JuranBoldenRules

I like a strong head coach who wants to manage and lead a team, empower his assistants and players and only micromanage when absolutely necessary. I think O'Shea fits that mold. Obviously he is inexperienced, but I'd rather an inexperienced guy who can lead that a guy like Bellefeuille with head coaching experience.

That's not exactly what he said...I caught it on the way home and he said, and stay with me here guys because I know this sounds loony, but O'Shea essentially be the actual HC but bypass on the HC gig and just 'accept' a DC position here, thus allowing Cortez to be promoted from Sask OC to our HC as more of a figurehead title. O'Shea would be the HC but actually hold the DC title, and Cortez would be the OC but have the HC title. Ya... Then we can remix "Blurred Lines" as our theme song. "3 and 1, should we go, who makes the call, no one knows"

Every team is running targeted camps where they make contact with agents and invite players or agents suggest players to them. Some teams allow guys they haven't invited to show up too, but nobody is running purely free-for-all free agent camps. I think you'd have a tough time naming more than a couple players who just wandered into a free agent camp completely unknown and unsolicited and ended up making a CFL team recently.

Completely disregarding the specifics of this case, and just speaking generally. Small town Southeast Manitoba is a terrible market for a start-up, non-chain, step above greasy-spoon type place to make a go of it. Not a big market to draw from to start, and close enough to Winnipeg, Steinbach and WInkler that you're competing with businesses there for the locals. I worked for a couple years in a nearby town and a lot of my co-workers lived in Morris, Emerson, Arnaud, Altona, Rosenfeld, Lowe Farm etc. When they decided to go out for dinner or have a night out, they mostly went to Winnipeg. Another factor is that people from the country aren't phased by a 45 minute drive like people in the city are. Most places you want to go is a long drive! You don't see a lot of places in those larger towns like Morris and Altona outside of long-standing breakfast and lunch spots or chains like Subway, McD's and Chicken Chef. The only restaurant I'd want to operate in any of those towns is a Tim Horton's.

Cortez as a head coach is a playcaller who gets to make the big decisions, basically an OC with expanded duties. I'm not a fan of that setup. It takes a very special coach to pull that off, and while Cortez is one of the best OC's in this league over the last couple decades, I don't believe he can run a team successfully that way. I want a head coach who will manage a football team, not spend 90% of his energy on one-third of the team.

They essentially are the scouts. They work their contacts and use scouting services/freelancers, target players for workouts and neg list. We do need someone in football operations.

It's a name hire, so immediately everyone will react. We have the least experienced front office in pro football. That's not slagging ability, but there are a lot of lessons that will likely be learned the hard way, at least they are being handed a team that was more conservative with player contracts so they have loads of flexibility. We are sorely lacking anyone who has experience operating a pro football team at every level other than CFO. I guess we can still hope for another hire at director of football operations to support. Impossible for any of us to know if McManus is a good, bad or great scout, his experience is limited, similar to Walters and whoever we hire as head coach. Just have to wait and see.

Yes, there are only candidates with experience and candidates without experience. Good observation. All humans too. Our recent coaches from that species have been awful.

Mack drafted enough useless players with high picks to offset Muamba's impact on the ratio.

yea cuz that henoc guy and greaves have just been such busts.. When the ratio goes down to 2 NI's we'll be golden.

Kohlert, Watson, Muamba and Greaves are the only NI's that are worth protecting at this point. Hard to see a reason why we wouldn't protect any of them, regardless of their contract status.

Rouse fulfills the Ottawa Dexter Manley requirement for the illiterate ex-con roster spot. It will be harder to fulfill the NI ratio.

I'm pretty confident that getting a good piece or 2 on the o-line will do more to improve the Bombers than an 'impact' import receiver. Those pieces don't hit the market. Name one starting NI OL in the whole league who moved during free agency last off-season. In the last 3 off-seasons, Labatte, Picard, Rottier and O'Neill are the only guys who could be even loosely called starters that moved in free agency. Last NI safety to move in free agency, JR Larose, a guy coming back from a tib-fib fracture who almost had his leg amputated. Free agency is useless when you are building a team. Draft and develop. The Saskatchewan Roughriders, 2013 Grey Cup Champions*, disagree. *barf The core of that team was not built through free agency.

Does Edmonton even have a president right now? Scary that Hervey has total autonomy there. That is a guy who is clearly overwhelmed.

Would be pretty seamless, get rid of Edwards and that would cover most of it.

The fact that he's even in the CFL is a fluke, not so much his cannon arm. If he learns how to play QB he'll be great, but that's been said about him on both sides of the border. Popp and Trestman had Russell Wilson on the neg list. That would have been a fluke too.

More likely that the Bombers had no interest in Higgins, just like every other team in the league.

I'm pretty confident that getting a good piece or 2 on the o-line will do more to improve the Bombers than an 'impact' import receiver. Those pieces don't hit the market. Name one starting NI OL in the whole league who moved during free agency last off-season. In the last 3 off-seasons, Labatte, Picard, Rottier and O'Neill are the only guys who could be even loosely called starters that moved in free agency. Last NI safety to move in free agency, JR Larose, a guy coming back from a tib-fib fracture who almost had his leg amputated. Free agency is useless when you are building a team. Draft and develop.

This is the first deal of its kind in the sports realm. First time a league has given exclusive rights in one country to one partner. That kind of screams CANADA! Umm...the NHL has had the same deal in the states for decades with both ABC/ESPN (Disney) and then NBC/Versus later NBC Sports Network for national rights. Regional rights are completely different, same as Canada. The CFL has also sold it's entire inventory of television broadcasts to CTV/TSN since 2008.

This is all I've found so far "Rogers will make an up-front payment of $150 million, and then annual payments starting at $300 million, which will escalate to $500 million in the final year of the deal. According to CRTC data, TSN and RDS only took in a combined total of $541 million in revenue last year." http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-scoops-nhl-national-tv-rights-in-5-2b-deal-1.2440645 Rogers purchased way more inventory than TSN ever had though.

No doubt the guy has the north side of the border under control and I like that he has run a CIS program, but he has one year in personnel. It is pretty sad that he's been tossed the keys of a CFL team with that little experience. I hope it isn't the cheap way out, but knowing how the Football Club operates, it likely is. I would have preferred someone like John Murphy with Walters being a key assistant. We really need a strong assistant GM or director of personnel now with plenty of experience negotiating contracts, which is something we don't have, and Danny McManus is just as inexperienced. To me it is sort of like tossing a rookie QB out onto the field, it's either going to be a massive success or a massive failure.

Could be bad news for the CFL if TSN gets knocked off basic cable, or if the pick and pay model for cable and satellite that the current federal government is pushing comes to fruition.

As their intro said, "they have sold nearly 1 million albums." Not exactly the resume of most halftime shows at the recent Grey Cups or Super Bowls and it sure feels like the CTV/Bell machine hold stock in the band.

Guys who have played in the league and are free agents? To me, that's about the last thing I'd be thinking about when I'm hiring a coach, although a coach who does a good job will create an attractive team to play for. Free agency (Feb 15th) is nearly worthless in this league, it's like the $2.99 DVD bin at Wal-Mart, good movies don't end up in there unless they are old or otherwise damaged. This team is so far away from being able to actually make good use of free agency to add the supplemental pieces it provides that it isn't even a concern, and really should never be. Free agents are looking for an opportunity to play and sometimes money. You need to build and develop a team with great scouting on both sides of the border. In a coach I'm more interested in a guy who can develop individual players and a team than someone who can attract free agents. You win and trend upward, players will want to play here. I'm not sure if you watched the Grey Cup, but Khari was typically with Durant on the sideline, or with Cortez discussing strategy. TSN had a closeup on a pretty emotional embrace between Khari and Durant immediately after the game. I don't think either of the two guys you mentioned would have significant difficulty with players.

Because everyone in the league assumed Walters would get the interim tag removed. How to kill a personnel search quickly. No one is going to interview for a job that is filled. The league assuming something doesn't mean it was true. "Kyle will be holding interviews for coaching candidates next week," Pretty easy assumption.