Sporting Madness

Reports of the death of fans' interest in the Toronto Maple Leafs have been exaggerated. Bob McCown and Jim Kelley spent the first 15 minutes or so of Prime Time Sports ' 5:00-6:00 hour today discussing the idea that no one cares any more because the team isn't in playoff contention, and offered two major arguments as to why this was so; the Leafs' game story from last night was on the fifth page of the Toronto Star 's sports section, and there have been less callers than usual who want to talk about the Leafs during their 4:00-5:00 call-in hour. This is a flawed analysis, however. First, let's examine the placement of the story in the Star. I don't have the print edition handy, but you can see the listing of the stories in today's paper here , which is generally organized by importance. The top story is about hurdler Perdita Felicien 's return to competition, which is a reasonably big deal; she's a well-known Olympic athlete and the Star is k...

Photo: For Hockey Night in Canada, the song doesn't remain the same. (Photo from The Globe and Mail ) CTV announced today [ tsn.ca ] that they've acquired the rights to the popular "Hockey Theme", better known as the opening soundtrack to the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada , "in perpetuity." This comes shortly after the CBC's last-ditch attempt to bring in Gord Kirke as a mediator (as if he didn't have enough on his plate with the Leafs' GM search). There are several intersting aspects to this move. First, it draws a hell of a lot of attention to TSN's new six-year deal with the league, and with every one of their games now featuring at least one Canadian team, the case can be made that their "Hockey lives here" slogan is becoming more and more accurate. It continues their attempt to look more like the first line instead of the grinders and checkers. It also should bring a fair bit of public goodwill to their side: just look at ...

Okay, an interesting thing here. The Province story on Dave Pratt's plagiarism mentioned only the one specific example, but said the piece "contained some clear similarities" to Reilly's article. I thought the other things would be pretty minor if they weren't mentioned, which is why I perhaps wasn't as severe on Pratt as I might have been in the first post. I also thought it might be difficult to round them up, given that the column got axed from the 'Net. Well, thanks to one Sportsnet.ca forum commenter, we can see the two pieces side by side (actually above and below), and there are many more issues. Here's the full pieces (potential plagiarism bolded by me). Bob Cole is one for the ages all right David Pratt, The Province Published: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 Sooner or later, it gets to be closing time. So pour it like you don't own it, bartender, and let's have one for the great Bob Cole. After four decades of doing play-by-play for the CBC...

(Photo from The Red Line ) Gary Bettman's most recent interview with Ron MacLean, which just aired on CBC's pre-game show, clearly is deserving of its own place in history on the Unintentional Comedy Scale . I recommend at least a 78: better than the Super Bowl Shuffle but not quite up there with Bill Clinton's denial . Credit to MacLean for going after Bettman with both barrels blazing, instead of throwing the softballs usually delivered at the commissioner's public appearances (often by broadcasters from his league's own network ) or by callers to his radio show . A key topic of conversation was sports business columnist extraordinaire Rick Westhead's piece in the Toronto Star yesterday, which revealed that the six Canadian teams (20 per cent of the league, if you're keeping track) account for a staggeringly disproportionate 31 per cent of the league's gate receipts. This provoked incredible hilarity, as Bettman tried to bash the piece as sensationa...

I should preface this by stating that I respect the Globe and Mail's William Houston as a writer who's been doing a tough job for a long time, and I frequently read his columns. He does a fantastic job as a reporter who digs up interesting details on media coverage of Canadian sports, and his takes on the competition among the various channels and the TV ratings of different events are always worth a look. However, his analysis of networks' on-air coverage is much more hit-and-miss. Some of it is bang-on, such as his analysis of the different networks' trade deadline shows. I don't agree with many of his other ideas, particularly about what makes good and bad commentary, but I can usually at least understand where he's coming from. On occasion though, he'll drop in something that's so absurdly out-of-the-blue that I can't even begin to fathom the thought process he went through in constructing it. A great example of the latter is his column from ye...