After taking most of the year to decide on an Argos jersey, it appears as though our good friend Shoomy's decision has ended in heartbreak.  Luckily, he was able to stop sobbing long enough to provide us with this pinch hit.

*** 

When the list of Argo free agents was announced I was disheartened to see who was on it… my man, number 65, Jerome Davis. Now I know that some Argo powers that be read this blog and it was my hope that their knowledge of my fondness for the big bald bearded fellow might be persuaded to keep their All-Star right tackle. Sadly, Jerome is now a member of the Grand Rapids Rampage.

The Jerome Davis jersey and Jerome, both during better times Jerome, in addition to wishing all the best, I also wanted to take a moment to offer an apology to you and the entire Argo nation. As Rusty pointed out earlier in the season - clearly my purchase of your jersey jinxed you - and it was that jinx that caused the season to spiral out of control.

Consider the facts: Jerome had been playing through some foot issues for most of the season to the level that he was voted an Eastern All-Star. It was not until my jersey purchase that he broke a few ribs in practice and was forced out of the final game of the season and the Eastern Final, both against Montreal, both loses.

Jerome did return for one game though where the true impact of his loss was highlighted by the inspiration that is his participation. I am hesitant to use the word heroic for Jerome’s play during the Eastern Conference Semi-final so let me instead use a word that provides a more adequate representation of his display on that day – superhuman.

Yes there were one or two holding penalties but if you saw him on the sideline you would wonder why he didn’t get a tripping call – from the opposition falling over his obviously excruciatingly pained and mangled corpse. I can’t count the number of trainers that looked after him or the number of times Rusty or A-Rad leaned over to me during the game saying – that’s it, he’s done – only to shake their heads in disbelief as Jerome went trotting out on to the field for the next offensive series. At one point he had a towel firmly wrapped around his head with a trainer pleading with him to put him out of his misery, only to once again answer the call.

To recap - the only Argo victory in the last 3 meaningful games of the season was the one Jerome played. Who knows what might have been had I not jinxed the All-Star right tackle? For that I am truly sorry.

If you faithful boatmenblog readers might indulge me for a moment, to Jerome - in the off chance he reads this blog - I would like to sincerely pass along my best wishes and sincere thanks for being a big part of my first Argo season.

Now for any other Argo players or fans, I am now soliciting consideration for my next jersey purchase. Although, given my devastating impact on the Argo season - perhaps you might want to try to persuade me who not to choose.

The city of Jacksonville has obviously angered the football gods. We had assumed that football fans in northern Florida had suffered enough this week given that the Jaguars were eliminated from the NFL playoff picture at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs. Apparently, we were mistaken, as today it was announced that the new football coach at Jacksonville University will most likely be former Argo Kerwin Bell.

That sound you just heard was 5,000 Manitobans organizing an angry mob to travel to Jacksonville.

The question here is why JU would hire Mr. Bell, and according to this article, one of the main factors was name recognition. It seems that quarterbacking the Florida Gators more than twenty years ago carries more weight than we thought.

What I’d really like to know though is which of these conversations actually took place in the Athletic Director's office:

“Well, as a player he would occasionally take taunting penalties after throwing interceptions, but he’s a bigger name than Kevin Feterik, so let’s go get him.”

“It seems that as QB of the Argos he turned the ball over at least 4 or 5 times in a playoff game, but he’s a bigger name than Marquel Fleetwood, so why not?”

“He appears to be the only thing both living or inanimate that Pinball Clemons has ever said anything negative about, but he’s a bigger name than Mike Kerrigan so… You’re sure that Danny Wuerffel isn’t available, right?”

We here at Boatmenblog would like to take the start of a new year as an opportunity to thank all of you for visiting and supporting this site in 2006.  We didn't really know what to expect when we started posting in July, but the support of CFL fans and the CFL community has been fantastic, and we have truly enjoyed sharing stories and getting to know fans from across the continent.

So please keep posting your comments and stories on the site or send them in to boatmenblog@gmail.com.

And when you have a moment, please raise a pint (or a glass of Cheetah) to a fantastic 2007 season in the CFL.  To the greatest league on the planet, and the Argos continuing dominance over the Ti-Cats, cheers.

With the year quickly winding down, we thought we'd steal a page from every media outlet/blogger/writer/drunken New Year's Eve partier and take a look back at some of our favourite people of 2006. Some impressed. Some dazzled. Most just amused, and only occasionally intentionally. Enjoy.

Number 7: Etienne Boulay

Let the record show that nobody stacked up better this year than the man who put two Ds in defence. Really, there isn't much to say here beyond the obvious: Va-va-voom!

(Okay, here's the problem. Jokes about Etienne Boulay's team photo were pretty much the easiest thing we could do this year. So we'd already selected him to our illustrious Top 10 and written our celebration of his assets when we discovered, to our horror, that the Als have now taken his photo down. We're just going to assume this is because Etienne got back from the Grey Cup, Googled himself and found about 18 Boatmenblog posts pointing to his ample bosom. But as good as that makes us feel, our hearts break for those who missed two of Canada's finest natural wonders.)

UPDATE: Thank you Google cache.  

With the year quickly winding down, we thought we'd steal a page from every media outlet/blogger/writer/drunken New Year's Eve partier and take a look back at some of our favourite people of 2006. Some impressed. Some dazzled. Most just amused, and only occasionally intentionally. Enjoy.

Number 8: The Blue Lightning
No, we do not have pictures from the Regina incident

Prior to starting this site we didn't really pay much attention to the exploits of other cities' dance teams.  So if asked at the start of the year which squad would be featured most prominently on the blog this year, we would have guessed Toronto's own Blue Thunder, or perhaps the Als' cheerleaders. Lesson learned: Never underestimate Central Canada.

In an event that will live on forever in the folklore of the Regina hospitality industry, Winnipeg's Blue Lightning terrorized the patrons of an unsuspecting hotel by singing and occasionally running around topless into the wee hours of prime time. (Unsurprisingly, the title of that blog entry seems to be very popular with the search engines)

Back on their home turf at Grey Cup Week, the Lightning delighted the throngs of inebriated football fans by actually having some fun with their routine and incorporating both football plays (Vegas set the over/under on the number of tight end jokes made during that performance at 200.5) and an unmistakable taunt of Jermaine Copeland and friends with a  fake bobsledding routine. 

Jermaine, we highly encourage you to avoid retaliating until after Danny Mac has retired, because the Lightning's brand of terrorism might very well kill him.

Allow us to break, ever so briefly, from our usual diet of snark and gentle mockery. Because this genuinely depresses us.

It's not that we didn't see it coming; the assortment of insiders who'd look at our Clifford Ivory jersey and inform us we'd soon be buying a different one was kind of a dead giveaway. But you can tell from the press release that even the Argos are depressed by Cliff's release, and they're the ones doing the releasing.

Cliff is one of the CFL's genuinely good guys, and he'll be missed. This also presents some of us with a dilemma. If he goes to, say, the Ticats, we're gonna feel pretty uncomfortable still wearing his jersey. But if we run into him wearing a different jersey, he might be crushed. This, after all, is the guy who dispenses hugs, free drinks and invites people to come party after the game in his trailer when he sees you wearing #13.

Then again, he never did call us for that drink we were supposed to go for in the off-season. So you might say he's a bit of a tease. We're gonna tell ourselves that, anyway, because it'll make this whole thing a bit easier to take.

With the year quickly winding down, we thought we'd steal a page from every media outlet/blogger/writer/drunken New Year's Eve partier and take a look back at some of our favourite people of 2006. Some impressed. Some dazzled. Most just amused, and only occasionally intentionally. Enjoy.

Number 9: Jack Todd

There is, we acknowledge, no shortage of competition for the most unintentionally enjoyable columnist covering the CFL. And even though none of them are Rod Black, most have at one time or another been in possesion of a genuinely outstanding mustache. But one man truly rose above the pack.

We had some inkling of how truly craptacular the Gazette's Jack Todd could be a couple of years ago, when we saw him on a panel the weekend of the '04 East Final (which ended rather unfavourably for the Als, as we recall) predicting that the Argos didn't stand a chance because they had a "cheerleader" on the sidelines while Montreal had Don Matthews. But either he didn't go all the way off the deep end until this year, or it just took us a while to notice.

Ironically, much of Jack's best stuff revolved around some sort of feud with that same Don Matthews. Whereas at the start of the year he was waxing poetic about The Don's "impassioned" speeches to the team and gleefully predicting a Grey Cup win, by mid-season he was explaining that Matthews should be fired because scalpers were having a hard time selling tickets. When The Don finally was replaced, he wrote a triumphant column explaining that he had to go because he wasn't nice enough to reporters - which, as we all know, is the primary consideration for most fans.

To cap off the year, there was his insightful pre-Grey Cup column, which apparently involved Jack falling asleep with his mustache pressing down on the "o" key. But what really earned him this illustrious spot on our list was his brilliant coverage, much earlier in the year, of the Als' blowout win over the Argos at Molson Stadium.

See, like most middle-aged sportswriters, Jack was clearly excited by the opportunity to bust out a bunch of pot jokes when Ricky Williams was signed by the Argos. But cruelly, by the time the Argos played their first game in Montreal, Ricky was hurt and out of the lineup.

Now, a lesser columnist would've set aside those jokes and written about the guys who were actually on the field. But not our man Jack. No, sir. Or, as he would say, nooooooooooooooooo sir! Undaunted, he cranked out an entire column that existed solely to let him work in zingers about the munchies, second-hand-smoke, Ricky's "burnt-out roach of a career" and the Argos competing for "the Grey Hookah."

That's gold, Jack. Gold. And yes, we know that if you repeat that to anyone, you'll tell them it was "Mexican gold." Because that's just the crazy kind of guy you are.

(Is it too early for New Year's resolutions? Because we're pretty sure we have to make one never to write this much about Jack Todd again.) 

 

With the year quickly winding down, we thought we'd steal a page from every media outlet/blogger/writer/drunken New Year's Eve partier and take a look back at some of our favourite people of 2006. Some impressed. Some dazzled. Most just amused, and only occasionally intentionally. Enjoy.

Number 10: Lesley Stewart

We start our list with the person who got us the most Google hits of the year (it came as a mild shock to us that more people look for photos of Lesley Stewart than Scott Coe).  This was a banner year for Lesley, who:

1. Took two former Argos cheerleaders with her to Hamilton, which started the biggest controversy in the CFL in 2006: Cheer-gate 

2. Was possibly the most senior member of the Ti-Cats organization not to be fired in 2006

3. Instructed members of the Prowl to remove their jackets during the team's routine at the Grey Cup, delighting the crowd and giving three girls frostbite.

Now, as for all of the people who come hear looking for photos of Lesley, we'll throw you a bone... so to speak. 

Earlier this week Ben Johnson announced that he had finally figured out how he tested positive for steroids in Seoul in 1988. The culprit: Carl Lewis, who Johnson claims slipped the banned substance into his beer a few days before the race. (No word from Johnson as to why he tested positive later in his career, but we’ll ignore that.)

Now while we here at boatmenblog have not put in the same amount of doped blood and sweat into trying to crack this “mystery” over the past 18 years as Mr. Johnson has, we do have an alternate theory.*
Sadly, we could not confirm if a Marilyn Monroe impersonator was present in Seoul.

Let’s set the scene. It’s 1988 and we’re still a few years away from Roberto Alomar’s McCain punch commercial that changed the way we viewed athletes as actors. A young apple juice executive is sitting in a bar in South Korea where he had been trying to find a cheaper supply of aluminum cans.

“If I’m going to get the business off the ground I need a big name endorser, and Hank Illesic won’t return my phone calls. But who’s bigger than Hank?”

At that time a young innocent sprinter walks into the bar to enjoy a beverage.

“Ben Johnson! Of course. But he’d be way too expensive. There must be a way to keep his celebrity status but get him cheaper…”

The juice magnate remembered the "special juice" he’d been using to propel himself to stardom as a goaltender in the B Division of the Beverage Producers of Ontario Men’s Hockey League…

To no one in particular he remarked, “Sometimes, you have to cheat... uhh to get ahead. Hey, wait a minute…”

Congrats Frank. It may have been 18 years later, but now… he cheetahs all the time.

* Note: Probably not true. Please don’t sue us.

 

Well we tried to help the Riders out, we really did, but Eric Tillman didn't take our carefully thought out suggestions.  Can't say that we didn't see this coming though. 

Presumably, Kent wasn't this dumbfounded when Tillman gave him the callWe wish Kent Austin the best of luck in Regina and hope that his ads for Moose Jaw Toyota are as brilliant as the work he did for Barrie Nissan.

As to what the population of Riderville can expect... well, let's hope Kent defers a little bit to an offensive co-ordinator.  While his gameplans for the 2004 East Final and Grey Cups were brilliant, it's apparent that the league has gone in a bit of a different direction, and that rushing attacks are now a bit more potent.  If he sticks to the same old plan, then I guess we'll find out just how good a blocking back Kenton Keith is.