Bonus Pick:

All of the Argos have been injured in practice, leaving Pinball to play the Riders himself. Pinball is a man of compassion, but this might be taking it too far. In order to show solidarity with Arland Bruce III, Pinball develops sympathy hemorrhoids. How does Pinball do?

Boatmenblog Pick: Well this might be the most uncomfortable bonus pick we've ever done. Pinball quickly realizes that running isn't really an option and so he proceeds to play that game while running on his hands. While this is impressive in and of itself, Pinball further surprises the fans by scoring the decisive twentieth touchdown by using one hand in a spring like fashion pushing himself off of the ground and landing in the end zone 70 yards away.  Tackling was a bit of an issue for Pinner this week, hence the closer score.  Pinball 142  Riders 26

* Everything we need to know about football analysis, we learned from early ‘90s SNL sketches.

Edmonton at Montreal
Wow, that Eskimos-Bombers game last week was pretty much the typical CFL game:

• A somewhat inexplicable to U.S. football fans score of 2-2.

• A temper tantrum by a star player

• An exciting finish featuring a rouge

• A Jesse Lumsden injury

Poor Jesse. It’s not his fault that he seems to have the durability of that old brown banana that you have sitting in the back of the fridge. So I guess the question becomes, what does Jesse do from here?

Well you’re asking the wrong guy. My medical knowledge comes exclusively from the autopsy scenes in Law and Order. So I may be able to tell you that he suffered blunt force trauma to the shoulder, but he’s not dead and we already know who did it. See? Useless.

In the mean time, Calvin McCarty looks like a good back and maybe Arkee Whitlock works out but really whenever the Esks have a returner, receiver or running back go down, our refrain will be the same. Bring back Gizmo.

Pick: Montreal

Calgary at Winnipeg
The most remarkable part about the Derick Armstrong story to me isn’t that the Bombers tried to have him come in as a substitute and it isn’t that he hasn’t reacted well to the “demotion”. It’s that the Bombers tried to get Matt Dominguez but were rebuffed when he decided not to leave his job at a Regina based realtor. That’s at least 100x worse than Rob Waldrop not coming back to the Argos to go to a Sheriff’s Academy in California.

Pick: Calgary

Hamilton at BC
Wait, the Ticats are going to be missing both Terry Caulley and Tre Smith, Nick Setta is somewhat banged up, they’ve been moving players to different positions “to see where they can help us” and they get to play the late game in B.C. where no eastern team has won probably since the last time Pinball played. Looks like I can go to a bar on Friday night that doesn’t have a TV.

Pick: BC

Saskatchewan at Toronto
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game with 15 combined turnovers like the Lions and Riders had last week. It was a close game and all, but with offences so ugly, you would have thought that Gary Etcheverry was a head coach in that game as opposed to a defensive co-ordinator. Anyway, with three interceptions and one fumble the meaning of Darian Durant’s sloppy seconds has been redefined.

Pick: Toronto

Thank God. It’s time for another CFL season, which unfortunately for you means another season of snarky comments and truly terrible predictions. Now it’s the start of the season, so we’re probably going to be a little worse on the predictions than usual. Much like the start of a sports comedy movie, we’ll flounder around here at the start and probably go 0 for 4 while knocking the head off of a metal cut out of a batter with a fastball.

Toronto v. Hamilton

The start of the year always brings on a flood of pundits claiming that this will be the year that “possibly, maybe” the Ticats will be better this season. This is always the easiest of predictions if they improve on the 3 wins from last year then you’re right, if they don’t... well they’re the Ticats. The question posed should be, how much will they improve?

It’s like if your friends have a dog and every time they bring the dog over it takes a dump on your rug. Then one day they bring the dog and it only spits up on your rug. Sure it’s better than crap, but it’s still dog vomit. And I guess that’s my prediction for the Ticats this year. Not quite crap, but still dog vomit.

Pick: Toronto

Montreal v. Calgary

Hey, a Grey Cup rematch to start the year, nice work scheduling committee.

It’s getting tougher and tougher to come up with anything new to say about the Alouettes. On the plus side for Argos fans, Anthony Calvillo and Ben Cahoon are now another year closer to mandatory retirement.

Pick: Calgary

Winnipeg v. Edmonton

Damn it, all of our favourite Bomber jokes are useless now. No Milt Stegall, No Little Hawk, No fake Greg Marshall... just an awful turn of events.

Frankly the Bombers are a complete enigma to me. They could finish in first in the East or in dead last and I wouldn’t be overly surprised by either result. Ok, maybe I’d be surprised if they finished first. We’ll see how Mike Kelly works out as the head man in the Peg, but it was nice to see the Bombers management keep to the golden rule of football: when you have the chance to sign a former consultant to NFL Films as your head coach, you have to do it. However, not hiring former NFL Films guest narrator Gary Busey as special teams coordinator/motivational speaker is a travesty.

Pick: Edmonton

BC v. Saskatchewan

Well at least with the departure of DJ Flick and the injury to Wayne Smith, Ticats fans can take solace in that trade for Rocky Butler now being somewhat even.

Pick: BC

Bonus Pick:
All of the Argos have been injured in practice, leaving Pinball to play the Ticats himself. Oddly though, the league has mandated that he plays the whole game in the same well tailored suit he showed up to the game in. How does Pinball do?

Boatmenblog Pick: Another easy win for Pinball. While the presence of a necktie helps the Ticat defenders a little, it’s not nearly enough. Pinball 567 Ticats 3 (because Nick Setta is actually pretty good).

* Everything we need to know about football analysis, we learned from early ‘90s SNL sketches.

Most of yesterday was spent driving to Montreal in a crappy rental car, so not a lot of interesting activity to report. Given the lack of anything interesting to look at on the drive - with the notable exceptions of the Big Apple and the Hell Holes Provincial Park - we thought we’d start off the weekend with our burning questions:

- Will any Als fans show up to the events outside of the Grey Cup village? Number of Als jerseys seen during our four hours at the Spirit of Edmonton room last night...three

- Suzy (or is it Susie, or maybe Suzie... screw it, we’ll go with this spelling) McNeill is playing the half time show on Sunday, but don’t worry if you miss her at the game. Next week she’ll be playing in the area under the food court at First Canadian Place in Toronto. So does that mean we got a sub-par halftime act or is the allure of Taco Bell and crappy Chinese food much stronger than we thought?

- We’ve written pretty extensively over the years about how ridiculous the crowds in the Big O are, and to reiterate we think that the fans that show up to Molson are great. But for some reason the bigger crowd doesn’t cut the mustard. During last week’s playoff game with Edmonton, it sounded very quiet in the Dome when Ricky Ray had the ball - except when the “fait du bruit” instruction played, and then the place went nuts. So given that this is supposed to be a neutral site game, if you’re working the PA system do you play the “fait du bruit” chant when both teams have the ball - which could potentially lead to an epic Calvillo/Chiu freak-out - or do you choose to play it like the Als aren’t involved at all, and accept that most of the crowd will spend the entire game in stony silence?

Off to Touchdown Manitoba...

Don Matthews?  Didn't see that coming.  Finally something tops the Don King apperance in the TSN booth for "oddest moment of the year". The fact that the whole Argo section at the Labour Day game didn't boo and heckle Mel Lastman for doing a commercial in a Ticats jersey ranks a distant third. 

Of course all of this news (the Taafe firing, the Canada-Moreno trade) comes during a week where I basically am screwed for time, so more in the coming days.  As an initial reaction though, presuming that Don doesn't do the "Weekend at Bernie's" act that he had going on the sidelines for the last year in Montreal (hopefully the medication helps with that) it should work out well.  The alternative is to hire Jonathan Silverman to help prop him up during games.  I hear that he's available.

Calgary at Edmonton
Maybe the first sign that Dave Dickenson wasn’t going to be OK was when he fumbled in a non-contact mini football game while being chased by a middle-aged man during last year’s Grey Cup festivities. If we actually made anything from this blog, we’d finally be able to write off the beers consumed while we were watching that touch football game.  It was research, see.

As an aside, what number do you suppose Ben Sankey is on the Stamps speed dial?

Pick: Edmonton

BC at Hamilton
Well that was certainly a busy week for the Leos. We’ll deal with the Roberts trade a little bit later, but they may have only been the second biggest piece of news from BC this week what with the training camp fight between Geroy Simon and Tyrone Williams. Presumably the scuffle was a result of the un-Lions like 4-5 start to the year, but honestly that has us a little perplexed. At this stage, if you were a Western club wouldn’t you much prefer to get the cross-over and try and go through the East?

On the Ticats side… well at least it was a close Labour Day game this year. How close?  Well let’s see a yard is about half of the length of a horse, so they did quite well if you had the place bet.

Pick: BC

Toronto at Montreal
With the signing of P.K. Sam it’s becoming plain to see that the Argos are trying to recreate the 2004 New England Patriots. We’re betting that J.J. Stokes who “hasn’t officially retired” but last played in 2004 is the next to be signed.  He’s available.  Very available.

Of course, we’ll be perfectly happy with this strategy if it leads to a disoriented Ricky Ray vomiting on the field in the waning moments of the Grey Cup (and you’re welcome for getting the image of McNabb being sick all over the field in your head)

Pick: Toronto

Saskatchewan at Winnipeg
How many times does trading one underachieving star player for another actually work?  At the very least we can see why the Bombers did this. Joe Smith immediately vaults to the top of the depth chart and provides a RB that is similar to the guys used by Doug Berry in Montreal.

Who will actually win this trade? We have no idea. However, if we had to chose a financial advisor amongst the two, we’d definitely go with Joe Smith.  From Ed Tait:

 “Talk about cheap… He used to collect pop cans and bottles kicking around the Lions’ clubhouse and haul them down to a recycling depot for the $10 to $15 they would deliver. So cheap that he’d take his own popcorn bag to the movies and then head up to the concession stand for a free refill.”

Amazing what can happen when you're away in Vegas for a few days (cheers to the Stampeders for winning over the Lions and paying for the flight, jeers to the manish craps dealers for taking it all back). Hard to say what was more surprising, the Bishop trade, the Steinauer release or the Kevin Millar Hitler mustache look.  Check that, it was definitely Steinauer.

For the record, the Bishop trade now means that the deals with the Riders look like this:

To Sask:

- T.J. Acree, negotiation list player, 3rd round pick, Leron Mitchell, Glenn January, Michael Bishop, Steve Morley

To Toronto:

- Kerry Joseph, Jamal Robertson, Nathan Hoffart, 5th round pick, whatever they got for Bishop

All hail the hedgehog. 

Saskatchewan at Edmonton
It’s time to face it. If the ‘97 Argos couldn’t go undefeated, nobody is going undefeated.

Outside of the undefeated bid, obviously the biggest story in Riderville this season has been the somewhat absurd number of injuries the team has suffered. So we thought it‘d be interesting to see how some of them are spending their time off, namely backup QB Drew Tate. 

Now presumably this was taken during Halloween but here he is as one of the characters from Dodgeball.  Hopefully.

If he's smart his next costume won’t involve the Robert Downey Jr. character from another Ben Stiller movie.

Pick: Saskatchewan

Calgary at BC
The Calgary offence has been extremely efficient and impressive so far this year and should be one of the tougher units the Lions see this year. So how are they planning on stopping them? By confusing their own defense with new signals in the hopes that it’ll stifle backup QB Dave Dickenson. 

Whatever works I guess. 

In any case, in order to limit confused glances amongst the defense, we humbly submit that the Lions go back to the days of yore and simply use carrier pigeons to deliver messages to the field. (Somewhere Damon Allen is in a rocking chair nodding his head)

Pick: Calgary

Hamilton at Winnipeg

A huge game for both teams and possibly the biggest non-Labour Day game for Hamilton for a few years. The Bombers are going back to Kevin Glenn ending the great Ryan Dinwiddie Experience v. 2.0. Has there been a team in the past 5 years to have more quarterbacking issues than the Bombers?  Tee Martin… Jonathan Quinn… Brad Banks… we weren’t really going anywhere with those list of names, we just enjoying torturing Bombers fans.  Anyway, Bryan Randall is waiting patiently in the wings and let’s hope he gets his chance soon if only so that his google image search pulls up a photo of him as a professional that isn’t from the AAFL.

Pick: Winnipeg

Montreal at Toronto

Given last week’s performance and our attempts to stay positive we aren’t going to reference the Argos this week… except to wish Ross Weaver the best of luck.  On to the Als, how is it that Anthony Calvillo isn’t getting the full “Brett Favre” treatment at this point in his career? We mean the “this guy loves to play”, “he’s like a little kid out there”, “I’d like my wife to be impregnated by him” treatment. Not the “let’s make an absurdly big story out of this and follow him around incessantly” treatment. Although if that were to happen to a CFL personality, you’d think it’d be Tillman. Maybe Gainer. 

Pick: Toronto

Bonus Pick:
All of the Argos have been injured in practice leaving Pinball to play the Als by himself. Unfortunately, the Canadian Olympic team has also asked him to help end their drought and win some medals. How does Pinball do?

Boatmenblog Pick: Despite not being an actual Canadian, Pinball talks his way into letting the Olympics allow him to compete in for Canada. Not having all of the proper equipment, Pinball proceeds to win the epee fencing event wearing no protective gear and using a toy “He-Man sword”. He then proceeds to win the 110 meter hurdles by using his football skills and simply barrelling through them. Not wanting to embarrass the other athletes, Pinball returns to Canada and proceeds to beat the Als handily.  No rest for Pinball.  The final tally: Pinball 253 and 2 gold, Als 5

Things that you can buy for $575 that aren’t a single ticket to the NFL exhibition game:

- 176 pounds of copper
- 17 tickets to the Argos-Alouettes game
- half of the City of Detroit
- 43 copies of the Maestro’s Urban Landmark
- 27 copies of Matt Dunigan’s book on football
- 30 copies of Matt Dunigan’s book on cooking (honestly this shocked me, after his coaching career I would have assumed that his cook book would have been more expensive)
- Buy 575 copies of the newspaper.  Make 575 newspaper hats
- 35 haunted Coleman coolers
- 580 alien raisin heads
- 542 copies of the Sacramento Gold Miners media guide
- The rights to the Sacramento Gold Miners

Reasons we can think of for spending $575 to watch preseason football: