Category Archives: Sports

| Montreal, My articles, Sports

TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence

A double dose from yours truly today:

This week’s Justify Your Existence is an interview with a member of Anonymous, the anti-Scientology group. Though she’s unnamed, you’ll recognize her as the same young woman I made fun of talked about earlier when a video was posted on YouTube in which she said Scientology conspired to get her fired from her job. Though I suggested she was weird, to her credit, she was willing to sit down with me and explain herself. Reaction on their forums is starting to build here.

There’s also a protest today at 11 near Lafontaine Park, for anyone interested.

UPDATE: For those of you who are reading this article because it was posted on the Anonymous forums and have never read it before, Justify Your Existence by its very nature takes a tough stand against its interview subjects — part of the reason it’s tough getting interviews sometimes.

Also, from the Enterbulation forums:

NO WAY!!!!
His name is Steve Fagay?????

Actually, no it’s not. But I’m touched by the maturity.

Finally, I’ve already got hate mail. Sweet.

NFL vs. CFL

This week’s Bluffer’s Guide is about the Buffalo Bills game in Toronto this week, and what the NFL testing the waters in Canada could mean for our national football game. There’s suggestion that the Bills might move to Toronto after its current owner dies and the franchise is sold off. Such a move, worryers say, would spell the end to the Toronto Argonauts, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and probably even the CFL itself.

It comes the same day as this piece from The Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky, quoting league officials worried about the NFL threat. He also has some interesting history in his notes that I wish I’d stolen from is useful for context.

UPDATE (Aug. 21): A reader points out that other NFL games have taken place on Canadian soil. This will be the first time that regular-season games take place in Canada, however.

| Navel-gazing, Sports

G to the S to the B

That’s more like it.

I was doing the Olympics pages last night, and there was a story from Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun about how the American journalists are starting to make fun of us for not having won any medals.

Just before midnight came word that a Canadian wrestler had reached a final and would be guaranteed at least a silver medal, so the piece needed a significant rewrite.

UPDATE: This New York Times story looks like it was similarly rewritten on deadline. It points out that Canwest News Service has 28 journalists in Beijing, and our medal-to-journalist ratio looks almost as bad as our medal-to-athlete ratio.

| Sports, TV

NBC is lying to you

I just watched the Men’s 100m backstroke final race on NBC late night. It says “LIVE” in the corner, so I can only assume the images I’m seeing are, you know, live.

Problem is, the race happened five hours ago. I know, because I watched it live on CBC. And the results have been on the Beijing Olympics website since then.

This isn’t the first time I noticed this problem, either.

So is someone at NBC incompetent, running a tape delay without covering up the “LIVE” thing, or is someone being intentionally deceptive?

UPDATE: It seems it’s the latter, and I’m not the only one to notice. The official reason:

…the constant “Live” tag is accompanied by twice-per-hour time stamps that inform West Coast viewers that the event was only live on the East Coast (ex. “10:05 ET”).

“The audience makeup of the Olympics is very much like that of ‘American Idol’ and ‘Dancing with the Stars’ which have ‘live’ season finales presented in much the same way,” an NBC Sports spokesperson says. “You assume there’s a large amount of intelligence in the viewing audience, so when they see those twice-an-hour time stamps they’ll understand what is being presented.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Let’s count how wrong this is:

  1. Lying isn’t OK if you air a disclaimer twice an hour.
  2. Lying isn’t OK if other broadcasters also lie.
  3. I’m on the East Coast, and what I saw wasn’t live.
  4. The difference in time zones between East and West Coast is three hours, not five.
  5. This isn’t American Idol. The time difference isn’t as obvious, and last I checked the Beijing Olympics wasn’t created by a U.S. or British-based entertainment company.
  6. None of these things are excuses for presenting a tape delay as live.

It’s either live or it isn’t. It wasn’t. I don’t care if it makes you look bad. It’s wrong to lie. And more importantly, it’s ridiculously transparent.

| Opinion, Sports

Asstastic

It’s nice to see the news media, politicians, fans, organizers and TV broadcasters are giving women’s Olympic beach volleyball the respect it deserves as a sport. And apparently deeming it insufficiently sexy, they have cheerleaders brought in during breaks.

This is what our world is coming to, folks.

Perhaps we should take it farther: Archery is among the least popular sports at the Olympics. But what if, instead of bows and arrows, we turned it into Semen Archery, in which the closest splat is the winner?

Most gymnastics competitions could be made much more interesting by pairing men and women and having them contort into various positions together. Marks would be awarded for difficulty.

Judo, wrestling and taekwondo would be a huge hit if instead of those bulky housecoats everyone just wrestled naked.

The possibilities are endless.

| Media, Sports

Gazette starting Olympics page, photographer blog

As editor-in-chief Andrew Phillips explains in a blog post, The Gazette is jumping on the bandwagon and has launched an Olympics website to cover the Beijing Games that start next week, at www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/sports/beijing2008/index.html. Most of the web content is provided by Canwest, which has a similar page (as does the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, etc.)

Other media outlets have already launched Olympics pages, which I have almost universally panned. That said, it’s clear the news media is making a much bigger effort toward these games in terms of online coverage. (It remains to be seen which of these websites will have better live coverage of the Games.)

As part of local coverage of the Games (and to justify the oodles of money spent sending him there), The Gazette is also starting a blog for photographer John Mahoney, who will accompany reporter Dave Stubbs to Beijing (Stubbs already has a blog up with funny little stories leading up to the Games). Mahoney has a first post relating Beijing to his first Olympics in Lake Placid in 1980.

The paper, of course, will also have special coverage. Mahoney has photo profiles of different athletes each day starting Saturday, there will be a special Olympics preview section on Wednesday, and each day of the Games will have special Olympics sections with pages of coverage (some of which will be edited by yours truly).

| Media, Sports

Gazette live-blogging Impact game

The Gazette is trying something new tonight, live-blogging the Impact vs. Toronto FC game at Saputo Stadium BMO Field in Toronto. The copy is a bit dirty (note to marketing dept.: “Pat Hickey RAW”), but at least you get the news of what’s going on.

La Presse is doing similarly with blogger Pascal Milano, as is Radio-Canada, with at least a half-time report from each.

Unless I’ve missed something, Le Devoir, Quebecor’s Canoe portal, CTV Sports and even the sports networks (TSN.ca, RDS.ca, Sportsnet.ca) have nothing on how this game is going.

The Impact is the unpopular little brother of the Alouettes and Canadiens, and the media tends to half-ass coverage of the team (in most cases, only covering home games so they don’t have to spring for airfare). Since this is a non-league game, it’s not on TV. RDS and TSN have Rogers Cup tennis, and CBC/Radio-Canada have regular non-sports programming. Fortunately, though, CBCsports.ca has a free live broadcast of the game online.

UPDATE: 1-1 draw gives a victory in the CONCACAF Canadian championships to the Montreal Impact. SUCK IT, TORONTO!

Rad-Can and Milano win the race for breaking news, having the result up within minutes (seconds?) of the game ending.

CBC Television is also replaying the game at midnight.

| Media, On the Net, Opinion, Sports

Olympics blogs ahoy!

La Presse unveiled its Beijing Olympics blog, noting that it’s sending a team of reporters, including columnist Pierre Foglia, to China next month. (Ten years ago, a newspaper sending reporters to the Olympics wouldn’t be news, but with the industry suffocating and cutting back, every plane ticket and hotel room has to be justified as a Newspaper Reporting Event.)

The Star, meanwhile, is putting links to its Olympics website on every page, including a logo next to its flag. Sadly, the website from Canada’s largest newspaper has about the same design finesse you’d expect from a YMCA bulletin board.

The Gazette’s Dave Stubbs, meanwhile, is still milking the Chinese news sources for weird stories relating to the Games on his Five-Ring Circus blog, which contrasts with Canwest’s matter-of-fact topic page.

The Globe and Mail hilariously has its Olympics coverage in a section called “Others“. Their Olympics blog is better, at least, though I’m not sure what “Wb” stands for in the URL.

The best Canadian Olympics news website unsurprisingly goes to the CBC, which not only has a general Olympics website, but has separate related sites for each major sport at the Games, each filled with stories. These will be the last Olympics the CBC has broadcast rights for.

And for completeness sake, Quebecor’s Canoe portal has yawnable websites in French and English for the Games with stories from its newspapers and wire services.

But even that’s better than CTV’s Olympics website, which doesn’t exist. (CTV has rights to 2010 and beyond, so you’d think they’d take advantage of the opportunity to get some practice online)

| Canadiens, Video

The young’uns come out to play

With Canadiens development camp open to the public, we’re getting our first taste of amateur video of some of these new prospects, including 6’8″ goaltender Jason Missiaen, seen above looking like King Kong in front of the net.

Some skater shooting drill highlights, courtesy of a very dedicated fan:

UPDATE (July 14): Some video of the team drills, showing how even the young unproven players can totally pwn the rest of us at hockey.

| Canadiens, My articles

NHL free agency explained (I hope)

The Bluffer’s Guide this week, courtesy once again of yours truly, is about NHL free agency, which began on July 1 as it does every year. Our beloved Canadiens got its star power-play quarterback snatched away, but have acquired a thug enforcer to toughen the team up.

Because NHL contracts are complicated, I figured some training might be useful for us less-than-insane fans and well-wishers. In order to do that, of course, I had to read the collective agreement that was signed in 2005 after the lockout.

Unfortunately, I failed to realize that the agreement is over 450 pages long (PDF).

Didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. And I’m sure I still got a bunch of things wrong.

Not that I’m worried. If I fail at journalism here, I can always sign in Russia, right?

| Opinion, Sports

Salaries in perspective

As the NHL free-agency period began yesterday, and players’ contracts expired allowing any team to sign deals with them, some pretty wacky numbers started to appear:

  • $8.7 million/year for Evgeni Malkin
  • $7.45 million for one year for Marian Hossa
  • $7.1 million/year for Brian Campbell
  • $4.1 million/year for Mark Streit
  • $4.5 million/year for former Canadiens goaltender José Theodore
  • $5 million/year for former Canadiens goaltender Cristobal Huet

And yet, someone is going to make more next year than all of these people put together: Rush Limbaugh. And that’s not even including his $100 million signing bonus.

| Sports, Video

Go Boston

The Boston Celtics are one win away today from winning the NBA championship. The Boston Red Sox lead the AL East and trail only the Chicago Cubs in number of … wait, what? The Cubs? Really? The Cubs? You sure it’s not the White Sox? The Chicago Cubs? Best in the entire league right now? Wow. OK. Wow.

Anyway, add to that the Boston-based New England Patriots went 18-0 last season before fucking it up in the Super Bowl, and it’s a pretty sweet time to be a Boston sports fan.

Unless of course, you like hockey.

And this is a perfect excuse to bring back my favourite Ryan Parker song. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you haven’t read this blog enough.

Enjoy.