Hopefully the break will allow me to regroup and return with the vision as to where I want this site to go.  Until then, I will still monitor the site and keep it safe from attackers and spammers, but otherwise things will be quiet.

• in an escalation of the past two plus years, CTV and TSN are ramping up their Olympic rhetoric and Believe campaign with local affiliates now in the fray.  Even more disgusting is the Buy Own the Podium campaign.  Wasn’t the Olympic movement based on amateur athletic achievement, not who could buy the most medals?  More on the Olympic sellout perhaps in a later post.
• the effort of Pepsi to push their stupid, contrived Canada chant at the World Junior Hockey Championships in a run up to the Olympics.  What is wrong with Go Canada Go?  Their contest was flawed in its entirety since Canada already had chants, much like those of the other countries mentioned.  Pure marketing for web page views and to sell some more Pepsi.  Drowning out natural chants of Go Canada Go is wrong.  It is time people quit falling for gimmicks to create chants for companies and getting their name in the HHOF.  Thankfully their attempt for this to go viral via youtube, facebook, twitter, etc. so it can be spontaneous at the Olympics doesn’t appear to be working.
• overpaid hockey players who want to go out and live the high life, but don’t want to pay the bill, whether it is a few thousand dollar bar tab or a few bucks for a cab.
• reading books about the old days when athletes got paid a good wage, had some fun times, but played for the love of the game and a desire to win.  Despite the lip service today’s professional athletes pay to that if asked, I would guess the majority wouldn’t be playing if salaries were a fraction of what they are.  This will eventually hurt the million dollar salary leagues as fan loyalty to the home team requires some people you want to cheer for.

There are more, but I’ve forgotten them already.

I held another set of challenging CFL contests this year.  It was a challenging year in the CFL, with parity making picks much tougher.  Everything culminated with winter’s prelude, an exciting Grey Cup.  Although the outcome disappointed many, it was a tremendous comeback by the Montreal Alouettes.

Before we get fully into hockey season, it is time to check your Grey Cup tickets and pool boards.  If you want the quarter scores from this year’s championship, head over to cfldb.  While you are there, check out some of the information they have added like a searchable CFL rulebook and CFL videos.

Maybe it is me, maybe it is the result of growing older.  I’m not a kid anymore and I see a lot more of the behind-the-scenes ugly aspects of the league.  Kids today see the same thing as I, so their jaded viewpoint may protect them in the future from having the same change of heart.

The waves of expansion started it all.  Nine teams added in 10 years, only one in Canada.  Four other teams relocated, two from Canada to the US.  Many of the new US franchises provided only better arenas and deep-pocketed owners; actual fans in the building or watching on TV did not materialize or waned after the initial shine wore off.  As many as six expansion franchises and 3 or 4 other US franchises have substantial attendance problems.  According to the NHL, all is good with their business.  In fact, the last 10 years the NHL has lost any ground in gained in the 1990′s in the US.

The past few months have been focused on the bankruptcy of the Phoenix Coyotes and the attempted purchase and relocation of the team to Hamilton by Jim Basillie.  First the NHL took the position that the franchise was not bankrupt, despite the league providing assistance to keep the bills paid this past season.  After the bankruptcy was confirmed the NHL has insisted that the team has a future in Phoenix.  Unwilling to admit to any failure the league has attempted to put a positive spin on their situation and yet it has had no effect anywhere in saving face for the league.  They kind of operation the NHL has allowed in supporting franchises, special deals for owners, and loans between owners would generate the term bush-league anywhere else yet the hockey media is very easy on the league, likely due to the vindictive nature the league would have against anyone who lashed out at it.

The utter refusal of the NHL to consider a franchise move to Canada is amazingly hard to understand.  Ignoring the spin of the league, theories are that the NHL does not want a franchise in Hamilton as it has no drawing power in the US or wishes to put its own expansion franchise in Toronto for a $400 to $500 million fee.  Additional expansion!  They need to contract first.  Only the NFL has more than 30 teams, and it is the most popular sport (in terms of viewership and playing talent) in North America.  There just isn’t enough hockey players to supply the 30 teams that exist now.  As for the drawing power of Hamilton (or Winnipeg or Quebec City for that matter), they have a team in Columbus, Ohio.  Columbus, though the 32nd largest metropolitan area in the US, hardly is a draw in New York or Los Angeles.  For a league with as much trouble as it has, having well attended games anywhere should be a priority, not attempting to place franchises in the largest TV markets.

Additional teams in the south has led to a deteriorating product because of the ice conditions.  The NHL considers this a non-issue, as both teams play on the same ice, and it is consistently bad through most if not almost all the league.  Ignoring the playing surface which directly impacts the level of play is maddening to this fan.  Would the NBA say their courts were fine as both teams play on the same one if the floor was warped and damaged?  Would the NFL say there was no impact to play if all fields were four inches of muddy soup?  But the NHL has to ignore this fact because its only purpose is to make money and it has used expansion to large, warm US markets as its strategy to do so.

The game has suffered.  Increased coverage has not helped the quality of information.  In Canada we are left with a legacy of hours and hours of endless hockey drivel on television and sports radio.  Nothing new is said, the same cliches are spoken over and over and topics rehashed until you just want to never hear about them again.  Their are fewer and fewer characters in the game, and the number of anonymous interchangeable parts on each team increased each year it seems.  Coverage for the sake of filling in hours has taken away the desire for more; now my desire is to shut it off.  Couple that with a season that is too long (a winter sport that is effectively 10 months long!) and the overdose continues.

Hockey, and therefore the NHL as the pinnacle of the profession, is driven in Canada by a national pride associated with our unofficial pass time.  No one stops to question it in the midst of the male bonding and civic pride.  I think the support of the NHL has become more about those factors, along with the prestige of attending/watching an event outside of the normal working man’s realm rather than about getting to see the most skilled hockey players in the world, to see some real talent and be there when something special and memorable happens.  That is what I thought sports was about, but for so many that is secondary to all the other attributes.

This post isn’t going to change anything.  For me the NHL will continue down the spiral.  It will still have strong support in Canada.  In the US, it may implode, there may be an abundance of franchise bankruptcies and movement in the coming years.  Even if the league contracts and expands in Canada, the same direction will be policy and not much will change.  The spiral is impossible to climb up from.  That is why it is called progress.

Sports gambling, wagering and gaming have been around for a long time and have moved into the mainstream from behind closed doors in recent decades.  However, unlike casino gambling that governments have embraced over the past 20-30 years, there is an affect on other institutions, namely the professional and amateur sport ranks.  Certainly the lessons of the Chicago Black Sox scandal, Pete Rose, Tim Donaghy, and Rick Tocchet show that gambling has a corrupting influence on sports.  While regulating it at the sports level seems like the solution, rules banning it were in place for all the above examples.

Placing the government in charge of sports gambling is a risk in itself.  Not only have they allowed $200 million in false winnings to be collected in their lottery games, but have made mistakes on their existing Pro-Line sports wagering business (I can only find this anecdotal reference to a $900,000 soccer mistake).  There is also no evidence that the government act responsibly with the billions they raise from gambling today.  Additional billions will increase the income statement for the provincial coffers, but the money will not be targeted to any specific social infrastructure area to benefit all.

Finally, there is a social cost to increased gambling.  Moral issue aside, the advent of casino gambling and VLT’s in Canada brought increased gambling addictions.  This in turn has increased the theft and fraud of businesses, charities and governments as well as personal bankruptcy.  When the government tells people to start practicing their happy dance for their sports wagering, how many more will be caught up in dreams of hitting it big?

I see that real government sports book will eventually come.  They will not resistant to ignoring a new revenue stream.  I am satisfied with small charity games and the lottery sports offerings available today.  Adding betting on individual games will only cause problems for sports and that is what is most important to me, not the side wagers.

Take the cited Santanio Holmes touchdown as an example.  Instead of an official making a call on the field, we were subject to minutes of review which broadcasters fill with speculation if there was a hair-width of space between one foot and the ground.  It was obvious to me that the official made the best call with the visual information available and the time on the review was unnecessary.  Since this was not a blatant blown or missed call by an official, the review process actually suppresses the celebration as well as delaying it.  I appreciate my memories pre-replay of many touchdowns scored late or last minute goals where you knew it counted if it was not immediately waved off.  I would not trade catches waved off or goals disallowed for teams I supported if it meant replacing it with a long drawn out review process.

Regarding The Atlantic article on NFL broadcasts, it shows to many Canadians the NFL broadcast production is not just about the quantity of cameras, technology and money they throw at it.  The whole televison crews are specialists for broadcasting football, from the camera operators to directors to the commentators.  Using all specialists for their broadcasts is easy not just because of the money in the television contracts, but because of the economies of scale.  In Canada, in an eight to ten team league, and one or two broadcasters you are not going to to see the hours of coverage needed to develop specialists.  It shows in the camera work and direction of CFL games.  It was worse when the CBC had the broadcast rights as their camera operators from across the country would work across all kinds of genres, from sports to news.  Hockey on the other hand does not require as much skill to broadcast.  Nothing has worked better than the pan up and down the ice method that has been in use since the first televised hockey broadcast over 50 years ago.

The Super Bowl is notorious for producing less-than-entertaining games yet the hoopla and growth continue to rise.  The ability to market the day to the masses and attract viewers who have little interest in the NFL during the season is commendable from a marketing perspective.  The game has become so secondary however, and that can not be good for the sport.  A number of people asked me if I was watching the Super Bowl this year.  When I replied negatively and they positively, I inquired to their reasons since many were non-NFL fans, if not non-sports fans.  The resounding answer was the commercials.  Really, the commercials.  Now I view commercials like the flu, something to avoid.  Commercials have become despicable in their methods in manipulating people’s thoughts about what they need, which has led to some of the issues we are facing now.  Some people don’t see commercials as such (even arguing the whole economy would collapse without them) and find entertainment in them.  To spend five or six hours on a Sunday to see a few 30 second clips when they could see the highlights on the news channels or YouTube the next day if they wished seems very wasteful to me.  Surely commercials are not that high on the entertainment scale.  The entertainment value of the sport has been eclipsed by just entertainment in general (and if it is on TV, it must been entertaining!).

Many of those watching the Super Bowl on television will be there for the commercials, the half-time show, the party and the approval (I’m American, Hollywood because I watched the game all the Americans, movie stars watched!) and will have no idea about the players, the teams or even how the game is played.  It has become a sad reflection on our society, and in Canada, an example of the cultural influence of the US on us.  Interest in their football championship would be one thing, but a mass audience to be spoon fed thousands of corporate messages to buy more, need more, want more is the wrong kind of cultural influence.  I think Canadians should think about what they could do with that time and not be sheep for the sake of being sheep.  The only American approval that comes with watching their biggest game is in your mind, otherwise it does not exist.  There are other days and ways to gather with friends.  You may find other ways to connect with people without the television pumping messages at you.

The motivation beneath the hawks, which are mainly commentators who are filling a talking head role after careers as players and coaches, appears to be at least partly due to a machismo attitude ingrained into them after years in hockey circles.  Any sign of being against what has become “normal” violence in the game would be a sign they are not quite a man.

It hasn’t always been like it is today, with professional fighters who see 2-3 minutes of ice-time a game.  The old “code” was based on demanding respect.  Now it based on vengence and strategic fights for motivation.  All sports constantly evolve where players will do what ever they have to to keep their jobs.  In hockey that has resulted in the lack of respect for fellow players in the same Player’s Association.  This is largely because:

1. Players carry a weapon
2. Fighting has always been allowed (offsetting penalties with rare game misconducts)
3. Suspensions for violence have not been stiff enough (acts of extreme violence have not resulted in the end of anyone’s career)

An increase in stick violence is the number one item cited when restricting fighting and enforcer players is discussed.  The fact is over the last 20-25 years the NHL has failed to maintain a standard for stick work on the body and even recent improvements has not reset the bar.  Any increase in stick work by frustrated players could be met with an increased crackdown by officials.  The game may suffer for a period as players adjust, but there is no other way to introduce such a change.  It will not come from the feeder leagues as they all train their players to the NHL standard, the NHL must change first.  The NHLPA has always stood behind its members in the truest union sense, disapproving of anything that may eliminate the jobs of its current members with more skilled players.  Just like any union, being a member is what counts, not your skills to do the job (playing hockey in this case).  (I am not anti-union, this is just one of the aspects of unions that I could do without).

There are a lot of options that can be tried before automatically kicking out players who fight and suspending them will come into play.  Maybe roster sizes need to be reduced to eliminate those players on the end of the bench waiting for their next bout.  I would certainly support a reduction in teams to strengthen the talent pool.  Hockey Canada penalizing fighting like any other league with ejection from the game in all leagues below the professionals would be a huge start.  Any rule about players maintaining helmets will do nothing to reduce fighting, but the hawks are still opposed to it.  If there is no helmet rule there should be a waiver every player must sign each season stating the NHL, member clubs and other players and officials involved will not be responsible for any act of fighting which causes them bodily injury or death.  Despite that, the NHL and hockey in general risks a great loss in popularity if another player dies as the result of a fight.

The hawks don’t want change.  Those that don’t change soon find out that the world changes around them, leaving them behind.  The NHL is already on the way to irrelevance in the US, even with fighting selling tickets.  A reduction of Canadians getting into hockey could be the result of maintaining old rules for the sake of the hawks feeling masculine.