Sporting Madness

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!

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!

Apologies for the delay in this Link Train post; I was planning to run it last night as per usual, but life got in the way and prevented me from finishing it until now. I should hopefully have another one ready at the normal time tonight, and perhaps even a piece of my own before then if all goes well. As always, leave links for upcoming editions in the comments, or send them to me via Twitter , Facebook or e-mail . Video Of The Day: Deep Purple - Highway Star One of the all-time great driving songs, this song also was one of the first real hits in the hard rock/heavy metal vein (along with Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown and Black Sabbath's Paranoid). It's the first track from Deep Purple's seminal 1972 album Machine Head, one of the most influential hard rock albums out there. Moreover, it shows off Jon Lord 's incredible use of the Hammond organ. If anyone ever tells you the organ has no place in rock, make them listen to Deep Purple for a while. My Lin...

It's time for another instalment of The Link Train . As always, leave links for tomorrow night's segment in the comments or send them to me via e-mail or Twitter. All sports-related submissions are welcomed. Thanks for reading! Video Of The Day: Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark I'm a huge Maiden fan, but this was a song that didn't really make much of an impression on me the first time I heard it on the eponymous album. It was cool, but it didn't particularly jump out at me. I then heard them play it live at Toronto's Air Canada Centre in October 2007 (still probably the best concert I've been to; you can check out some photos from it on my Facebook page and it became one of my favourites. This song is just epic live, particularly with a good crowd like the one at their headlining set at the 2001 Rock in Rio festival (which turned into an impressive live album ) above; it sends chills down your spine to hear a crowd that large singing the intro in unison...

This is a new daily feature I'm going to be running (and yes, I did steal the name ). The plan is to post a music video and a list of the most interesting links from the various sports I tend to write about each night. There will be a partial focus on the teams I tend to write about, but there will also be plenty of room for stories from around different leagues and other sports. Submissions and comments are welcomed, either in the comments section of the previous night's post or via e-mail or Twitter . Enjoy! Video Of The Day: To go with the efforts (led by Stephen of Stephen on Stuff ) to make Rush a trending topic, here's Rush with Limelight. My Links: - A piece I wrote on Y.E. Yang 's unexpected victory over Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship [ The Rookies ]. The Best Of The Intertubes: Soccer: - Duane Rollins weighs in on yesterday's Toronto FC win (which I live blogged here ) [ The 24th Minute ]. - Jason Davis has some good thoughts on the similariti...

Saturday may well be Hockey Night In Canada, but Friday's reserved for the CFL! There's an excellent matchup this week, with the B.C. Lions looking to keep their momentum from a win over Saskatchewan and the Toronto Argonauts hoping to avenge last week's shutout at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes. For a full preview, check out this piece over at CFL.ca; you can also check out my weekly CFL column over at The Rookies . There, I predicted a B.C. win, and I'm sticking to that; both teams may be 2-4, but B.C. was very impressive last week against a good Saskatchewan team, while Toronto played their worst game of the year against Montreal and couldn't record a single point. Join me in the live blog below to see if they can bounce back! B.C. Lions v. Toronto Argonauts

I'll be live-blogging the B.C. Lions - Toronto Argonauts game here and at Out of Left Field at 7:30 Eastern/4:30 Pacific. Until then, here's some links to the other stuff I've been writing and some of the best stories from around the web, as well as some tuneage to get you all pumped for the game. My pieces: - Here's the story of Canucks' prospect Sergei Shirokov and his quest to escape the KHL [ Canuck Puck ]. - Here's a link to the newest edition of The Whole 110 Yards , my weekly CFL column over at The Rookies . - The Vancouver Olympics are now only six months away. I have a story on one local group's Olympic preparations in The South Delta Leader , where I'm working for the next few weeks. - My weekly Phoenix Pub column took aim at the lack of proper standards and treatment around concussions in sports. - As part of those aforementioned Olympic preparations, the Richmond-Vancouver-Vancouver Airport SkyTrain line is opening on Monday. It will s...

Apologies for the lack of content around here lately. I've been working full-time for the past couple of weeks, filling in for editor Kurt Langmann at the Aldergrove Star , and have been swamped with other writing in my downtime, so I haven't had a lot of time to blog here. Don't panic, though; today's my last day, so things should hopefully return to normality soon and anything you still can't cope with will then be your own problem ! Anyway, I'll hopefully have a real post up before the end of the day. I'm also planning to live-blog the B.C. Lions - Hamilton Tiger-Cats game tomorrow (7:30 P.M. Eastern) and the Vancouver Whitecaps - Cleveland City Stars game Saturday (7 P.M. Eastern) but until then, here's a few links to some of the other pieces I've been writing. - A report on the BC Peewee and Bantam baseball provincials coming up this weekend. [ The Aldergrove Star ] - The second part of my list of annoying fan traditions. Everyone's favo...

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...

Note: this piece originally ran at The Rookies yesterday. However, a massive failure on the part of our hosting server means that it isn't accessible at the moment, so I figured it would be appropriate to repost it here today so everyone watching the Confederations Cup matches could share my vuvuzela hatred. It also originally had more pictures and looked prettier. I'll hopefully be running Part II on specific fanbases over at The Rookies tomorrow if our server's back up. - Andrew The ongoing Confederations Cup in South Africa has seen some great moments on the pitch, including the bizarre collection of circumstances Wayne and Rockabye described here and here . However, they have been overshadowed by one appalling one; the unleashing of the hated "vuvuzelas" (basically, cheap plastic trumpets) on an unsuspecting worldwide audience. A movement to ban them is already underway , and bloggers around the globe have weighed in. Even those who respect the vuvuzel...

Apologies for things being slow around here lately; I've been pretty swamped with other writing work. I'll try to get a full new post up tonight, but until then, I thought I'd share a few of the other pieces I've been working on. Hope you enjoy them! Feel free to leave comments on them at those sites or here, or send them to me via e-mail (andrew_bucholtz AT hotmail.com) or Twitter . Thanks as always for reading! - Over at my new blog, Canuck Puck , I have an analysis of how the Sedin twins stack up against other elite NHL players and why resigning them would be a great Moneypuck move. - At The Phoenix Pub , I have a few thoughts on how the recent increase in statistical analysis has changed sports. It's a bit of a follow-up to the piece I wrote here the other day about the (partial) demise of Moneyball . - At The Rookies , I have a piece looking at the most annoying fan traditions in sports.