Noeller

Pretty sure Bart's take is based on simple math.....and therefore accurate. I saw Scott Billeck Tweet similar thoughts. They know how many doses have been shipped to each province...they know how many doses have been injected by the province.....the math isn't very difficult to find out that Manitoba is leaving a lot of doses in the freezer.

Too many GC losses in the official portal but some really neat regular season stuff on YT. Love watching those 80s teams...

I.... I get that reference...

I think it's too early to call the trade either way but ya PLD has been very meh so far. Definitely not earning a big pay increase...

Ya it's a ******* mess in AB. I'm tucked away in a small town but we still have 35 cases in a pop of less than 15k including rural. Way too high. The premier won't do anything about it because he's terrified of his hard right base that wants to just go wide open like Fla/TX (he actually mentioned this during his last presser). I also truly believe that they're intentionally going slow with the vaxx rollout so they can further blame the Feds. They have the doses but are very slowly getting them into arms and crying that they don't have enough doses. It's a horror movie right now...

I think the variants and vaccine rollout (lack thereof) are definitely throwing a wrench into things. Gov't is a lot more cautious right now, as they should be. The way the pandemic is going right now, I'm not sure football is very high on the priority list. Just look at situation in Vancouver with the Canucks... I think that's going to put a halt to any risks anyone might have taken. So with all that being said, why release a statement that essentially says nothing?

ehhhhhhh I get where he's coming from, but the bottom line is the league doesn't know anything...nobody can make plans because it's a pandemic and everyone's flying by the seat of their pants. The government is the only one who can say anything, and even they're not really sure. So it's not like the league is intentionally holding the players in the dark....they just have no way of knowing anything right now. I get really tired of the players whining like the league is intentionally trying to screw them...

You are so right my friend. I would give anything to have an excuse to not leave the house for the next two months...

Brazilian variant running wild in BC. We're living in a horror movie, folks...

And Hinshaw announced "a significant outbreak" of the P1 Brazilian variant today, without saying where it is.. Only that they're working on containing it. Yeeeeesh. This province is a tire fire...

Hmmmm well that's an odd spike.... Even for 2 days worth of info, that seems high.

Yes that's the one. That's exactly how Strev should have been treated, instead they tried to make him a pocket passer with the regular playbook and that'll never work...

Helle deserved a better fate. He was all ******* world again tonight.

Arizona didn't have plays suited to him when he got thrown to the wolves this year. Who's that other gimmick QB that they wanted him to be like...? Drawing a blank... But whatever that guys plays are, Strev needs that..

In fairness to Ambrosie, he did say after the news first dropped that there would be a long stretch of silence. There won't be any news for a long time.

That's gonna be on my tombstone when covid finally gets me...

I don't get it.....?

It's definitely very interesting. We (those markets) are the lifeblood of the league, and if the day ever came where it was only those teams (and Calgary) I'd still follow it and care as much.

Oh these variants will absolutely be getting more people sick (and dead). I've read 50% more deadly and 65% more contagious. And that's just the UK variant. The Brazilian one wen worse.

I really feel like Naylor has been a typical Toronto attitude throughout this. Very "nobody cares about the CFL, so we have to do this in order to make people care", except that it's really a Toronto-only attitude. I saw a thing from Duthie this morning talking about how there's really two modes of thinking about the potential merger: The Toronto view, and Everyone Else....

from Dave Naylor: https://www.tsn.ca/dave-naylor-status-quo-may-be-the-most-treacherous-road-for-cfl-1.1616719?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter If you want to know what’s driving the Canadian Football League towards an integration with the XFL, you can start with a simple understanding. Unless the league comes up with a vision that gives all nine teams reason to push into the future, its very existence is in jeopardy. So, if a potential injection of cash and a new business model built around collaboration with the XFL can guarantee that all nine teams stay in the game, then that’s what the CFL has to do. And that’s exactly why the league is pursuing this direction. The CFL is a unique mix of three publicly owned and six privately owned franchises that operate with minimally shared revenues, in what amounts to an every-team-for-itself kind of operation. Without a season in 2020, every team suffered significant losses, with the publicly owned Winnipeg Blue Bombers recently reporting a $7 million deficit, a figure that’s likely to be reflected in the year-end statements of every team, both public and private. The nature of public ownership among Winnipeg, Saskatchewan and Edmonton means they will almost surely find a way to survive, or at least will be given the opportunity to adapt to the new reality. Their businesses were solid if unspectacular before COVID-19, and each team has a significant presence in its respective market. They aren’t going anywhere, for now. The same can be said of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, where owner Bob Young had built his team into a stable business before the pandemic. Young, who bought the Ticats out of bankruptcy in 2003, has both the wealth and the apparent wherewithal to see his team through the league’s darkest days. The Ticats were one of the teams that pushed to play last summer. And for Young, CFL ownership has always been more about passion than profit. The CFL’s Ottawa and Calgary franchises are owned by parent companies invested in other local sports properties. Each has been able to operate its CFL franchises without taking on great losses. Which brings us to the CFL’s three biggest markets, starting with the Toronto Argonauts – long the league’s greatest source of concern and by far the weakest link in a Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment family of teams that also includes the Maple Leafs, Raptors, TFC and Marlies. Bell, Larry Tanenbaum, and later full MLSE ownership, bought the Argonauts in 2015, anticipating that a move to intimate BMO Field on the shore of Lake Ontario would change the team’s image in Toronto and bring people back to the stands. It hasn’t. Instead, amid record-low announced attendance figures, the losses have piled up. That’s never going to sit well in a company that is all about driving revenues and franchise values. It’s going to sit even worse when MLSE hasn’t taken in ticket revenue from the Leafs or Raptors in more than a year. MLSE is believed to be among the CFL owners most bullish on the idea of an XFL collaboration, presumably seeing it as a way to turn their football asset into something of value. It’s not hard to understand why they might rather roll the dice on an XFL venture than continue funding losses under a business model that hasn’t worked in Canada’s biggest city in 30 years. So what if MLSE concludes that, under current conditions, the Argos just aren’t worth it under the traditional CFL business model? Would there be such a thing as a next owner of the Argonauts? Logic says the white knights disappeared the day the league allowed David Braley to own two teams. And what then of Montreal? Gary Stern and Sid Spiegel took over the team in January of 2020 at the urging of CFL chairman of the board Dale Lastman, a boyhood friend of Stern who happens to sit at the right hand of MLSE chairman Tanenbaum. If MLSE decided it wanted out of the CFL, would Stern and Spiegel remain committed to Montreal? It took the league a full year and a boatload of money to find the current owner of the Alouettes. How hard would it be to find someone else who wants to own the Als under the current business model? And then there is Vancouver, where the estate of the late David Braley owns the Lions. It’s believed Braley left the team enough money to see it through at least a couple of seasons. But does the pandemic change that equation? And how on earth could the league even begin to negotiate with potential buyers when it’s impossible to know what’s being sold? Is this B.C. franchise part of a nine-team CFL? An 18-team CFL-XFL? Or a seven-team CFL? And what’s the business model for any of those? Is there another owner waiting to invest in the Lions under the CFL business model? Or would the league be more likely to attract investment as part of a much bigger league, one on American television with big-money U.S. investors behind it? The answers to any one of these questions about Toronto, Montreal and B.C. are critical to the future of the CFL. That’s why the league needs a plan that gives all nine teams a way to see beyond the limitations of the current business model; a reason to believe that funding teams through the current pandemic-driven crisis is more than just an exercise in staving off the inevitable. That’s where the XFL comes into the picture. There are endless questions about how a CFL-XFL joint venture will work, but at the very least it will be different. There will be a new business model to test and new sources of revenue to potentially tap. CFL teams may have been forced to open their minds to the XFL collaboration out of fear of the status quo. But emerging from dire circumstances is a broad enthusiasm about trying something new, of exploring a way for the league to reinvent itself for the future. Make no mistake, there is going to be plenty of risk associated with an XFL-CFL venture, given all the dynamics and leaps of faith involved. But if such a collaboration holds enough promise to keep all nine CFL franchises committed to the future, that’s going to be inherently less risky than trying to steer forward with the status quo.

every CFL beat writer in Canada was upset about that on Twitter yesterday....

People in their 40s dying...man oh man. The further we get into this, with older generations being vaccinated, we're seeing younger and younger people being greatly affected by this virus. Absolutely terrifying...

Oh my lord, how I love that Osh GIF.......