Losing Game 1 is a good thing, at least on Wrong Answers Only Wednesday
Hej vänner! These are some actual sports and current affairs questions, albeit not from actual people. Enjoy your midweek.
Why is it a good thing that Toronto and Edmonton, the two Canadian NHL teams which opened their Stanley Cup playoffs round 1 series on home ice, are both down 0-1 in their series?
— M.M., Thornhill, Ont.; C.M., Sherwood Park, Atla.
This is how Playoff Puck works in the Wonderful World of Bettman. All energy flows according to the whims of the referees who need not have it spelled out that their playoff assignments depend on their contribution to Operation Stretch Series To 6 Or 7 Games.
This game of games involves knowing that, and not panicking. Get jammed in Game 1 on the scoreboard while, in the Leafs’ case, scoring direct hits on the defensive depth of the Tampa Bay Lightning through serious-seeming injuries to Victor Hedman and Erik Cernak. (The latter likely costs Toronto pesky wing Michael Bunting; oh well.)
Just ride that ebb and flow. Square the series 1-1 by winning the next battle, be square 2-2 after two games on the road, and then just win the all-important Game 5. It keeps everyone happy and keeps the audience engagement up when everyone is watching before their teams get knocked out and their playoff pool turns to dust.
Also, never go up 3-1 in a hugely hyped series. The Leafs made that mistake with Montréal in 2021. Getting to the closeout game so quickly, then losing it in overtime, put the wind in the sail of those Habs hackers. And we all know how that turned out.
One could even get a little more conspiratorial beyond the “0-8 when Wes McCauley officiates and Sheldon Keefe is behind the Leafs bench. There are about 5.2 billion reasons why one of the telcos that own the Leafs can’t have them winning an early-round series in four or five games, if they are ever to get out of the Atlantic Division stage of the playoffs. Sweeps are not allowed till the third round, should they ever make it there.
In conclusion, the Leafs will be fine. Easy to say here. The beauty of being a registered conscientious objector in Leafs Nation is getting to have some distance if their stepondickitis flares once more. Also, do you see who cheers for that team?
How can one tell the handlers of Premier Doug Ford grasp political science better than most of the Canadian media and their audience get actual-science science?
— G.T., Guelph, Ont.
The Greenbelt Heist, every damn day, should be big news. Top-notch reporting, much of it from The Narwhal and National Observer, has detailed how the graft and grift are being carried out openly — in a climate emergency that will affect the health outcomes of you, me, and everyone you know who is not an ultramarathoner.
Ontario cities need more variety in housing stock, more transit, more ways to get people to not use or even own personal cars, and greater local food security. Instead, natural environments and clean air are being sacrificed, and we do not even get an explanation other than talking points that insult our intelligence. More people will get sick, but think of the profits of privatized healthcare, eh?
For those not up on the Greenbelt Heist… Somehow, über-rich developers who just happen to donate to the Ontario PC Party, which has the former high school hash dealer as its Useful Idiot, just happened to buy land where development was proscribed by law. And then it just happened to be opened to development. And growth plans from cities such as Hamilton that emphasized infill density just happened to be altered by the province's environmental registry.
Reminder: no one has ever seen the ministerial mandate letters from the first term of the current Government for the Property Developers. It has been fighting in court for years to keep those sealed. In Fordville, ONTerrible, public oversight only occurs after the foxes have shredded the henhouse.
But head-fake people with an announcement about moving the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, and they idiotically go for it!
That draws heat (pun intended) away from the destruction of swaths of the Greenbelt, does it not? One appreciates, here, what George Monbiot said about humans’ infinite capacity to get mad at the wrong thing. End of the day, the outrage needs to be concentrated on the Greenbelt. The kicker is that Ontario actually has a golden crisitunity to instead sustainability. It is not just 25-year-olds who want no part of spending two hours in commuter traffic every day.
Urban sprawl is neither exclusive to ONTerrible nor one party. Having less green space and less arable farmland is already hitting home. The growing deviations in weather — 29C in April last week, and snow flurries this week — contribute to exacerbating the environmental effects on human health. Of course, Ontario is signing contracts to build new gas plants even though the federal government says those won’t be allowed after 2035. Ontario likely would not have had to do that but Ford, et al., nixed 750 renewable energy projects in their first term just to show they could.
We need to be on the Greenbelt Heist like some… well, you know what wildly inappropriate analogies sound like.
The Ontario Place plan is a numb-brained middle finger to us lowly thousandaires. (Rosie DiManno — when she’s on, she is on — recently called the Ontario Place plan “a stupid posh spa and a massive parking garage [with] the toppling of some 800 trees” that nobody in Toronto actually wants.)
But eyes on the real scandal, people. Tired of living in a place where Ford and his ilk end up being The Champ.
What do you think is the real reason for Galen Weston Jr. stepping down as president of Loblaw?
— T.F., Oshawa, Ont.
He wants to pursue his true passion: privatizing healthcare.
Why does Pierre Poilievre have such a hate-on for the CBC?
— P.M.J.T., Ottawa, Ont.
The public broadcaster is pro-establishment and that reminds the Very Serious Leader that he is too. One does not become a government-funded millionaire by being an outsider.
What is a fair assessment of the #SaveSFUFootball effort since Simon Fraser University shut down its NCAA D-2 team two weeks ago?
— G.M., Vernon, B.C.
Oh, nice execution; they are doing terrific. Seeing conspiracy everywhere, taking potshots at administrators who made the gutting decision, being litigious, and likening it to “attacking NATO. You hit one university, you’ve hit them all,” like B.C. Lions governor Amar Doman did is just brilliant.
Or it is just weird and over the top. We want university football, but no one is owed a team in this economy. Whatever is said here is impelled by wanting more live amateur/community sports, and more Canadian three-down football. There is a danger that is all going to go away since it is cheaper and easier for children to sit at home playing video games, not that there is anything wrong with that. There is no joy in seeing any university sports team in Canada fold.1
I neither have all the facts nor am I in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia where there are concerted efforts to try to bring it back. But it all seems geared to short-termism. It beggars belief that no one with the SFU Red Leafs had an inkling of what was coming, and there needs to be some planning.
Universities in Canada periodically review their varsity programs and make decisions on funding. A team whose circumstances are contributing to being mediocre to uncompetitive should know when they have to figure it out. That was evident at SFU, which makes the reaction all the more overdramatic:
SFU had a record of 4-62 in their last seven seasons in NCAA Division 2.
Football is expensive.
Football is even more expensive when travelling from B.C. to Texas to play in the Lone Star Conference. That was where SFU ended up after previous conference rivals in the U.S. Pacific Northwest either went to Division 1 or D3.
It is hard to imagine the combo of 1, 2, and 3 creates momentum for recruiting.
They defected from Canada West to become an NCAA school in 2010.
The rules of Canada West and U Sports do not allow a school to also play in the NCAA in any sport it could play in Canada.
On the administrative side, playing one season of D2 football seemed like thin gruel. But SFU also has a just two-year-old home stadium. Saying “no” to a one-shot deal in 2023 is not “no” forever.
Sometimes you have to drop back and punt. More on that in a second.
So under what terms should SFU return to Canada West and U Sports football then?
— J.F., Bowmanville, Ont.
There is a huge temptation to say they made their bed and have to lie in it. Now, that would not be very nice. The terms are simple.
Sign a contract stating the SFU football team will stay in Canada West/U Sports, or any sport conference that it might evolve into, for 20 seasons. No bailing after only a decade. There is a willingness to make an exception in U Sports for a football-only member that has a long-term plan that goes beyond, we deserve to have a team.2
Odd numbers stink for scheduling. Canada West has had a tidy six-team alignment that allows for a bye week on Canadian Thanksgiving. So, SFU may field a football team in Canada West when it can recruit another member school to start a team so the conference will be at an even eight. It is probably a bit blue-sky to pick candidates while not knowing how severe the budget crunches are at CW’s 11 schools that do not have football. Victoria, Fraser Valley, UBC Okanagan, or Winnipeg. And if it has to be funded by alumni, then so be it.
No charge for all this unsolicited advice. You are welcome.
This is weird. So what is it that you’d say that ya do here?
— N.A., Carbonear, N.L.
This is a space for sports fans who read. The same deal as the SportsLit podcast, and the same as it was back in the Blogspot days with Out of Left Field. It is all about how to relate to sports, and keep it in a proper place amid the challenges of the 2020s.
No one writing in this format should think they were replacing the rank-and-file of sports media who are paid to report at live events. Or those who describe them off a TV monitor if they are radio broadcasters for BellMedia or Rogers.3
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.
A macro position is that Canadian university football needs to go under the umbrella of the single-entity structure that served its purpose in the early years of Major League Soccer. Sounds socialistic, but football is supposed to be about teamwork, after all. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It would even out development, funding, and infrastructure, and you might have better football. It would also free up teams to do their own media deals and promotion.
Those are problem areas for the U Sports and sports conference members, with the exception of Québec. Football teams would be a turnkey operation. They lease space and branding from the schools and provide a representative team for the wider community. The student-athlete pool could be expanded to anyone who is making an honest effort to get a degree, diploma, or trade certification in the city. In other words, everyone gets to have what the Western Mustangs have with King’s University College.
Simon Fraser was in the NAIA. In 2000-01, most of its teams shifted to Canada West and the then-CIAU/USIC. Football followed two years later.
One of the great jokes in Canadian media is that the call letters of the French-language sports network RDS actually stand for “Rester Dans Studio,” rather than Réseau des sports.