Linebackers, Lewd Tweets and Other Things That Don’t Start With L

As promised let’s get back to some football. The Riders helped in that regard by announcing the signing of 4 new import LBs: Alvin Bowen, Abraham Kromah, Tony Taylor and Jamar Williams. It’s nice to finally see some signings at the LB position since we are going to have to find 3 new starters. At best we may find the next Reggie Hunt, Anton McKenzie, Jerrell Freeman or Mo Lloyd (even though Mo Lloyd is one of the people trying to become one of them). At worst it’ll at least provide some competition for Stewart and Graham.

Since I know next to nothing about these new recruits I will resort to what I do best: stereotypes and wild assumptions based on limited information. It’s the same system that established Demetrice Crawford as the leading RB candidate. Let’s begin:

-       By virtue of having the blackest sounding name Jamar Williams gets my vote as the most likely to be good. (Just because it’s a stereotype, doesn’t make it not true).

-       Depending on which Google search result I believe Tony Taylor is either a second basemanin the MLB in the 60s and 70s or a co-conspirator in the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal... either way I’m just going to go ahead and assume he won’t be much of a football player.

-       Alvin Bowen was drafted by the Buffalo Bills. That fact alone should make you skeptical about Bowen. The Bills haven’t been successful in years and are such good evaluators of talent that they reportedly gave James Robinson a workout.

-       As for Kroham, well... let’s see... he went to Duke. Duke tends to do well in March Madness. It’s almost March Madness. So following that unrelated and mostly random line of logic, he should do well.

The big news in the League this week was of course Jonathan Hefney, who made news for the 100^th time this offseason for tweets he’s made. This time he took it to a whole new level by tweeting a lewd comment and a picture of a partially naked woman. For his dumbass-ery the CFL fined him. It really makes me wonder how long before agents start banning their clients from twitter or at least instituting a Don Cherry-style delay between an athlete tweeting something and it actually being posted for the world to see. It also makes me wonder what the hell people are thinking. I mean I have done and said a lot of stupid things but no matter how drunk I am my first reaction is not “I should post this online for the world to see!” (sometimes my friends are kind enough to do that on my behalf). But that seems to be the new mentality among people these days. They think that every thought and everything they do should... nay must be put online. How much longer before people start tweeting stuff like “Just took a dump”, “I swear this chick looked hotter when I took her home from the bar last night” or “Just because you watch American Idol only to see Ryan Seacrest’s eyes it doesn’t mean you are gay right? “

You’d be amazed the random thoughts you have when you are up in the middle of the night due to a new baby. For example: Someone was joking that CFL teams should be calling Peyton Manning since he is now on the market (I’m actually surprised he’s not on our neg list). Problem is now team could afford Manning... unless (and here is where my 3am genius comes in) Ottawa makes a play for him. Here me out. They won’t start play until 2014 or 2015 at the earliest. So if they pay Manning $4 million in 2012, and $4 mil in 2013 then they will be within the cap and still be paying Manning NFL type money.

It’s really amazing what stupid endeavors the processing power of brain gets directed towards. I could be solving world poverty but instead I’m focusing on alternative contract models to circumvent the CFL cap.

I’ll close with a plug for a charity event. You heard me right a charity event. A blog reader has asked me to promote a charity event... and since I have like 5 readers, its fairly easy to accommodate their requests.

The event is called Hockey Marathon for Kids and it’s in support of pediatric cancer care at Alberta Children’s Hospital (a very worthy cause). Basically, 40 men are going to attempt to break the world record for longer hockey game (10 days) and raise money to support kids fighting cancer in the process. The event was inspired by Diamond Marshall, the little girl who greeted William and Kate in Calgary on their royal tour of Canada.

For more information on the event or to donate check out their websites at www.facebook.com/HockeyMarathon and www.hockeymarathon.com.

Have a good weekend.

Picture

Okay I promise not to turn this blog into a baby blog and I will return to football related matters tomorrow but this picture was too good not to share

Monday Morning Sentimonies: Catching Up

For those who have been asking, everyone is now home from the hospital. Mom and baby are doing really good. Dad is exhausted but smart enough to keep his mouth shut since he is finding little sympathy from the Mrs... or anyone else for that matter.

Since I’m off work for a few days I decided I might as well get caught up on what’s been going on across the CFL.

The league is moving forward with a few rule changes. The first is so obvious that I’m surprised it took us this long to adopt it. If would seem to make sense that since the helmet is the most crucial piece of safety equipment, if someone loses it and is in a position to get turned into a vegetable the play should stop... not the CFL. Up until we have taken the “let’s see how this plays out” attitude which was popular in hockey before goalie helmets were invented. Well no more. This coming season a play will be blow dead if the ball carrier loses his headwear. Though it will still go on if he loses his pants, shoes or nipple tassels.

Other rules changes include reviewing every scoring play (just as the NFL started doing last season). I get why leagues are doing this but unfortunately the result is more delays during the game in order to fix a small percentage of plays.  That said, if the Riders have another riveting offensive year like last year, our game day experience won’t be delayed very much in 2012. The league will also be adding a penalty if a non-ball carrier loses his helmet and subsequently is involved in the play. So if last year was any indication there will either be a huge increase in penalties or use of super glue.

The league also considered rule changes involving pass interference. One where coaches would be able to challenge one PI call per game and one where PI would become a 25 yd penalty. Both were held off pending further review and discussion. I don’t mind the idea of being able to challenge a bad PI call/no call but the penalty is a subjective one so I’m not sure how well it would actually work in real life. As for the 25 yard penalty I think it’s dumb. If that was the rule every DB would automatically knock down any receiver who gets behind them deep.  It would actually decrease big plays rather than increase them.

E-Camp was this past weekend but I will save the draft talk for when we get closer to the draft... hopefully by then Duane Ford will have written something on the topic since no one else in the country seems to have a clue.

Well that’s it for now. I’ve got to get back the wife and kid... and work on my next excuse to get out of diaper duty. It being against my religion didn’t go over well so my next angle is a medical allergy to whatever it is they make diapers out of.

CFL Ins and Outs

BC

Out: DL Brent Johsnon (retired)

Hamilton

Out: LB Auggie Barrenechea (retired)

A New Addition to the Prophet Family.

I'd like to welcome the newest member of the Prophet Family... My little Prophet Junior was born this morning.

Bear with me, as posting will probably be sporadic until everyone is settled back at home.

Thursday Roundup: New QBs

The Riders signed a couple of QBs this week and in positive turn of events I don’t already hate them (see: Bishop, Michael and Dinwiddie, Ryan). The team added Colt Brennan and Drew Willy.

Colt Brennan is by far the most recognizable name of the 2. He was a record setting QB with the University of Hawaii Warriors (or as they preferred to be called the Rainbow Warriors... not that there’s anything wrong with that). He was drafted in the 6^th round in 2008 by the Redskins. A few years and injuries later and he is out of the NFL and headed north to try and re-establish his career. He certainly has an impressive resume but after digging a little bit deeper into his background I have few red flags.

1 – Before U of Hawaii he attended the reputable institution known as Saddleback College... where he must have majored in lassoing or chewing tobacco.

2 – The last prolific passer to come out of the University of Hawaii was Timmy Chang... and that ended with him being arrested for throwing someone’s camera on a roof.

3 – The only 2 NFL teams to give him a chance were the Redskins and Raiders... these organizations thought that Jamarcus Russell and Rex Grossman were also good.

I’m not saying I think he is a bad signing or doomed for failure. I’m just saying his resume is not as pristine as some would make it out to be. If you want to know more about Brennan, you should check out Saskawhat’s analysis here.

 

As for Willy, I just hope his parents had the foresight not to make his middle name Adam (Drew A Willy) or Preston (Drew P Willy). You might think that Willy is an odd name but I did some looking into it and apparently the family changed it to Willy back when they immigrated to the US... it used to be Oneeyedtrousersnake.

Overall I’m happy we are bringing in some new players as opposed to recycling a bunch of has-beens and never-was-beens.

Monday Morning Sentimonies: Mosaic’s $14 Million Facelift

Usually by this point of the offseason the lack of actual player news leaves me commenting on curling, discussions on whether it was a pimple or a boil and pretty much anything just to fill this space... and by that I of course mean that I put tireless effort into each post regardless of the time of year to ensure a positive reading experience for my fans... any chance you are buying that? No? Didn’t think so. Well it was worth a shot.

Anywho, this offseason there have been enough big stories to so far tide me over. Last week it was the Lingerie Football League and this week it’s the announcement of a $14 million upgrade to Mosaic Stadium. The plan will see the installation of 5000 new fancy temporary seats in a bowl style in the endzones, add corporate boxes and add new jumbotrons. This will be phase 1 and look like this:

Then next year when the Grey Cup is here they will expand overall seating by adding second decks to the new temp seats pushing capacity to 50,000 for Labour Day through the Grey Cup. It will look like this:

Then in 2014 the 2^nd deck will be removed and we will be back in the bowl style 33,000 capacity format until the new stadium is ready at which points the temp seats will be sent off the football fields around Saskatchewan to support amateur football.

Now this should have been nothing but positive news but it has unfortunately been sullied by a bunch of assuming and misinformation regarding the prospects of a new stadium. And when misinformation and stupidity in the football world abound, you know what that means... it’s time for another installment of Addressing Uninformed Opinions aka Everyone is Stupid But Me.

Uniformed Opinion #1 – This means we are not getting a new stadium.

Clearly you missed key parts of the announcement like “temporary seats” and “seats to be taken down and distributed across the province”. Or maybe you just assumed that this was bizzaro world and temporary meant permanent and “torn down” meant “left there forever while the kids of Swift Current cry that the stands Jim Hopson promised them are never coming”. This is a temporary thing that was needed for the Grey Cup and is only meant to tide us over until the stadium is ready.

The only way we are not getting a new stadium is if people vote for the hippie mayoral candidate who doesn’t support the stadium.

Uninformed Opinion #2 – It’s a waste to pump $14 Million if we are just going to demolish it in 4 years.

On the surface I will agree with you here (aren’t I a nice guy?) but you need to dig deeper to see the economic sense. Fact is we needed temp seating for Grey Cup. Believe it or not the CFL would not have awarded us the event if we didn’t promise to expand seating a ton. So given that we would have had to pay for that anyway the team wisely decided to try and make it a more profitable investment. So instead of just getting the increased capacity for Grey Cup we are now also getting an additional 5000 seats per game for 4 years, which should  mean more $$$. We are also getting more corporate boxes for 4 years which are a cash cow for sports teams hence more $$$. So the team is turning a necessary expense into what should be a money making venture. It’s actually smart business. After a year of witnessing countless stupid decisions on the field, we should feel somewhat reassured that the team is still making good decisions off the field... you know minus the giving Taman complete control thing.

Also it’s not like we are just going to throw out the new jumbotrons in 4 years, I’m sure they will move them to the new stadium so it’s not a wasted investment. Then again if they are planning to throw them out I may just have to go dumpster diving... my house could use a 60 foot TV.

So in conclusion, upgrades = good investment; temporary actually means temporary; and stadium still a go unless people of Regina vote like idiots.

The good news on that last point is given that voter turnout for municipal elections is embarrassingly low, given that me and Mrs Prophet plan on voting for a pro-stadium mayor that should pretty much make it a lock.