Sporting Madness

It should be a great day in CIS football, as the No. 2 Western Mustangs take on the No. 10 Guelph Gryphons live on The Score 's University Rush. I'll be live-blogging it here and at The CIS Blog with Neate Sager and Rob Pettapiece , plus anyone else who can make it out. Kickoff is at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. Come join us then! Western-Guelph liveblog

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 ]

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...

Well, Rogers Cable finally came to an agreement [Fadoo.ca] to carry TSN2 shortly before Jaypocalypse Now would have occured next week when the Jays faced the Red Sox in games only available on TSN2 [ Neate Sager , Out of Left Field ]. No specifics have been released yet, but it's a good bet that Rogers caved in the end; TSN had all the leverage in this one thanks to their agreements with every other cable/satellite provider (which demonstrated that their terms can't have been all that unreasonable). Someone at Rogers' baseball division ultimately sold the cable side for 30 pieces of silver with the decision to put Jays-Red Sox on TSN2, as the great Chris Zelkovich of the Toronto Star noted earlier this week on his blog : "A deal has to be coming because, if it isn't, Rogers call-centre employees will have to show up for work that day with bulletproof vests and industrial-strength earplugs as they try to explain to angry Jays fans that they can watch the game on...

Neate has some interesting thoughts on the newspaper industry over at Out of Left Field , particularly with relation to an online subscription-based model either through cable companies or done as a standalone (as Newsday is trying [ Steven Musil , CNET). I don't think this is the way to go, though. For one thing, subscriptions are untenable if free alternatives are offered, so you'd have to get all the papers on board (nigh to impossible) and others would certainly start free alternatives of their own to challenge this. Furthermore, bringing in subscriptions would generate some new revenue, but it would also lower your traffic numbers and thus either your online advertising rates or the number of ads you're able to sell. In my view, this would mean that going to subscriptions would either have a minimal effect or even a negative one on the bottom line. For me, the solution is a traditional one with a couple of new elements. Make all the content free; this increases the ...

Everyone and their sister seems to have joined the Twitterati recently, including Steve Nash , Shaq , Will Leitch and Jeff Blair . Normally, I try to resist jumping on the bandwagon, but I saw quite a bit of potential in what Neate has been doing with his feed , especially the links. I'm a long-established fan of throwing out links , but haven't had a lot of time to write those kind of detailed posts recently, so this seems like a good way to get those out along with a few quick observations here and there that I don't have time for an entire post on. Thus, I'll be adding the Twitter feed to the right-hand bar for the time being. We'll see how it develops; feel free to e-mail (andrew_bucholtz at hotmail dot com) or tweet me suggestions on what to do with the feed!

A quick note that I'll be live-blogging tonight's Queen's-Ryerson men's hockey game, which is at 7:30 p.m. at the Memorial Centre. It's Slap Shot night, so people in attendance are encouraged to dress up (and they apparently will have beer gardens, which is a huge step for men's hockey; we haven't seen those since the glory days of Jock Harty Arena). The game itself will be big too, as the 7-13-2 Gaels desperately need a win. They're four games behind the 11-9-2 University of Toronto Varsity Blues for the division lead and three games behind the 9-9-4 Ottawa Gee-Gees for the final playoff spot. Here's a few links to pique your interest for the game: - Neate unleashes an excellent Top 5 Slap Shot clips . [ Out of Left Field ]. - Amrit wrote a great story on last week's Queen's-RMC game with a bit of a preview for tonight. [ Queen's Journal ]. - Scott Turcotte has a solid profile of Queen's goalie Brady Morrison in today's pa...

Just a quick post to let all CIS hoops fans know that Neate will be live-blogging tonight's Capital Hoops Classic [ universitysport.ca ] over at The CIS Blog , featuring the No. 1 Carleton Ravens and the No. 2 Ottawa Gee-Gees on the men's side and both schools' 10-5 women's teams in the opener. I saw both schools' men's and women's teams play Queen's last weekend, and I was rather impressed with all of them (plus, that Queen's - Carleton women's game had the craziest ending I've ever seen ). Thus, we should be in for two very good games tonight. For supplementary coverage to go with the live blog, you can watch webcasts of both games at Streaming Sports Network Canada 's site or watch them on TV on The Score .

The great Tom Benjamin found this site a little while ago, and I was intrigued. Basically, you type in a blog URL and it gives you a readout of the personality of the blog's author. I figured I'd try it with my site and some of the sites I read regularly. Results are below. For myself, Sporting Madness : "The analysis indicates that the author of http://sportingmadness.blogspot.com is of the type: INTP - The Thinkers." "The logical and analytical type. They are espescially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to unders...

Apologies for the shortage of posts here; I've been busy writing for Out of Left Field for the last couple of days. There hasn't been a shortage of interesting stuff, though. Here's my post on the Arena Football League's potentially impending demise and what that could mean for the CFL; I've also written a follow-up post on the Prime Time Sports segment discussing it and one today on the newest member of Toronto FC, Dwayne De Rosario . Should be back to regular posting here shortly.

I figured that 12-6-2 start was too good to be true. According to Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun , Roberto Luongo has left the Canucks-Penguins game with "what appears to be a serious left groin injury." As Neate wrote, "I never saw an entire team get helped off the ice before!" Sean Zandberg doesn't think it's too bad , though, because of the on-air reports. The Canucks can go a few games without Luongo, but he really is what makes this team anything more than mediocre. If he's gone for a long period, they may have trouble even making the playoffs. We'll have to wait and see.

According to TSN.ca , Doug Gilmour will be officially announced as the new head coach of the Kingston Frontenacs today. At first, that seems like a decent idea; just about anyone behind the bench would probably be an improvement over Larry Mavety , and the team has some talented players, so a coaching change might make a difference there. Gilmour's status as a local hockey legend also adds to the respect he'll get from the players. He has some coaching and player development experience as well, working as an advisor to the Leafs for two seasons and serving as a Marlies' assistant coach this year. His experience won't necessarily make him a great coach, but it certainly can't hurt. More revealing, though, is Gilmour's recent cameo [ Miss 604 ] in the soon-to-be-released Slap Shot 3: The Junior League , a straight-to-DVD movie. Perhaps he enjoyed seeing a gong show of a junior franchise on film and decided he'd go for the full experience? If so, he's ce...

And we're up and rolling! Kickoff should be in just a moment. My previews of the game are here [ Sporting Madness ] and here [ Queen's Journal ]. Neate also has a good one here . The game is also on the radio at CFRC and is being webcast at SSN Canada . Post comments here or send them to me at andrew_bucholtz (at) hotmail.com. First quarter: - Dan Village kicks off for Queen's: Ottawa returns it to around their own 20. - Dave Mason runs off the left tackle for about five yards. - Josh Sacobie completes a short pass, but his receiver is stopped less than a yard short. Gee-Gees are going for it. - Sacobie sneaks for the first down. 1 and 10 on the Ottawa 33. - Mason carries off right tackle, picks up 5. 2 and 5 on the Ottawa 38. - Mason carries for two, stopped by Mike Botting . 3 and 3 Ottawa: they decide to punt. - Awful snap and the punt's almost blocked by Tim Poffley . Ottawa gets it off, though, but the ball only travels about 35 yards. Jimmy Allin pulls of...

A quick note that I'll be live-blogging Saturday's CIS football game between Queen's and the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees right here: Queen's Athletics has told me that I should be able to get the power hookup I need, so barring technical difficulties, we should be good to go. Kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m., but I'll try to have the first post up by 12:45 p.m. or so. You can also check out CFRC for streaming radio coverage. Neate already has a good preview up at Out of Left Field and my Journal preview's been filed: it should hit the web later this morning. Clint Walper and Mike Koreen from the Kingston Whig-Standard will probably have pregame pieces up today as well, and I'll have more pregame posts here throughout the day. This should be one hell of a game, so it can use all the coverage it can get.

Yes, more happened in sports yesterday than just the continued resurrection of the Boston Red Sox [ Marcel Mutoni , Deadspin ]. For example, there's the Gaels' football win [ Neate Sager , Out of Left Field ] over the Waterloo Warriors [this blog], which gave them a perfect regular-season record of 8-0... The score: Queen's 38, Waterloo 22 (CIS box score is here ) How I saw heard it: On the CFRC radio broadcast. The Good: -Danny Brannagan: Our Queen's Journal Athlete of the Week from last week turned in another solid performance, completing 23 of his 39 passes for 342 yards and three touchdowns without being picked off. The early injury to Mike Giffin (see below, also here ) meant that the Gaels had to take to the air more frequently than normal. As Neate noted , that's a season-high in pass attempts for Brannagan. He was up to the challenge, though. The zero picks is particularly impressive given his number of attempts (although it sounded like he threw...

Today's 38-16 win over Ottawa [ Mike Grobe ,gogaelsgo.com] was very impressive (go here for Neate 's excellent live-blog of the action). The score doesn't really reflect how absolutely dominant the Gaels were: they led 31-0 at halftime, and didn't seem to be trying particularly hard to pad their stats in the second half. That's a great result against an talented Ottawa team. Sure, the Gee-Gees have struggled on the gridiron this year (today's loss drops them to 3-4), but their talent is immense. All five entrants in our CIS Blog prediction pool had Ottawa finishing first in Ontario before the season began, and three out of the four sets of playoff predictions had them winning the Yates Cup as well. Yes, the Gee-Gees haven't lived up to their potential, but this was still a squad that could have posed a lot of problems for Queen's (as partially demonstrated by their third-quarter resurgence). It's not just the win that's important: the way it ...

A big shout-out to Dan Pawliw for throwing to this blog in his terrific weekly Queen's Football Club Newsletter. Just to let everyone interested know: I will be doing my best to live-blog tomorrow's Queen's - Western game (kick-off: 1 p.m. ET), but a lot depends on the weather. Due to the media crush covering the match, there's a good chance I'll be in the regular bleachers instead of the press box itself, which may lead to difficulties in case of rain. There's also a possibility I'll be in the press box serving as a spotter for announcer Tim Cunningham , which would help with the weather but probably keep me from trying to do every play the way I did last week : if this happens, I'll check in periodically here with big plays, updates and analytical thoughts on the game. Either way, there will almost certainly be some form of live-blogging going on here, but it's unclear at this point exactly what form that will take. I'll also be checking in wi...

There's been quite a bit of controversy over the Queen's Athletics and Recreation Department's recent decision to refer to their teams as the "Queen's Gaels" from now on instead of the traditional "Queen's Golden Gaels". For dead-tree edition background on the story, check out my piece in today's Journal or the article Jordan Press wrote for Monday's Kingston Whig-Standard . There's also some solid pieces of the Out of Left Field variety, including Neate 's initial post on the rebranding and name change, Neate's post on Monday's football game (which includes some reaction to the name change and Duane 's first upset comment on the matter), a satirical press release written by Duane about the next logical step, dropping the "Thigh" from the Oil Thigh*, and Duane's post today suggesting that this is all part of "the modern marketers' pathological need to control every aspect of everything....

I was glad to hear that International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge decided to take a stand for the good of the Olympics. However, I wondered which of the many available targets he would shoot at. Would it be China's failure to live up to its promises of democratic reforms [ Amnesty International ]? Perhaps the arrest and sentencing to "re-education through labour" of those people who dared to apply for permits to protest [ Deadspin ]? The censorship of the Internet [MSNBC] sites available to journalists who had been promised open access? The massive cheat-at-all-costs campaign the Chinese have employed to win the gymnastic events with underage athletes [Juliet Macur, The New York Times ]? The rounding-up [Jay Nordlinger, National Review Online ] of Falun Gong practioners, disaffected minorities and Chinese writers who dare criticize the regime, probably to be shipped off to secret forced-labour camps [Geoffrey Clarfeld, National Post ], where they might ...