Sporting Madness

In a few short months, the Waterloo doping scandal has gone from an investigation of one player to a team-wide investigation to league-wide concerns over drug testing. Today saw the first tangible impact on a league-wide scale, though; as Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Canadian Press reports , Waterloo has suspended its football program for the coming year. The coaching staff has been placed on paid administrative leave. I'll get into analysis on this later, and I believe Rob Pettapiece has a post coming at The CIS Blog as well, but for now, let's focus on the facts. As Mark Masters reports , Canadian Centre for Ethics In Sport (the organization that oversees CIS drug testing) president Paul Melia announced that nine anti-doping violations were found after tests of Waterloo's 62 football players. As Masters writes, CIS CEO Marg McGregor called it "the biggest doping situation in CIS history. "The results announced today illustrate that the CIS core value ...

To follow up to my initial piece on the Jerod Morris / Raul Ibanez controversy from this past week, I figured I'd discuss the reaction of the guys on Prime Time Sports on Friday. For those not familiar with it, Prime Time Sports is a radio/television program broadcast across Canada daily on the FAN 590 and its affiliates as well as Rogers Sportsnet. It's probably comparable in reach to ESPN's Around The Horn (a show I've complained about previously ), but is generally much more insightful. The regular broadcasts tend to feature host Bob McCown and Globe and Mail writer par excellence Stephen Brunt interviewing top-tier guests from the media and sports worlds, and often have some great stuff. The Friday shows are more of an Around the Horn feel than an interview show, with a couple of other Toronto media personalities joining Brunt and McCown to discuss sports, but the emphasis still tends to be on thoughtful discussion over yelling and extreme opinions, which ...

I didn't write anything about the Raul Ibanez controversy [ Jerod Morris , Midwest Sports Fans ] yesterday outside of my Twitter feed , mostly because it was aptly handled everywhere else [links, in order, are Alana G , Joe Posnanski , Hugging Harold Reynolds , Rays Index and The Big Lead ]. However, today saw some Canadian media types weighing in, and I thought their reactions deserved some coverage. First off, we have Geoff Baker . Baker's a Canadian guy who used to cover the Expos and Blue Jays, and now covers the Mariners for The Seattle Times . He's a good baseball writer, and I usually enjoy his stuff. Today, though, he produced one of the more annoying pieces on the matter, ironically enough on his blog. You know it's going to be bad as soon as you read the title, "The Difference Between Real Journalists and Basement Bloggers." Baker does actually make some valid points. He has some good thoughts on the importance of accountability, and he'...

In the wake of his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, Roger Clemens held a press conference Monday to repeat his denials of steroid use (alleged in George Mitchell's report earlier). The most interesting thing to come out of it was his playing of a (secretly) taped conversation between himself and former trainer Brian McNamee, which he thought would help his cause (aside: who knew that only one party to a conversation had to consent to taping it? Apparently New York and Texas have no problems with people acting like Richard Nixon ). As the Globe and Mail 's Jeff Blair reports , it actually may have hurt Clemens' case. Clemens shows his outrage at McNamee for telling Mitchell that he used steroids, but never actually accuses McNamee of lying (and McNamee never said he lied on the tape). As Stoeten points out over at Drunk Jays Fans , another interesting moment comes from McNamee's line, "The truth is the truth. It is what it is," which Clemens, not so shockin...

Well, the hammer dropped earlier this afternoon as former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell released his long-anticipated report . Contrary to Bob McCown's claim on Prime Time Sports a couple days ago, the report named far more than the dozen or so players he predicted. Several prominent players who there had been little prior conclusive evidence on were included in the report, including Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, Miguel Tejada, and Andy Pettitte. On the Jays' side, important names included Troy Glaus (to no one's surprise) and Gregg Zaun (to the surprise of some). Many have argued that this report's value is minimal. However, I disagree. For one thing, it gave some solid backing to the widespread nature of steroids in the game, as the Globe 's Jeff Blair commented on The Score . "This issue clearly goes beyond hitters," Blair said. "The fact that they came out with the names of three prominent pitchers—Clemens, Pettitte, and Gagne—sort of give...