Consider this a pre-emptive strike.

While at the Jays game Friday night (at this point it would probably make more sense if I started renting a room at the RC hotel) the woman sitting behind me was giggling with delight after every Jays strike out. Now if she was just delirious about the Jays recent lights out starting pitching or was enjoying the mutton chopped stylings of Brian Tallet that’d be one thing. But no, like thousands of other occasional Toronto baseball fans she was giddy over the prospect of possibly getting a free crappy $2 pepperoni slice from Pizza Pizza.

“Wouldn’t it be great if they did this at every game in Toronto?”

Hell no! We’ve already seen this damn promotion ruin Jays and Raptors games and there is no way as fans that we should allow it to spread to other teams. There is little that is more embarrassing as a sports fan in this city than to have a top of the ninth situation in a close game and have the crowd chanting “Pizza! Pizza!”. I get it from Pizza Pizza’s perspective, it’s a great marketing trick, but why people are so enthralled by this (or the chance to win a shirt that says FedEx on it) is beyond me. If the Carolina Hurricanes had a promotion where everyone got some free ribs if the team scored 4 goals and the whole crowd starting chanting “B! B! Q!” in the third period, we’d all think they were brain dead hicks, so why do we stand for this in our own city? Incidentally, the Hurricanes example would actually be somewhat defensible on account of BBQ being awesome.

So, how does this relate to the Argos? Well, so far Pizza Pizza’s advertising at the games has been restricted to bringing out that guy who won the world pizza dough competition and having Damon Allen make incomprehensible jokes about Jude St. John being Italian. But we all know that it won’t stop there.

As we speak there is someone sitting in a big leather chair at Pizza Pizza headquarters plotting a way to get pizza chants going at all public places. Weddings, funerals, beer fests and yes, Argo games. It’s not a stretch to picture fair weather fans making too much noise when the Argos have the ball because one more first down will get them a soggy piece of cardboard with cheese on it. Or groaning after a third down stop because it didn’t get them the last sack needed for an angioplasty inducing slice, and the last thing this city needs is to have the rest of the country think that he have the dumbest fans in the league save for the gaggle of bandwagoners that show up for the Als game at the Big O every year.

So is there any sponsorship that Pizza Pizza can take on that would make us happier than seeing Timmy Chang coming into a game? Easy. Cheese Race! Cheese Race!