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.

Some people don’t think spring has arrived until the Leafs have been eliminated from the playoffs. Others use the opening of restaurant patios as a sure sign of the season. But not us. We here at boatmenblog know that spring hasn’t truly arrived until the Argos have used their first round pick on an offensive lineman.

Sure Taylor Robertson wasn’t “drafted” in the traditional sense, but trading a first and third round pick to acquire him is basically the same thing. I for one welcome the new “drafting” strategy given that the Argos last three first round O-Line picks (Mike Moroz, Nick Kaczur and Dan Federkeil) have started a combined 0 games for the Boatmen. Now both Kaczur and Federkeil could make it to the Argodome eventually, but we aren’t holding our breath.

The major concern with this strategy is that with the new salary management system, drafted players – who are not paid as much as veterans – are now more valuable. Our hope of course is that Rita and Mohns can unearth some talent in the later rounds like they did with Bryan Crawford a few years ago.

Long time boatmenblog readers will know that one of the pillars of the Argos’ drafting strategy is finding out what board games prospects like to play (anyone who answered bingo last year was immediately assigned to room with Damon Allen on road trips). So to put it in those terms, hopefully when they roll the dice this year, they’ll land on a ladder and not a snake.

Until this week, we had forgotten just how completely insane the Sherwood Schwarz era was. Then we took a look at the Argos' 2000 media guide - to look at the only known shaven-headed photo of Pinball, giving us an idea of what he'll look like this week - and it all came back to us.

It's not the photo of a grimacing Jay Barker on the cover. It's not even the photo of a smirking John Huard inside. It's the write-ups of the front-office staff - which, we're told, were done by none other than "managing director" (read: general manager) J.I. Albrecht.

The one that Albrecht wrote for himself - a glowing page-and-a-half tribute in which he describes himself as "a living legend in the game of football" - is itself pretty spectacular, as you might gather from the final paragraph:

"J.I.'s contributions to the game are truly of legendary proportions. His 'Hall of Fame' recruits ... are testimony to his human resource productivity. That's not all. He's been responsible for recruiting no fewer than 150 players, a good portion of whom were All-Stars. He should bea (sic) shoo-in for the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as a builder. Now he has undertaken the rebuilding of the Argos."

As enjoyable as that is, though, it's surpassed by the write-up for one Dean Albrecht. As poor Dean was trying to prove he got his "director" job on his own merit, the first paragraph probably didn't help much:

"'Like father like son!' That's what they say about Dean Christian Siegfried Albrecht, the youngest of J.I.'s three sons." 

Wait, wait...that's not the really good part. This is:

"Dean, born in Montreal in 1964 when J.I. was General Manager of the Quebec Rifles was conceived when Albrecht was still with the Dallas Cowboys."

Yes, conceived. Now, we don't know about you, but we don't even want to think about our parents conceiving us - let alone have the details sent out to journalists. But then, Dean should probably consider himself lucky. The way this guide was written, he's fortunate his dad doesn't go into his "legendary" performance conceiving him. 

There will be much criticism of the Argos' turfing of Kent Austin the next few days; in fact, it's already started on the CBC panel. Rest assured that all of this criticism will come from people who haven't actually paid to watch the Argos play.

Losing your job sucks, so we'll try to go easy. But all we really ask of our football is that it entertain us. The Argos don't need to win the Grey Cup every year; they can miss the playoffs, and we'll still find ways to amuse ourselves. But this season has been progressively sucking the life out of us: There's only so many bachelor searches, chili throw-downs or haunting voyages down Rod Black's pants we can distract ourselves with before we realize that the games themselves are unwatchable.

It wasn't Austin's fault that he had no O-line and no starting quarterback to work with this year, or that the Argos running backs have been falling faster than a Spergon Wynn screen pass. But he does have to take some heat for the world's most boring playbook. If the talent is lacking, that should make you more creative - not try running the same play 30 times a game in hope that Sperge will eventually get it right. Honestly, it would be more fun to watch the Argos get picked off four times a game throwing downfield than trying to keep our eyes open while they go two-and-out every series. And if Ricky Williams (or John Avery, or Jeff Johnson) is in your backfield, and you can't block up the middle - for crying out loud, send him outside.

Since this is veering dangerously close to serious analysis, we'll stop and leave that to the experts (even if they can't spell our quarterback's name). All we can really offer is that, if we're right about Adam Rita being high 24 hours a day, he might just be creative enough to turn this thing around before this battleship is totally sunk.

As noted in our Calgary-Hamilton Game Diary, TSN ran a feature on Andy Fantuz which revealed that Adam Rita asks potential draft picks if there are any particular board games that they like to play.  After careful analysis, we have come up with our best guesses on Mr. Rita's thoughts on some of the prospects' responses.

Scrabble - "Not impressed.  I don't like any game where "rouge" can be more than 1 point. But I do wonder how many points "Dmytryshyn" would be worth..."

Hungry Hungry Hippos - "Aggressive.  He'll probably be willing to do anything to get to a loose ball.  30% chance that he may enjoying eating marbles."

Aggravation - "Hey, Kerwin Bell, it's been awhile."

Financial Post's Money Wise - "Who the hell let the banker from boatmenblog in here?"

Monopoly - "How many times do you typically land on the "Go to jail" space?  Wow.  We may have to compete with the Riders for this guy."