Noeller

Sounded like there were various offers over the last few years, but Braley didn't think he was getting a fair deal, so he wouldn't let go. I'm not sure what the new owners will be like, but I'd bet we see a new, local owner in BC pretty quickly.

Apparently one of his last wishes, after he realized he was dying, was to make sure there was a smooth transition of ownership of the Lions. I think it was Lalacheur or someone that said it. Said they'll be working with the estate to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

Heartbreaking.... The guy was a straight up legend.

I read a thing today (Naylor, maybe?) where, apparently, the Lions were about to fold, and CBC (the CFLs only broadcaster) was apparently going to stop broadcasting if there was no team in BC, so someone from the government went to Braley and told him about it, and that's how he jumped in to help them out the first time....

3 teams...bailed out the TiCats after Ballard died, as well. The man was a known ******* within the BOG, but there's no question he absolutely LOVED the CFL...

discussion ongoing in the CFL Forum (...we need all the content we can get over there..)

No idea where to put this, but incredibly sad news out of the CFL, as David Braley has passed away. The man (and his $$$) saved the CFL multiple times over.

https://www.tsn.ca/naylor-many-questions-but-few-answers-on-a-2021-cfl-season-1.1543725 The Canadian Football League has been outrageously quiet since it pulled the plug on its season more than two months ago, leaving behind a wake of speculation about where things are headed next. With the reality setting in that COVID-19 is likely to still be around in some form next summer, there is real concern about what the 2021 season might look like or if it will occur at all. There are teams that believe it is vitally important to play in 2021 and that without a season the CFL is in danger of being mothballed. Whether every team believes that is another question. And there is a lot to sort out before anyone can accurately predict what a season might look like and how much pain the teams are collectively willing to stomach to make it happen. The league and its franchises are currently running through various scenarios for next season, trying to get a handle on true costs of each and working at ways to trim budgets and save money. That’s likely to continue until the league can truly choose a course of action, which feels like next April at the earliest. Why? Well, there’s not much point in fully committing to a scenario that’s seven months away if that scenario might be totally unrealistic by the time you get there. There has been no 2021 business plan presented yet, only regular updates to the presidents and governors about what the league is doing to prepare for the unknown. It should be noted that teams will need to make decisions about retaining assistant coaches with expiring contracts by December, which will be the first real economic commitments to a 2021 season. Restrictions on signing players will need to be lifted well before the opening of February free agency, where players are likely to meet a cautious market – one in which signing bonuses will probably be absent. There’s a collective bargaining agreement to amend, if not renegotiate, with the players, which will require some kind of pressure point because it always does. But the league can’t sit down with the players until it gets a true handle on revenues and it can’t do that until it chooses a course of action. Will CFL teams be allowed to have full stadiums next summer? It doesn't seem likely. But just what percentage of capacity will be allowed – if any at all – is impossible to guess. It seems as if the league is counting on the restrictions that currently prevent fans from being in stadiums being lifted. But to what degree? When will we see a schedule? Good question. Or could we see multiple schedules for different scenarios? Never say never. Could it be a 21-week, 18-game season played in home stadiums? Unlikely, given the losses teams are expected to take with reduced numbers of fans in the stands. Could we see a return to the 10-week bubble? Maybe. A nine-game schedule played in home stadiums before fans? Perhaps. The point is no one knows, so demanding answers to questions that can’t possibly be answered right now is a waste of time. All we know is that there’s going to be a lot less revenue for teams to operate with under any scenario, not just because of crowd restrictions but also due to older fans choosing to stay home for their safety. The CFL’s fan demographics do it no favours in this regard. Getting consensus on a best course of action won’t be easy for the CFL’s nine teams. Back in the summer, there were teams that were willing to play without government support and teams that weren’t. And just like then, the biggest challenge commissioner Randy Ambrosie faces now is finding a scenario they can all live with. Adopting a revenue-sharing model so that each team absorbs the same amount of red ink would certainly make consensus-building easier, which many believe should be the direction for the future, COVID-19 or not. The other elephant in the room is federal government, which many in the CFL believe left it high and dry last summer after months of back-and-forth talks where the league believed it was making progress. Is the CFL prepared to go down that road again, knowing it doesn’t control the timeline and larger forces can change things in an instant? Perhaps, although it’s not as though the feds don’t have a long list of people coming at them with their hands out. There will be voices demanding the owners suck up the losses of playing a season under any circumstance, as owners have done in other sports. But the business calculation in sports such as MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA is different because of the percentage of revenues those leagues derive from television. Losses sustained by playing in those leagues can also be viewed as investments towards protecting massive franchise values. That’s not the case in the CFL, where teams can’t just float money on the backs of their franchise values, and where one third of the teams are publicly owned. It would be beneficial for the league to soon announce its formal commitment to play some kind of season in 2021. But beyond that, get ready for months more of waiting with lots of questions and speculation but very few answers.

I'm in favour of then wanting to preserve the theatre experience but if it's gonna have to be delayed another year or more because we can't get into theatres safely, what can you do? They want a small fortune, but I'm sure someone will pay it...

The only comparable is the CPL, and even then, I'd bet CFL had way more players in the States that they needed to get across the border. At the end of the day, the CFL just doesn't have enough money and their business model, flawed as it is, won't work with no fans in the stands. I'm really disappointed that they couldn't figure something out from March to July, but I hold out hope that they'll get something figured for 2021. If not....there could be big problems.

I've said from the start I'm so glad we had a progressive (rather than conservative) government in power when a pandemic hit. I'm on the fence about JPT but this government has handled the pandemic as well as possible.

Our man Tait is going to have a series of great articles surrounding the "Run To The Cup" last year........ https://www.bluebombers.com/2020/10/22/10-plays-made-champion-1-hint-magic/?fbclid=IwAR3aIbjOWxISUTUSR_VjKguxVxmGs-w7poqRZE1319lEH9UNWM4xnJrLcSs

Seth M and DRM.... I am a fan of all these things. Very intriguing.....

It's not even McDavid that the Jets really need (Okay, every team needs him, but still...) it's a high end D. If you're going to shoot for the moon, the guy you want is Ivan Provorov. The Flyers will never part with him, but THAT'S the guy you want....

I thought they were ending at 10. Surprised that there'll be an 11th. That seems random. I still think they should have wrapped it with the movie Walker died in... the way they ended that seemed like a logical place to just wrap the series......but hey, there's money to be made. Also, each one without Rocky in it suffers greatly from the lack of his presence.

And right on cue, Fox News refused to run with the story because they "questioned its authenticity"......so, as you were saying......

I will never forget walking out of the theatre that day....so angry....

One of the worst films I've ever seen in my life... my buddies and I, excited for a reunion of the mid-90s SNL boys, were actually angry about how bad it was. And trying to shoe-horn Kevin James into a role clearly meant for Chris Farley.......irate about sums it up.

I was super disappointed in both Costco and Walmart, recently, when I saw approximately 50% mask usage by customers. As mentioned, both Costco and Walmart were among the first to make masks mandatory......so what happened? Why did they stop enforcing it?

I read something from Bart Kives the other day that basically said the high numbers were a bit of a red herring, in so much as there was a huge backlog of tests, and you were just starting to see the results from days or even weeks ago, which artificially inflated the daily case numbers. I'm wondering if this daily total of 75 means that they're starting to clear up the backlog...

I think Netflix just bought that because UG isn't *his* movie, per se. It's not a Happy Madison project.

Ha... Not far off. My wife LOVES those movies. I enjoyed most of them. But...as far as Marvel goes... The Cap Murica movies are the absolute best. Cap 2 might be the best made Marvel movie so far.