Is it just me who wonders…
How the “National Football League is coming to Canada” movement manages to exist any more?
Throughout my 11 years in Montreal, a city councillor named Gerry Snyder professed — year after monotonous year — that the NFL was soon to expand to Montreal and Toronto. Well, it never came close to happening and it probably never will. Snyder promised anyone who would listen that Montreal and Toronto in the NFL was imminent. That was 50 years ago.
If the Vancouver Canucks realize they’re running out of time to win the Stanley Cup?
Hall of Fame play-by-play broadcaster Jim Robson, called the Canucks’ first game in history and has seen almost all of the 4,495 since then, has been retired for 25 years. While he was never a cheerleader in the broadcast booth, Robson is today and he badly wants to witness the Canucks’ their first Stanley Cup. Last week, Jim Robson turned 90.
Is there anything more ridiculous than not revealing the nature of player injuries?
Teams used to distribute press releases to let the media (and by extension the fans) know the nature of an injury and how long said player would be out — and that was before this information became crucial for the growing gambling industry that’s in bed with sports as a sponsor. Now, and this largely applies to all major professional team sports, it’s suffice to identify injuries as upper body or lower body. Period.
If baseball’s new free agency has reached a scarier level that rich teams (Los Angeles Dodgers) will win in perpetuity and the small-market teams will be permanent also rans?
At the dawn of free agency in 1976, nobody was supposed to be able to compete off the field with the Dodgers and New York Yankees, who promptly won three of the next five World Series (all against each other) before pretty much disappearing for 12 seasons. However, the Dodgers’ signing of Roki Sasaki — the “next great pitcher” — revives that fear.
Why hockey arena announcers and the in-house music are so loud that they make it impossible to hear the TV commentators?
History tells us this was done to make fans in attendance feel like they were at one big party, and to help viewers feel like they were in the arena. Does that mean wearing your favourite player’s jersey in your living room is mandatory…or that pyjamas in the arena is acceptable? And why would they bother paying play-by-play and colour commentators enormous salaries NOT to be heard?
How pro teams ever managed with so few coaches?
Hockey once had one, plus a stick boy who doubled as a trainer, or vice-versa. Canadian football teams had a head coach and two assistants. Today you can find six people behind a hockey bench (teams at the World Junior Championships had seven coaches and a 24-person staff, this for an annual tournament), and the minimum number of coaches for CFL teams is 11.
If there are too many Olympics?
From 1896 until 1992, there was an Olympiad every four years. Since 1992, there’s one every two years, plus worthy offshoots like Paralympics and Special Olympics. But has the “Olympic” brand become too diluted?
