johnzo

yup, absolutely, and Rolling Stone deserves all the heat it got for the story. This is a super real problem and messy reporting about it really hurts efforts to do something about it.

holy crap, Zarley Zalapski, the best name in NHL history, is dead? I'll never forget the Penguins' play-by-play guy yelling about Zarley's zalapshot...

It gets even weirder ... the Alabama special election parallels the 2010 Massachusetts special election almost exactly. Early in a new, controversial president's term, a safe senate seat flips in a massive upset because the favored candidate had some flaws. But yeah, conventional wisdom is that the presidential party loses seats in Congress during the midterms, and I think that will get even more pronounced in the near future. Midterms turn on motivated voters -- the Tea Party had been stoked white-hot in 2010, just like the anti-Trump resistance is now.

re: false allegations, they do exist. Here is a great example of the difference between a false accusation and a credible accusation. https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-cernovich-chuck-johnson-alt-right-hyped-anti-schumer-forgery-that-plagiarized-conyers-complaint

from https://www.cfl.ca/2017/12/11/oleary-popp-gives-argos-every-option-need-centre/

Maybe the Argos are pitching a Harris / Burris type situation? Ray comes back in 2018 as the starter, but Franklin is sure to get some starts too, and then in 2019 Ray is gone and Franklin is the guy.

Who else is geeked for The Last Jedi? I'm seeing it on Saturday with a ton of friends at the plushest theatre in the area. Have avoided all the trailers too, I'm going in completely cold.

Speaking of Canadian receivers... http://3downnation.com/2017/12/08/receivers-nik-lewis-rob-bagg-discuss-changing-cfl-ratio-rules/ (I am a fan of the Canadian roster rules overall but I hope they'll be revised if the league ever expands to 10 teams.)

June Jones doubles down on Johnny Football: https://www.tsn.ca/jones-manziel-would-be-best-player-to-ever-play-up-here-1.937424

JJ is pumping Johnny Football's tires hard. Warren Moon? Seriously? https://www.cfl.ca/2017/12/04/jones-says-plug-manziel-ticats-offence-easily/

Any love for Shaq Johnson? He looked good against us last year. Signing him might really help with our ratio, and would put the Lions in a big bind...

Bauming tweets that "Mark Nelson will remain with the team in a coaching capacity." Is there any way this isn't a demotion for Nelson? Looks weird for him to be sticking around, but maybe I don't know enough to judge. In other news, J. Mincy has been released to try the NFL. Als lose one of their bright spots from last year. Thought he had some great games against the best in our league. Good luck to him.

Jesus Christ, dude. I'm sorry to hear that.

I don't think you should need to go to court to fire someone., I suspect that when a guy of Lauer's stature is canned so quickly, that there's some open secrets in his workplace that we're not privy to. Firing him is risky, he's a big star and has gobs of money to fight this if he wants. You have to think that the beancounters and producers figured out that the risk of keeping him and being sued into oblivion for enabling a sex criminal was greater. He's also semi-confessed and semi-apologized, so it's not like he's denying he's been a creep. And that whole thing about his desk button that would lock his office door is just gross.

Voyager 1 keeps kicking ass. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/12/after-37-years-voyager-has-fired-up-its-trajectory-thrusters/ Its control team just fired up some secondary maneuvering thrusters that have been dormant for 37 years and they responded perfectly. This adds 2-3 more years to the V1 mission .. the main thrusters that have kept V1's antennas aligned with Earth so far are starting to crap out, but now they have an alternative. I think I'm going to throw a wake for V1 when it disappears into the void...

yup. I looked at the numbers a year ago and it looks like a typical CFL team will need to start 7-10 different import receivers in a season due to injury and etc. You need great receiver depth to survive a CFL season. Look at the Eskimos -- Hazelton and Duke Williams were depth receivers for them.

The cfl.ca piece about his re-signing does mention a "midseason injury" that cut into his practice time, but doesn't get into specifics: https://www.cfl.ca/2017/11/30/coach-oshea-pep-talk-helped-keep-medlock-winnipeg/

Thanks for breaking that down. I'd put his middle third at pretty good for a WR2/3, that's a 100-catch / 1000-yard pace in those six games. But then he just utteryly disappeared in the crunch time and it was so sudden that I gotta wonder if something else was going on. Funny thing about Denny's 2017 stats vs his career year in 2014 ... he had about the same number of catches in both years (60 vs 65) but his YPC was way, way down in 2017, even during his good middle six. It seems like Lapo wasn't sending him downfield much -- Dressler and Adams and their injury replacements got all those throws. So I gotta wonder if he's a victim of the Lapo offence?

Would love to see him in Blue and Gold, but he's gotta change his number..

Ritchie was the Blue Bomber STC in 1990. I took a spin thru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_Canadian_Football_League_head_coaches_by_team and the only non-Trestmans I can spot who jumped straight into a CFL HC job in the semi-recent past are Bart Andrus, Dan Hawkins, Forrest Gregg, and Daryl Rogers. Not a real distinguished list, and very little to suggest that you can hire a guy straight out of the US and instantly turn your program around. You need a guy with CFL experience. (There's also Jack Pardee, Pepper Rodgers, Ron Meyer, and Kaye Stephenson from the US expansion days. I don't count those guys because they didn't have to play by the same roster rules as the rest of the league. tho Stephenson had an undistinguished year in Edmonton after his Sacramento / San Antonio stint. I think that was the same year that Dave Archer bit a guy's finger. Man, the CFL was nuts in the nineties)

I was gonna say June Jones but he's only had half a season of success and he was the OC of the Rough Riders back in the 1986. Looking at this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_Football_League_head_coaches_by_wins It looks like Frank Clair leaped straight into the Argos' big chair from a college job in Buffalo way back in 1950, but all the other top coaches had time as players, assistant coaches, or both, before becoming CFL HCs.

Funny thing was, he was hitting the endzone like crazy early last year ... then he just stopped getting targets. It happened so suddenly, I wonder if he was playing through an injury?

Yoiks, this taco org structure is really messed up. And then you consider that these are two guys who are really not super good at playing with others....

Inexperienced O'Shea: 12-24 Experienced O'Shea: 23-13

Always been a fan of Ray's. If he comes back for 2018, I'll still be a fan, if he retires, I'll be happy I got to see him play and wish him all the best. It's a super personal decision with health and financial considerations, and since I'm not his doctor, his accountant, his coach, or a member of his family, I choose d) no opinion because it's really none of my business.