Whether it is Saudi sportwashing with golf or wildfire smoke, this is fine: Wrong Answers Only Wednesday.
From the department of Fore! and loathing, more answers to questions no one actually asked Also: On Alek Manoah and really tone-deaf Canadian TV knockoffs
Thanks to everyone who wrote in! Is it odd how these questions are always so pointed and very up-to-the-minute, at least as of around 11:45 p.m. ET the previous night?
In descending order, what North American sports will queue up to get a cash infusion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund à la the PGA Tour?
— T.B., San Mateo, Calif.
Ooh, talk about an opening softball.1 The revulsion to the PGA Tour going Full Pro-Terrorism and taking a buyout from “the people… (who) allegedly killed Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi”… for the sake of getting all the best players in the Rocket Mortgage Classic is as strong here as anywhere else.
So let us play through that and on to the next question, which needs some starting criteria. What sports properties will the PIF have their eyes on?
The sport or league needs to already be Big, Rich, and Stupid. The PIF will have no part of a sport that is small, modestly budgeted, and stupid, so the Canadian Football League is probably in the clear.
The more the sport affirms a certain type of maleness, the better. The current crown prince is leading some advances in women’s rights for reasons that totally are not “a front to attract international investment and tourism.” But it was only four years ago that Saudi Arabia still did not allow women to drive.
The athletes, as the golfers who went to LIV showed, need to only care about getting paid and having low taxes.
After thinking this through, the sports fall into this rough order.
The National Football League. It is well-known that the NFL, in the long term, wants to build out from 32 teams to 40. It probably means having two teams in London and two others in western Europe, since the Incited States is already saturated.
Someone will have to pay the freight on $1.5-billion USD expansion fees and bribing politicians to appropriate land in London or Munich for stadiums.College football — in order to fund the inevitable Big Ten-SEC-Notre Dame merger. The college game has been trending toward a superconference for a good two decades, and having access to “money (that) is unlimited and infinite” will push the ball over the goal line. The 14-team Big Ten, Notre Dame, and 15 SEC teams — you’re free at last, Vanderbilt!! — will make for an epic conference.
Who will throw up a moral objection? The big-name coaches, the college presidents, the athletic directors, the conference commissioners? They just want to win, and keep their revenue streams. Since the crown prince is a surface-level progressive guy, he will probably agree with continuing to make sure the Power 5 schools have their baseball, basketball, soccer, women’s softball, and gymnastics.
And you will want to be there when the Texas Longhorns, even when rolling in Saudi money, lose a nonconference game to UT San Antonio.Tennis — ATP Tour only. See Point 3. Tennis players are pretty much stateless. Women’s tennis has always been a better watch anyway. After this, we have a big drop-off.
Major League Baseball. Went back and forth on this deliberation. Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has hardly built the social capital with fans to make one think he is above pulling a Jay Monahan. However, baseball has also spent much of my lifetime retreating into being a niche, regional game built on niche, regional followings. Also, there is a non-zero chance the PIF’s impressions of baseball players are formed by listening to people who think ballplayers are not athletes.
The other side of the same coin is baseball teams are just vessels for real estate and online betting conglomerates. Someone is going to have to buy the Athletics, as well as the Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, and the six or seven no-account franchises within the two Central divisions.The NBA and WNBA. The former might be safe, due to the latter. LeBron James will not stand for it.
The National Hockey League. This seems like a hard pass. Oligarchs who put things in the middle of a desert against all logic outside of ‘we can, that’s why’ do not need to own the Arizona Coyotes. The hard salary cap also means they cannot drop a dumptruck of money in front of the hockey equivalent of Cristiano Ronaldo, if there even is one.
(Tie) Major League Soccer, NASCAR, and IndyCar. No need when the hooks are already into various English Premier League and Formula One teams.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
What rates a higher number: (A) the air quality advisory in some Ontario cities on a scale from 1 to 10 or (B) on a scale from 1 to 200, the confidence in the Ford government to handle this climate change-exacerbated public health emergency?
— S.D., Sydenham, Ont.
Come on, that is a leading, loaded question. Premier Doug Ford and Natural Resources/Forestries Minister Graydon Smith, of Ontario’s Government for the Property Developers, are clearly the eco-dynamos who will protect you, me, your children, your aunt with the heart problem, and your mum with hypertension, while schoolchildren ask their teachers why the air smells like charcoal and their outdoor sports are cancelled.
But the answer is (B). Go ahead, accuse me of judging boobs by their cowardice.
On Tuesday, Smith (who before he became an MPP, was accused of destroying the habitat of a species at risk) was pretty much acting out the “this is fine” meme. The minister, per Queen’s Park video journo Richard Southern and others, “fail(ed) to draw any connection” between the increasingly severe wildfire season and “climate change.”
With all apologies to Bob Dylan, you don’t need a weatherman to know why the wind blows harder, why storms are increasing in frequency and severity, and why “warmer temperatures and drier conditions can help fires spread and make them harder to put out.” That quote from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions is in an article that states, in the kind of plain Anglo-Saxon words favored by the pipsqueak who would be prime minister, “Climate change enhances the drying of organic matter in forests (the material that burns and spreads wildfire).” The fires are human-made, but the rate at which they consume both forests, and communities, is because of what our activity has done to the earth.
But hey, as Graydon Smith puts it, “We’ve got forest fires every year in Ontario.”
Sir, no. No, sir. Please stop insulting our intelligence. Ontario has had twice as many fires, burning almost 14 times as many hectares, as it had at the same stage in 2022.
This needs to be taken seriously if we want to have a quality of life and enjoy outdoor activities and recreation. The parties calling themselves Conservatives, whose namesakes were once leaders on environmentalism, are not serious about it. Ontario has not even put in an open-air fire ban (unlike Québec!), which is a relatively easy control measure. The province’s readiness to fight the wildfires was rated as “poor” by a national agency.
The first Ford-era budget four years ago included a 67-per-cent cut to emergency forest firefighting. That was the largest cut. Indigenous Affairs (49%) and conservation, environment, and parks (36%) got the next two biggest chops. One is probably just being paranoid if they read that as an attempt to minimize objections to the let-’er-rip, Open for Business mentality.
Well, now we know what purposeful incompetence in governance is costing us. Other parties might suck, too, but at least they would understand the need to be prepared for an emergency. The Conservative tack on the climate has moved to, “Don’t bother, it’s too late.”
I will level. At the age of 46, I am worried about having risk factors that contribute to becoming a statistic — one of those premature deaths brought on by the climate emergency. I have actually spent this week wearing a heart monitor after having some respiratory issues throughout the spring. If I go, I would prefer it happens in a casino orgy right after updating my will to reflect cashing in several big bets on the Minnesota Vikings winning the Super Bowl.
What the hell does all this climate change malarkey have to do with sports?
— J.B., North York, Ont.
I dunno, since many sports are outdoors, or require the capacity to exercise outdoors? A personal preference is that the sports industry will adapt to some basic sustainability goals, not that one should hold their breath waiting for that.
When was it evident that a certain Toronto Blue Jays righty pitcher was not the Manoah of the hour?
— L.E., Lethbridge, Alta.
Scanning the game log, one lands on May 9 at Philadephia, and not just on account of the fact that the game turned on a deep drive to left by Nick Castellanos. That was the second start in succession where Alek Manoah induced three or fewer swinging strikes, and it was the middle of three outings where he had game scores of 39, 41, and 26.
The Blue Jays did not have an evident Plan B like some MLB organizations (cough, Tampa Bay) would. That, evidently, means riding it out until it was seemed cruel to just keep putting the 2022 all-star on the bump. It is not the first time a major-league pitcher who had a quick rise to success suddenly lost it. It will not be the last either. Ever heard of Steve Blass?
It is worth trying something. So, over these next eight weeks, Manoah will be broken down to the level of a T-ball player, then rebuilt as a functional front-end starter, then broken down again, then take some time off for therapy and golf, then, if there's time, rebuilt once more.
What is the possible upshot of Manoah’s re-assignment to the lowest rung of the farm system?
— E.L., Medicine Hat, Alta.
Well, there is the matter that missing several weeks, perhaps longer, likely keeps Manoah from accruing the MLB service time to become a “Super 2” arbitration-eligible player. That gives him a do-over to prove he is worthy of the type of contract extension MLB teams will give to a young player that carries him through the seasons before he becomes eligible for free agency.
The Jays and Manoah were “not close” to agreeing to a longer-term deal before the season, and who knows whether that was another force multiplier on his fraying focus. Next season, he will have to come back ready to really bet on himself.
How do we know that an ounce of self-awareness is harder to find, and pricier, than an ounce of crystal meth?
— J.P., Albuquerque, N.M.
Canadian television networks and their programming announcements! Take the network that greenlit Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent.
Great: another cheap Canadian knockoff, only this one will glorify the police in a city where the real-life police fumbled the investigation of a serial killer who terrorized the gay village for years. And the announcement was made while the ex-police chief, who blamed civilians for not doing his officers’ job for them in that multiple-murders investigation, is running for mayor. And it was made during Pride Month.
At least there were some salty quote-tweets. Top three:
“In Toronto’s criminal justice system, there are two separate yet equally important groups: The police, who fail to investigate serial killers and protect the city’s most vulnerable, and the politicians who refuse to hold the police accountable.” — Sean Marshall
“I’m excited for an entire episode devoted to cracking down on drinking in parks.” — Kristin Raworth
“Canadian broadcasters, ffs. Do any of you even watch tv? Like, good tv?”
— Amanda Coles
If you were Sam Cooper, the now-former Global News reporter whose reporting led to a massive lawsuit from MP Han Dong and perhaps played to anti-Asian racism, what “personal journalism project” would you be pursuing with your newfound spare time?
— D.O., Mallorytown, Ont.
This is not the place for criticizing any individual media worker. One wishes Cooper the best after he “chose to leave” his position. But between Jason Kenney, Brian Pallister, Andrew Scheer, Erin O’Toole, and Candice Bergen, someone will need a ghostwriter for their memoirs real soon.
New segment: Stuff said by smarter people
“I don’t know how to work in a world where reality itself is under ever-increasing ideological assault.”
— Melissa Martin at incoming, writing from Donbas in Ukraine.“Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly. Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability.”
— Justice Dennis Galiatsatos in a recent Québec court ruling, quoted in the context of an Ottawa police officer being accused of trying to intimidate a child on a school bus.
Can’t wait for that Very Special Episode of Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent!
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.
Surely you know at least one golf analogy, Sags.