Real life seems to have gotten in the way of blogging this week, which is completely indefensible.  We apologize.

We'll get to the Danny Barrett situation this weekend, but for now, we wanted to tie up one last thread from the Grey Cup.  This National Post article by Siri Argell (found via Pop Wherry) reports that Nelly Furtado was the CFL's second choice for halftime entertainment.  The first choice?  Former boy band member and Jessica Simpson castoff Nick Lachey.  Given this strange turn of events, we thought we should break this down and see who the better choice would have been. 

In the interest of full disclosure, we should probably mention that one of your boatmen blog authors may have praised Nelly Furtado on CBC Radio Winnipeg during the game, so we may be a little biased.  On to the breakdown...

Popularity:

Nelly: If the routines of the CFL dance teams are any indication, "Promiscuous" and "Maneater" are the most popular, and therefore greatest songs of all-time

Nick: I could try and figure out where his most popular song charted and come up with some detailed analysis of why Nelly is more popular, but is it really needed?

The Edge: Nelly

The Posse:

Nelly: Nelly brought the incomparable Saukrates to the Grey Cup, and while his myspace profile only seems to reveal that he has no idea where he's from, he's easily the second best hip hop artist ever mentioned on this blog.  (No one is taking this spot from Shake Severs)

Nick: I don't know if his boy band exists any more, but regardless, yelling "Bring on Saukrates" during a bad first half of football is infinitely more entertaining than yelling "Bring on 98 Degrees".

The Edge: Nelly

Headwear:

Nelly: Umm... Maybe that hat wasn't the warmest choice, Nelly.  We can only assume that this was a terrible attempt to mimic Tom Landry.
Nelly + Saukrates = Gold 

Nick: We only brought this whole headwear (I have no idea if that is a word or not, but I'm sticking with it) thing up because we remember him wearing a U of Cincinnati Bearcats hat during a Cincinnati-Kentucky NCAA basketball game, and quite frankly, as we've established a few times on here: Anything with the word Cat in it is evil.

The Edge: Nelly

Connection to the CFL:

Nelly: Is from Canada, but mentioned in a CBC interview that she is not a football fan, and doesn't really have any sort of connection with the CFL.

Nick: As detailed in this article for argonauts.ca, Nick wanted to make a very special connection with CFL ambassadors, the Blue Thunder. This one is easy.

The Edge: Nick

So Nelly wins this battle 3-1, and the only reason this wasn't a tie... Saukrates.  I think we've figured out who the 2007 halftime act should be.