A Vikings fan’s guide to refball, a flippin' webcast farce, and the CFL will get a new commish: GRUFF insights, Vol. 2.

My football weekend came down to laughing off seeing Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold get pulled down by his facemask, and wishing a favoured local league, the OUA, could get live coverage right.

Oct 28, 2024

In the not-too-distant future wars might as well not exist for most people. But there will be Refball to rubberneck toward.

A true Minnesota Vikings fan did not need to see Sam Darnold get swung down by his facemask with no penalty, resulting in a safety that clinched a win for the L.A. Rams.

We, the royal-purple we, knew which way the Refball winds were blowing on Oct. 24. With great fandom comes a seventh sense for spotting a screwjob months ahead of time, like when the schedule is posted in May.

The biggest irritant from this Refball episode in Week 8 is its butterfly effect. There was a swing that led into the game scenario where Vikings left tackle Cameron Darrishaw went down with season-ending knee injury. C’est la vie and re-hab, re-hab.

A totally undetectable facemask penalty — totally.

Getting past the j’en ai marre vis-à-vis the NFL is helped along by having a football immersion that included reading 1970s and ’80s tomes by Dan Jenkins, Peter Gent, and Pat Toomay. Each writer strongly hinted that the NFL culture tacitly allowed thumbs to put on the scales of gridiron justice. As Gent once put it, albeit in the context of college football, “Criminal Conspiracy 101 might as well be a phys-ed class.”

Oh, the Editor has a note.

Nate, It was only a Week 8 game. I don’t know if people will get the headline.
— Ainsley

That line about how holding can be called at any time is a quiet con. It can be called any time one team needs some help keeping pace.

Personally, this has been a layer of protection for someone who picked the Vikings since they had cool players and awesome purple uniforms. It was early adoption well before the rumbling ‘rigging’ and ‘Refball’ rubrics led to the NHL counter-programming with the ‘script committee’ ads in 2023.

It was a ‘scheduled loss,’ to borrow an NBA term. The Vikings had two games in five days, albeit after their lone bye week. First they had played their most physical division rival, the Detroit Lions, at home, and a short week before a Thursday night game against the Rams, whose continuing competitive relevance is a major component of the NFL’s Battle for Los Angeles media strategy.

The Rams also had a Week 6 bye. By contrast, they played at home against no-account, non-rival Raiders. The Raiders are not even an NFL team. They are the NFL’s answer to a creatively bankrupt pop star doing a Vegas residency.

The NFL does not have pre-determined outcomes à la pro wrestling. However, its stock-in-trade is the convenient narrative, and continued chatter about big-market teams.

So, rate the Vikings (then 5-1) a slight 2½-point fave against Matthew Stafford and the slow-starting Rams (2-4). The slight-favorite team is from the 15th-largest media market and the other is in the second-largest. It would not do for L.A. to be out of contention, or else people will get cranky — or be yelled at by Stan Kroenke, the Rams’ bankroller and a top-3 or top-4 most powerful NFL team chairman.

That way, if it goes the way it should, the push-alert headlines will talk up the QB and his now-healthy receivers. How they led the Rams to an upset win.

Ha. Right off the hop, the Rams got prop-up from referee Tra Blake and his crew. Early, they had to match the Vikings touchdown-for-touchdown. Those yellow mouchoirs, of the AFD (automatic first down) variety, fluttered through the SoCal sky after the first two plays Stafford, et al., failed to connect on obvious third-and-long passing situations.

Prime Video analyst Kirk Herbstreit disputed the first, a holding call on Byron Murphy Jr., the Vikings cornerback. The second was pass interference against fellow cornerback Stephon Gilmore after mutual bumping with L.A. wide receiver Cooper Kupp. Instead of a field goal and a 14-10 score, the Rams cashed in for a touchdown to be level at 14-14.1

So it was like that. There was another dubious AFD in the middle of the second quarter — illegal use of hands called on pass rusher Jihad Ward, negating another third-down stop.

The Vikings gained no material advantage from Ward getting his hand up high on Rams centre Beaux Limmer. The upshot, though, was it spared the Rams from a three-and-out deep in their zone, and a less-rested defence facing a short field.

Limmer was penalized for holding during the next series of downs — a possible make-up call. The Rams punted anyway, but their defence had more juice. And so it played out. Instead of a 17-10 or 21-10 scoreline as halftime neared.

And the Vikings, at the end of the half, lost Darrishaw for the season. A holding penalty against a rookie on the punt return team backed them up close to their goal line after the Rams downed the ball. A different starting point, different scoreline, and they are kneeling down instead of having to run a competitive play. Someone rolls onto Darrishaw’s leg, and there goes his season.

Of course, in the second half, thus staked, Stafford spun passes better than Sam Darnold. And, of course, Darrishaw was not there to reduce the chance of Darnold being spun down by his facemask for a defeat-sealing safety.

The Vikings are my team, but the healthful strategy is making peace with all possible outcomes well before the ball is even kicked off, let alone well before the outcome is obvious. On that night, they were a sacrifice to the NFL’s win-L.A. strategy, and you know, the NFL needs that… if people do not support the league, it might not make it.

Also, I hear there is a lot to do and see in Los Angeles.

One irony is that any refball-assisted promotion of the Rams comes back on the NFL. Their retake-L.A. strategy was built on the Rams and Raiders shacking up — splitting aces by having two teams with history in the No. 2 market. It probably also would have been a way to get the Davis name off the Raiders.

Instead, the Raiders got Vegas. Dean Spanos got a valuation upgrade by making his Chargers become an anodyne, anonymous second team à la baseball’s Angels and White Sox and basketball’s Clippers.

The other kicker is the good laughs from the NFL showing its arse by having referee Tra Blake issue a statement to show it was on top of the situation. All having the referee state two officials “did not see it, so we couldn’t call it” did was show it knows it has public buy-in on deliberate incompetence than can step on any conspiracism.2

The great Geoffrey Sutton Smith (1941-2021) used to say, ‘there are no conspiracy theories.’ There are just institutions deciding when and where to cheap out on good oversight.

Please forgive any dissonance. A league that essentially invented televised sports, and does better staging than any domestic league in the world, cannot have a Video Assistant Referee (VAR)? The NFL probably will do so someday, just not right away, since immediation action amounts to admitting to being accountable.

And the NFL believes it is accountable to nobody.

Still, one watches it every Sunday. Football is awesome and visceral and the NFL has the best self-contained sports universe you can name. Who plays on Monday night mid-season game that will probably have more eyes on it than the baseball World Series?

Anyway, time to segue from a play the refs did not see to an amazing and improbable winning touchdown nobody saw.

No way, OUA: The play of the week that no one saw live

Queen’s stole a playoff win from Windsor with five seconds left on Saturday. It went in the stats as a 39-yard receiving touchdown by rookie Logan Walton, from reserve quarterback Russell Weir. And Walton did a backflip in the end zone to celebrate.

Powerplay Sports, fortunately, had video rolling from that corner of the end zone, and it’s incredible. Just two athletes going for an all-or-nothing touchdown, and Walton high-pointing the pass while double-covered by Windsor’s Harrison Daley and Breton MacDougall.

The problem, though, is that this was supposed to be viewable live. The Windsor-originating OUA.tv webcast went down with about two minutes left in the taut contest. Followers lost connection before Weir achieved connection with his receivers. In real time, there was just frustration at not seeing a game that had been close the entire late afternoon.

That recap caught that Queen’s starter Anthony Lio left the game with an injury. But it didn’t convey that Weir tried only one pass in the regular season, or that the Walton TD completed a Flutie Drive — 86 yards in 56 seconds — to save the season for the Gaels.

This is second time this season Windsor had that happen during a close game against a far-flung opponent. It also happened in the uOttawa-Windsor game on Sept. 21.

This is what people who cared about who won saw in the last two minutes of the game.

A playoff game is season-defining and experience-defining for student-athletes and their family and friend circles, regardless of what awaits Queen’s (or would have awaited Windsor) next week against co-No. 1 Laurier. Any advancement in the playoffs creates momentum, positivity, or at least a chimera of it. A little hopium for the next rookie class and the alumni. It’s a play you can show people on your phone to share enthusiasm.

And, once in a great while, there is an incredible game-winning touchdown that makes people take notice of OUA football. In 2023, when Western pulled off a great last-second win with a similar desperation pass, the video travelled far and wide due to the reaction of the Queen’s-based commentator. And it Queen’s had the video, and realized it belonged to the ages.

Back in 2014, when Carleton’s Nate Behar caught a Hail Mary pass to win the Panda Game, Ottawa’s staff members made sure the video was sent to media outlets. The people who might have been momentarily crushed to lose

Now, granted, both of those games were played in more modern stadiums. The Panda Game is played in a CFL stadium. Richardson Stadium in Kingston is an enclosed stadium that opened in 2016, so more accommodation for broadcaster needs was probably included in the design. And, hey, if facilities are ill-designed for live video, then maybe think of paring down. Pair live audio commentary — radio — with a feed from the cameras used to make the coaches’ tape. You could probably even edit that to a 25-minute podcast episode.

The passion and dedication of Canadian university student-athletes is unsurpassed. It is gnashing and gutting when the presentation does not attempt to capture all of that.

Schools need to be prepared if there is a sudden late jump in interest. It has to be beyond ready to ensure streams of season-defining games:

(1) hold up for all 60 minutes, even when there is a late audience surge;
(2) show the spectators, instead of having the main camera pointed out at greenery beyond a sideline with no stands;
(3) are graced by commentators who have been coached up on the teams and their history.

These are not especially big asks.

On the record, the ’cast cacked at the two-minute mark. The scorebug said 1:59 when Weir, sidestepping pressure and passed toward the right sideline. Windsor’s Ethan Johns defended the pass well.

And then there was just an error screen. The next time there moving pictures was when the teams met for the post-game handshake line. The scorebug shows there were still 33 seconds left in the game and Windsor was ahead 19-14, instead off triple zeroes and a final score of 22-19 for Queen’s.

It was frustrating to not see. The healthful response was to document the disappointment, which became this post. That was only interrupted by a text popping in: “Queen’s won?”

Well, game stats appeared on the internet almost immediately, unlike those from the game at Guelph. There is some regret about piling on, but this is so elemental.

In Canadian lingo, Queen’s played better desperate hockey in the last minute of the game. The Weir-Walton heroics came on third down and 12, and Weir also converted another third-and-long on his Flutie Drive.

A pore over the play-by-play hints that for 58¾ minutes, the Lancers and Gaels lived up, or down, to concerns about their offences.

Queen’s starter Anthony Lio was forced out with a leg injury after being sacked by aptly named Lancers edge rusher Jason Rushasti just after the midpoint of the fourth quarter. All told, the game had 9 sacks, and, before Queen’s Flutie Drive, only three pass receptions longer than 20 yards.

When Windsor punted with under 80 seconds left, the teams had combined for 425 yards. That is barely two-thirds of what the Western Mustangs tallied offensively in their quarterfinal against the McMaster Marauders.

However, Weir was a wild card. Per a Queen’s media-linked Instragram account, “a multi-position athlete in the mould of his father, Rob.”3 As in Rob Weir. He was a starting wide receiver on Queen’s 1992 Vanier Cup-champion team, since that team was well-spoken-for behind centre with Tim Pendergast. Then he was the quarterback for some also-ran teams, serving as his own rushing game by running draw plays and scrambling from empty sets. Then he was back to receiver on Queen’s next playoff team, where rookies Beau Howes and Paul Correale settled in as eventual five-year starters as quarterback and tailback.

However that shaded the competitor in Russell Weir, well, someone has surely asked him. He was ready to have a moment.

That was a Flutie drive — long way to go, short time to get there. Counting the punt return by Ian St. Arnault, whom frankly is the Gaels’ biggest all-the-way touchdown threat even though he plays defence, they covered 100-plus yards in barely a minute.

One should have a heart for the Lancers players, coaches, and football support staff. Merely noting they finished with four consecutive L’s after a 5-0 start feels like a pile-on. Rushasti had two sacks; their offensive line of (hope these names are right) centre Joe Fillion, guards Corey Levesque and Owen Mueller, and tackles Jaxon Morkin and Tyson Vanlenthe opened rushing lanes for Joey Zorn to scoot for 157 rushing yards with a 7.9 average. Unfortunately for offensive linemen, they get little say over a Hail Mary play.

There is a heart for how gutting it might have been for Windsor. It feels like piling on to point out that the Lancers finished their season with four consecutive L’s.

OUA, there is a solution…

The most disheartening part is that there is a lot of heart that goes into these ’casts. No one is expecting CFL quality, let alone NFL. However, there needs to more aforethought, AKA working smart, with how to present games.

An ever-frustrating shot when you watch a webcast of university football is that the start of a play can be 60 to 70 percent deadspace. This is the start of a touchdown run by Caleb Sargeant of the Guelph Gryphons, and some of the tension and excitement is diffused by using a camera that is high up at the 55-yard line. The Canadian field is bigger, so move the main cameras closer. It is also longer, so you need Camera 1 around one 30-yard line and a Camera 2 at the other 30-yard line. And they need to opposite from the stands.

Image: Rogers Community TV (via X/Guelph Gryphons).

The tight shot used on the replay picks up so much football goodness. It shows Gryphons such as Kaine Stevenson, Mitchel Schechinger, and Daniel Hocevar making blocks that get Sargeant up to the second level, with Hocevar getting just enough of a piece of a defender to allow Sargeant to cut right to daylight. It looks a lot better up close.

That does justice to the commentators’ knowledge, the camera operators’ touch and timing, the athletes’ dedication, and the raucous home crowd.

That is doable. If it is not, find a hybrid of old-timey live audio with a video editor who can sync

If that is not doable, then take a drop. Go to live audio. Have a video editor who can sync that commentary to either the coaches’ tape, or an in-stadium feed, and post that to socials.

That is offered in the hope of being part of a solution. Next item!

The CFL must court an uncorded commissioner

Whoever follows Randy Ambrosie as Canadian Football League commissioner will need to be super-advanced in media strategy. This is just being said from a place of fascination with how the CFL will adapt to the death of the cable box.

The business of sports in these times boils down to striking a media rights deal that provides the security blanket of ‘float money’ at the start of each season. A nice-to-have is keeping games accessible to ‘watch once in a while’ casual fans.

Fail on objective 1, and you end up like the Pac-12. The smart leagues know the next game on top of the game is objective 2. A league can’t be reliant on consumers keeping cable subscriptions.

For instance, that seems why the NHL started Prime Monday Night Hockey.

Amazon is, well, Amazon. At least Prime Video has a free-with-ads membership, so you can watch a weekly NHL game without a cable subscription, and with much higher presentation values than Rogers Sportsnet’s Hockey Night in Canada. That is 2024-analog to having a weekly game on over-the-air TV.

As best as is ascertainable, the CFL and tele-conglomerate Bell Media’s sports networks struck a long-term media rights exclusivity five years ago next month. A ballpark figure is that it brought about C$50 mil to the league. At the time, the deal was supposed to run until 2025, and, of course, the league laid out under COVID-19 protections in ’20.4

In practical reality, the Bell money eventually ensured that each franchise was operable. That is always a perpetual challenge for the CFL and the toughest commissioner position in sports.

Since that last media rights deal, though, the CFL’s preferred tele-conglomerate has closed, or heavily cut back, at TSN-branded radio stations. It also sold its share in MLSE, the corpo-parent of the Toronto Argonauts, to the other tele-conglomerate.

That feels like a loose wire shooting off sparks. In the short term, Ambrosie has had a good run. Franchise governance issues in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal — with media magnate Pierre-Karl Péladeau, who knew? — have been stabilized. Scoring on the field increased, with the average team tallying 26 points per game this season.

At the same time, when the current media deal was struck, Ambrosie spoke of “expansion, innovation, and literally taking on the world.” Citations, please.

The league has not added a new team. Innovation is a throwaway phrase; the CFL has always been smarter by not constantly futzing with gameplay. And taking on the world? Well, Ambrosie caught flak for a global player initiative, but that negative nattering nativism seems to have died out.

Savvier folk than I have pointed out this is the most challenging commissionership in sport. The CFL brings in a fair bit of money, but it is not a billion-dollar league that can expand wherever it wants.

The CFL has also scaled the Grey Cup up to a sells-itself, party-atmosphere event that happens to have a championship football game. It skews Boomer, and its skews affluent, so I am not in their demo.

However, it cannot live in the Boomer bubble, and it will have to adapt. Overall, Ambrosie is the fourth-longest-serving commissioner the CFL has had, and many of the little fires were put out during his time in a challenging role.

College Football Parmageddon

The bit here is soft-spotting outsider teams to crash the first 12-team College Football Playoff (CFP). This sport is never more fun than when also-rans get up and get even.

One reality check is that Notre Dame (currently 7-1 will likely get in). The only bit of spite candy on offer is knowing that Notre Dame used to run some semantical game about how it did not redshirt players. Of course, they do; Notre Dame wants to win just as badly as anyone else. Six of 12 defensive starters are grad students, including the other three D-linemen next to sophomore Joshua Burnham, whose position is called “Vyper.” That has not been cool in 30 years.

Big Ten: No. 13 Indiana Hoosiers (8-0 / 5-0)

It sounds as though Kurtis Rourke, the Indiana quarterback by way of Ohio in the MAC and Oakville in the GTA, is close to a return from a right-thumb surgery. Of the Big Ten heavyweights ranked nos. 1, 3, and 4, Indiana only faces Ohio State, on Nov. 23, and after a bye week.

Big 12: No. 17 Kansas State Wildcats (7-1, 4-1)

The Flyover Federation has two remaining undefeateds, ninth-ranked BYU and 11th-ranked Iowa State. And there is also K-State, which has had some history of ruining it for TV-friendlier teams. This edition is built from within, and they have a senior defensive end named Cody Stufflebean. He’s an engineering grad. How Queen’s-like!

The ’Cats lost at BYU by a 4-touchdown spread in September. Their Iowa State showdown is not until Sept. 30. None of BYU’s remaining foes have winning records.

ACC: No. 18 Pittsburgh Panthers (7-0, 3-0); SMU Mustangs (7-1, 4-0) — who play this week!

The 17-team Atlantic conference still has four teams that haven’t lost to a league foe. It seems possible for a three-way tie. That plotting hangs off the Pitt-SMU game this

SEC: No-boddddddddy!

One conference has eight teams ranked in the Top 25.5 Sure, that is totally plausible. Missouri remained ranked at No. 25 after being shut out at home by Alabama.

Outro

So, this has got wordy. There are capsule characterizations for all the myriad CFL division semifinals and sport-conference semifinals in the university football system. How about a separate post that will land in 10 minutes?

That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.

Oct. 24-27, 2024
Hamilton, Ont. : upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.

Check the play-by-play data. Source: ESPN.com.

Kevin Seifert, “Ref explains late no-call on Byron Young sack in Vikings-Rams,” ESPN.com, Oct. 25.

The account is called cfrcpowerplays.

Bell Media press release, Nov. 21, 2019.

Associated Press, Oct. 27.

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