Sporting Madness

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...

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...

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...

Photo: Saskatchewan knocked off B.C. 26-16 Friday night. (Photo from Luongo ) First, a quick disclaimer. There was plenty that happened in the sports I'm interested in over the weekend, but unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to write about it. Thus, I started several posts but didn't get them finished: they should go up later tonight or early tomorrow. Here's the first one. I'm going to try to start doing some analysis of the various games I go to or watch on here. There's usually plenty of other outlets handling the game stories, so I'll focus more on the analytical side, with perhaps a bit of humour here and there. My preferred method for these is from the Clint Eastwood classic " The Good, The Bad and The Ugly ," breaking down the best performances, the worst performances and the just plain awful stuff that happened (a previous example is here ). I'll file these under "The GBU". As always, post thoughts on the series or ide...