johnzo

Damn, this little league has survived a lot. My take is that Skalbania is the worst of all time. He ran the Concordes into the ground and abandoned the Lions the day after he bought them. Runner-up is Feterik, who made the Stampeders a joke but at least he paid his bills. The Glieberguys were buffoons, but they came closer than anyone else to turning the Riders around, producing the only .500 record in the team's final 15 years (1992).

What, no love for Horn Chen?

What happens to the playbook when your OC is suddenly changed? Are they still using Worman's playbook with some Dinwiddie on top of it, or did Dinwiddie implement his own thing immediately, or what?

These things look like garbage bags.

The most hipsterish thing I've seen lately is a 20something kid rocking a vintage royal blue #15 Zorn jersey at the Edmonton game. I got shots of him to show to my friends in Seattle. "He's a quarterback, he was big in the states, you probably haven't heard of him."

Those seahawk blue pants are freaking hideous.

"We should have signed Messam."

Damn I hate those green armpit stains on those Rider jerseys. Just shamefully ugly.

Seriously?

"Based entirely on a flip post-game comment, I am convinced that ______________ is a cancer in the locker room."

CJOB audio! That is deluxe. Very interested to see how it works out, I bet it's going to be tricky to keep CJOB and TSN in sync, neither signal has a timecode to sync to.

"CFL officiating is so biased in favour of the Braley teams."

Everything we saw was fantastic. I think my favourite was the Aiden Flynn show. I don't think I'll ever forget the man-falling-through-ice scene, what a piece of stagecraft. I asked the Caws people if they had a live band backstage but they denied it; whatever they did, it sounded live, it had a really warm organic sound with drums that were punchy as hell.

I think Larry Kurharich was a big screamer as well.

Did the downtown hotel to the stadium thing for the Edmonton game. The 161 express from downtown was super easy and faster than I expected. Alas, I don't think there's a 161 express back from the stadium, we had to take a 160 that stopped a bunch of times but still got us home in 20-30 min.

Doug Brown once tweeted that if you wanted to see what Tim Tebow would look like in the CFL, you just needed to look at Justin Goltz.

Missing "Friday night lights"

good lord that eastern game was brutal. Can we just award the two points to Ben Major?

Don't want to get too far ahead of things here, but if Lirim keeps on keeping on, he'll be a triple nominee for us at awards time.

Montreal had plenty of coaching turmoil last year too.

Watson caught a TD on a corner route during Game 1 vs. Toronto. It's the only endzone corner we've hit all year, I think we've tried it three or four times since, mostly with Denmark.

What did the TiCats do to turn it around in the second half? They were like a totally different team out there. Was it coaching adjustments? LeFevour calming down? Bombers laying off?

I'm pumped for the victory, but I'm happy and impressed that Hamilton came back to make an exciting game of it. There have been so many shitty games in the CFL this year! As a fan of the league as a whole, I'm glad to see entertaining football being played.

How much more valuable is a second round pick than a fourth round pick? How many CFLers do you find in the second vs. in the fourth?The CFL draft is basically lawn darts played by blindfolded football insiders. Four of our current national starters / rotation guys weren't even drafted (Bucknor, Pontbriand, Kohlert, Sherman). Lirim H, our MOC, wasn't drafted either. So I think it's funny to read that all this goldilocks stuff about how a fourth pick would have been juuuusst right but a second was wayyyy tooooo much. I don't want to think about where this team would be if Walters had been too cheap to secure Neufeld.

The Neufeld trade is simple. The Roughriders traded a guy they couldn't use in 2013 or 2014 for a guy they could use in 2013. We traded a guy who wasn't going to make a difference in 2013 and who would be gone in 2014 for a guy we desperately needed in 2014, and we threw in a draft pick who became a roster DL for the saskies. In 2013, the Riders won that trade. In 2014, the Bombers win that trade. In 2015 and onwards, we'll compare Neufeld + our fourth-round pick vs. Ainsworth and see who won the trade. I've got a feeling that unless Ainsworth becomes someone special, we'll be pleased with this trade in 2015.