some Blue Jays games, more soccer and basketball), they could be in a stronger position to force cable companies like Rogers to carry a new channel. Alternatively, Rogers Sportsnet's ratings could improve to the point where Rogers is no longer terrified of upstarts cutting in. There's also the chance that the CBC and cable companies might be able to come to a reasonable deal that would permit the channel to launch. It's not dead yet, it's just resting!



[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Upcoming CIS basketball live blogs

I'm off to Ottawa later this morning for the men's basketball nationals, the Final 8. It should be a great tournament. Four of the five of us from The CIS Blog are going to be in attendance and will be providing wall-to-wall coverage there, but I'm also planning to do some stuff at this site. In particular, I'll be involved in the live-blogging of all the Friday and Sunday games, and thanks to the magic of CoverItLive, you should be able to access those live blogs here, through Out of Left Field or through The CIS Blog. I have to return to Kingston for some Journal meetings on Saturday, so I won't likely be in on those live blogs (I think the guys are still planning to do them), but you can access those at The CIS Blog. Here's tomorrow's slate of games:

#2 Calgary vs. #7 Concordia: 12:30 p.m. Eastern (SSN Canada)

#3 UBC vs. #6 Dalhousie: 2:30 p.m. Eastern (SSN Canada)

#4 Western vs. #5 Ottawa: 6:00 p.m. Eastern (Live on The Score), also webcast live at SSN Canada)

#1 Carleton vs. #8 St. FX 8:00 p.m. Eastern (Live at SSN Canada, rebroadcast at 10 p.m. Eastern on The Score)

The 2008 Sporting Madness Christmas Gifts, Part I

Continuing in our proud 1-year tradition, and in step with everyone else who uses the meme, here's the Sporting Madness Christmas gifts for the world of sports:

Soccer:

- To the Vancouver Whitecaps and Bob Lenarduzzi: a nice, gift-wrapped MLS franchise. That could make the entire city happy. I'll have more on their chances soon.

- To the Montreal Impact: good luck for their forthcoming CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal matchup against Mexico's Club Santos Laguna. Montreal's unexpected run has been tremendous to watch, and it would be great to see a Canadian team keep going.

- To Toronto FC: Well, they did already get one very nice Christmas present, but we'll send them a quality designated player as well and a playoff berth. This franchise has been great for Canadian soccer and the city of Toronto. They have so much support and so many tickets sold in advance that they really could just go through the motions, so it's refreshing to see them continue their involvement with the community.

- To Dwayne De Rosario: A happy homecoming and a tremendous time with TFC.

- To Manchester United: Some polish for that World Club Championship trophy [The Times] and good luck for their match against Stoke tomorrow.

- To Cristiano Ronaldo: Some better cleats so he doesn't fall down so frequently.

- To the Seattle Sounders of MLS: solid support from the local fans and media. After all, they're one of the only bright spots on the Seattle scene in what was possibly the worst sports year ever for a city [Jim Caple, ESPN].

CFL:

- To the B.C. Lions: An increase in the salary cap. That way, they wouldn't have had to part ways with the likes of Jason Clermont [Tim Switzer, Regina Leader-Post] and Tyrone Williams [Lowell Ullrich, The Vancouver Province] (no, not that one) for reasons that were probably more financial than football. The current cap is far too restrictive.

- To Lions' head coach/GM Wally Buono: Some good binoculars. He'll need them to find replacements for all those who have left or may be leaving, including Clermont, defensive player of the year Cameron Wake, defensive coordinator Mike Benevides [Ullrich, The Province] and Otis Floyd [The Province]. Fortunately, Buono is a personnel mastermind and there's a great supply of players out there now, thanks to the recent demise of the Arena Football League [myself, Out of Left Field].

- To the Calgary Stampeders: Congratulations on that Grey Cup and an increase on the scouting budget, so they can replace the likes of Brandon Browner and Sandro DeAngelis if they jump to the NFL [David Naylor, The Globe and Mail].

- To the Edmonton Eskimos: Relocation to the East Division, as well as a nice mention in TMQ. It's too bad they lost the East final: I would have loved a Battle of Alberta Grey Cup.

- To the Saskatchewan Roughriders fans: A sense of decorum, and some new gloves to give them a better grip on their cans of beer [Greg Harder, Regina Leader-Post].

- To the Winnipeg Blue Bombers: A diminished sense of propriety. Having cheerleader photos show up on The Big Lead is not really a scandal. Hey, at least you got the American press talking about the CFL! [A.J. Daulerio, Deadspin]. (By the way, can we please bring back Gourmet Spud's CFL D###-Joke Free Jambor-eh? It was my favourite Deadspin feature.)

- To the Toronto Argonauts: A good new head coach. I think Benevides would be perfect for the job, as much as it would suck for the Lions to lose him. The CFL needs a strong Toronto franchise to stay healthy, especially with the cross-border incursions from the Buffalo Bills.

- To the Montreal Alouettes: One healthy Mike Giffin [Neate Sager, Out of Left Field]. Insert at tailback for best results. Caution: Not intended for use as a fullback.

- Also to the Alouettes: Thanks for putting on a great Grey Cup weekend and delivering stellar TV results, even if certain anglophiles didn't like them.

- To the Hamilton Tiger-Cats: A winning season. We all know they need one.

NFL:

- To Plaxico Burress: A new suit, with a built-in holster. That way, he wouldn't have to go clubbing in his sweatpants [Rick Chandler, Deadspin].

- To the Dallas Cowboys: Some nice team-building activities! That way, you wouldn't wind up with crap like this [Dashiell Bennett, Deadspin] happening.

- To Terrell Owens: A little bit of maturity.

- To Bill Cowher: A nice new head coaching job (but not the Browns: he deserves better!).

- To the Buffalo Bills: A wealthy local investor who can buy the team and keep them out of Toronto.

- To the Arizona Cardinals: A playoff berth. It's been a long, long time coming.

- To the Pittsburgh Steelers: Another Super Bowl title. I'd love to see this one, especially considering that they barely have any offence; it would vindicate my love of hard-hitting defence.

- To Ben Roethlisberger: A new offensive lineman or two to give him some more protection in the pocket. Failing that, some extra padding to make all those sacks hurt a little less.

- To the New England Patriots: A quick playoff exit (or a failure to get in at all). I'm really sick of this team. Weren't they supposed to be toast already with Brady gone?

- To the New York Giants: My undying gratitude for ruining 19-0, making one of my predictions work and giving us possibly one of the best football games ever (and my vote for the greatest play ever, attached below).



Hockey:

- To the Vancouver Canucks: A nice, gift-wrapped Swedish star [Jeff Paterson, The Georgia Straight]. More on this later.

- To Roberto Luongo: A magical healing chamber. His team needs him back [Iain MacIntyre, The Vancouver Sun], and fast.

- To Trevor Linden: The best wishes of all Canucks fans. It was great having you here, Trevor, and you'll be sorely missed.

- To Mike Gillis: A mild raspberry for canceling my interview earlier this year, but congratulations for creating a solid Canucks team out of other people's castoffs.

- To Kyle Wellwood: A Stairmaster, so he can stay in shape and keep this great run of form going.

- To the Phoenix Coyotes: Some money to delay their inevitable failure. Oh wait, the league already gave them that [David Shoalts, The Globe and Mail]. How about an even more favourable arena deal? [Scott Burnside, ESPN].

- To the Fresno Falcons' players: New contracts somewhere else. A franchise folding in mid-season [James Mirtle, From the Rink] is bad enough: it's worse when it comes right before Christmas. They were leading their ECHL division, but they couldn't overcome their franchise's off-ice incompetence.

- To Washington Capitals' web producer Brett Leonhardt: A very merry Christmas, and a new lifelong dream (as he got to achieve his old one this year) [Lindsay Applebaum, D.C. Sports Bog].

- To Kirk Muller: A nice Golden Gaels tie so he can remember his time at Queen's [former sports editor extraordinaire James Bradshaw, Queen's Journal]. Hey, it might bring good luck as well: the McGill tie worked for Mike Babcock [Earl Zukerman, McGill Athletics]!

- To Brian Burke: An extra layer of thick skin: he's going to need it in Toronto.

- To Dave Nonis: Some new Leafs clothing. Great to see him get another important job. I thought both him and Burke weren't treated terribly well in Vancouver. Both are great hockey guys and will do well with the Leafs.

- To George Parros: A mustache-grooming kit, so he can maintain his excellence in facial hair.



[Photo from SI.com]

CIS:

- To Laval: Some champagne to sip from the Vanier Cup. They had a great year, and they fully deserved the trophy.

- To Benoit Groulx: A fair tryout for quarterback at the CFL level. He won't get it because he's Canadian, and that's a shame; his play in this year's Vanier Cup was better than several quarterbacks currently in the CFL.

- To the CIS organizers: Inspiration to put the Vanier Cup back with the Grey Cup. That worked brilliantly last year, but this year showed that having the games back-to-back in separate cities isn't the best for the university game from any point of view. With the games together, that's plenty of free promotion for the university game, and you'd also get much more media interest. There aren't a lot of football-savvy media types in Canada, and splitting them between the two events means that many organizations will opt to only cover the Grey Cup in person. Laval will do an okay job of hosting, but I would have much rather seen the Vanier again linked with the Grey Cup.

- Also on that front, it would be great to get some clarification about the amateur/pro rules in CIS sports, especially soccer. As Srdjan Djekanovic himself informed me in a comment (which he then removed), basically the only thing that made his participation in CIS championships after playing professionally legal and Andrea Lombardo's illegal was a couple of pieces of paper that allowed him to retain his amateur status. There's nothing wrong with that if everyone's on the same page. However, the press release about Lombardo only mentioned him playing professionally and didn't discuss the distinction at all; that leads to unnecessary speculation and controversy. The Byzantine nature of the eligibility rules and the differences for each sport make it way too hard to understand who can play and who can't, and that's probably why we keep seeing these violations in different CIS sports; most of them are honest mistakes or misinterpretations of the rules rather than attempts to cheat. Let's make it simple and easy for everyone to understand.

- To the sports information directors across the CIS schools: A sincere thanks for all that you do. Your work makes things a lot easier for all of us who cover the league. Special thanks to Mike Grobe of Queen's, Dan Carle of Ottawa, Ari Grossman of Laurier, Earl Zukerman of McGill and Mary Beth Challoner of the University of Toronto. One thing that would be nice would be to see consistency in statistics, though; some schools do a great job, but there's far too many mistakes in other cases.

- To the University of Toronto football team: Hearty congratulations for snapping the losing streak. It's great to see the Blues back on the road to success. Also, congratulations to Greg DeLaval on the removal of his interim tag [Neate Sager, cisblog.ca].

- To the Gaels' men's soccer team: some coaching continuity. They could use it.

- To the Queen's bean-counters: Some extra alumni donations to dissaude them from moving the new hockey rink to West Campus [myself, Queen's Journal]. This is an incredibly bad idea. The hockey rink was going to be a focal part of the new building, and that's why our teams have had to put up with the constant travel last year and the antiquated Memorial Centre this year. You owe it to them to give them the promised new state-of-the-art rink in a central location where they can draw fans, not a prefabricated building out in the boondocks of West Campus.

- To the Gaels' rowing teams: Some craft beers to celebrate their excellent season. Year in and year out, they are probably the most successful teams at our university despite little publicity or funding. Keep up the great work.

- And finally, to Queen's football: Framed copies of all the records shattered this year. It didn't turn out the way many had hoped, but it was one hell of a ride. Best of luck to you all.

That concludes the gifts for the sporting world. Part two, featuring gifts for those who cover it, should appear tonight or tomorrow.

Vent Day, Part II: On Giffin and CIS stats

“Once blood is shed in a national quarrel, reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men."
- David Lloyd George

"It's true, I'm a Rageaholic.....I just can't live without Rageahol!" - Homer Simpson

[Satirical letter: please don't think this is real!]

Dear Mike Giffin,

I'm sorry to inform you that the single-game rushing record [myself, "The GBU: Queen's football versus Toronto", Sporting Madness] you set Saturday [myself, "Football: U of T - Queen's live blog", Sporting Madness] has been retroactively removed by the CIS bean-counting machine.

In our infinite wisdom, we've decided that the initial game stats were wrong, and you actually only earned 212 net yards rushing, instead of 215.
Now, we could have informed you earlier, maybe even during the game so that head coach Pat Sheahan could have left you in for another play or two to clinch the record. After all, he did say [myself, "Campus Corner: Preview of Queen's - U of T football game", Sporting Madness] that the reason he pulled Rob Bagg last year before he could break the record was because he didn't know how many yards Bagg had.

We also could have informed the media of the accurate stats right after the game, but we decided it would be more fun to let such outlets as The Canadian Press [via The Globe and Mail], the Kingston Whig-Standard and Out of Left Field let you think that you'd actually broken the record and keep the issue muddy until Monday night, over 48 hours after the game and long after everyone's deadlines.

Better luck next time,

[signed] The Evil CIS Stats Machine [/signed]

[/satirical letter]

Yes, it's three yards, and the above may be overstating the case a little: this is a vent, after all. The problem is that those three yards make the difference between a record-breaking effort and a good game. I don't claim to know better than the official statisticians, and the total of 212 is probably right. I have no problem writing articles with the 212 total either, as I don't have any vested interest in Giffin breaking a record on not.

The issue is the delay until the stats were clarified. In the NFL or the NCAA, the current stats are available instantly, so coaches, reporters and everyone else knows exactly how far someone has to go for a record. Not so much at the CIS level, which is understandable given the resources available. That's fine, and I get that: I'm not expecting professional quality.

The problem is when there are conflicting sources giving different statistical information, which happens far too often at the CIS level in a variety of sports. Those of us who cover the games are usually working on tight deadlines: I filed my Out of Left Field report the instant the game ended, even though I didn't have the full statistics yet. The CP story was filed later that day, the Whig game report Monday and my story came out Tuesday (but the paper was already at the presses when I found out the stat line had changed, so I couldn't alter it). That's three reliable sources that all had the wrong information due to a delay in clarification, and there are now massive omelettes all over all of our faces.

The other problem is that this wasn't avoidable. Each of our media outlets had to go with the best information we had at the time. I made the call that the 215 yards was better supported based on the sources I had it from, and I don't regret that: as shown above, I was in decent company. At the time we went to press, the CIS box score was the sole site giving 212: all the press releases, news articles and game recaps I saw had 215, and I figured it was safer to go with that than what could have been just a missed keystroke in the box score (and what my sources told me until last night was just an error on the CIS end). Also, I'd rather accidentally give a record than take one away, so 215 made more sense from that point of view as well.

Writing the article without Giffin's stats was unthinkable. Writing "Giffin had a good game" without supporting data is not only incredibly vague and useless, but also blatant editorializing. He was the key offensive player of that game, and he certainly deserved to be mentioned. It's awfully fraking* difficult to write about a running back in any meaningful way without including his stats.

*For those of you who don't watch Battlestar Galactica, check out this great AP article by Chris Talbott [via Yahoo! News] on the genesis and the genius of the word "frak" and its related forms.

In my mind, immediately available and accurate stats are the biggest barrier to expanded CIS media coverage. Sportswriting (and broadcasting) has to include a quantitative element as well as a qualitative one these days, and football stats in particular are incredibly important: look at how the popularity of fantasy football has stimulated interest in the NFL.

I've written about the problems with the league's stats before, as have plenty of others with more credibility, including Greg Layson of the Guelph Mercury, Rob Pettapiece of The CIS Blog and James Mirtle of The Globe and Mail.

CIS sports have a lot going for them, as I wrote about here in a news story and here in a column. The problem is that they're underexposed. In order to gain exposure, they need to be more professional with stats, interviews, highlight packages and the rest. I doubt you'd see stats screwups like the ones mentioned above in the NCAA, and I think that's part of the reason it gets more coverage: there's a professional feel, and you know that your stats are going to be reliable.

I'm not trying to bash the SIDs or the athletic departments here: most of them are underpaid and overworked, and many of them have managed to improve the professionalism around CIS sports considerably. The Toronto host crew last week did a terrific job, and I don't blame them for possibly forgetting to include a three-yard loss in Giffin's stats, if that's how it happened.

What should have happened, though, was an instant clarification to all involved SIDs as soon as the stats were changed. The SIDs could have then passed that on to the reporters, and at worst, we maybe get one or two articles that have to be corrected, instead of every article about the game. Instead, we wound up with a muddled situation where no one knew what was really going on until late Monday night, over 48 hours after the game. That needs to improve. I'm fine with making a change in the interests of accuracy, but CIS needs to make sure that everyone involved knows of the change, everyone knows it was intentional and knows the reasoning for it and everyone gets the information as soon as possible. I don't think that happened in this case.

(Note: Vent Day, Part III is postponed until tomorrow later today... the first two took longer than I thought to write. Feel free to vent about my poor scheduling in the comments!)