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. 

We swear, we'll come up with something a little more entertaining soon. Momentarily, even. But for now, let's take a moment to celebrate our man Clifford Ivory finding work in Toronto's football community.

We know what you're thinking: Toronto has a football community? Well, sort of. Outside the Argos, we basically have two crappy university teams. But Cliff is going to go coach for one of those teams, and we're fully confident he'll make it a little less crappy.

(We assume this move may also have something to do with Andre Durie leaving York, coming to the Argos and stealing Cliff's jersey number. Now Cliff will go steal...actually, we're not really sure, since defensive coordinators generally don't wear jerseys. But we're pretty sure it'll be something good.)

The question I was asked the most during this week at work was whether or not Indy would cover the spread (it should be noted that prior to Grey Cup my co-workers just asked who I was cheering for without the spread being mentioned, but that's a rant for another time).  In any case, it brings up a good question.  If you are an Argo fan, without a gambling interest, who do you cheer for tomorrow?

Well, Indianapolis has two key things going for it. 
Federekeil - who we selfishly hope is an Argo ASAPFirst, as every media outlet has reported this week, Indy employs the Argos first round pick from last year and argofans.com member, Dan Federkeil.  Secondly, the Colts did CFL fans an enormous favour by using Kerwin Bell as a backup QB for a year.

That being said, Indy is also the team that cut former Argo Mike Vanderjagt, and they employ Peyton Manning, which cancels out the positives.

With that in mind, I think that we'll simply steal a page from the Baltimore fans who come to Grey Cup every year.  This year we're cheering for beer. 

In a lot of ways athletes who used to play for your favourite team are very similar to former high school flames.  Once you stop seeing them, you generally stop wondering what they're up to and just assume that they are still an awkward 17 year old kid.  Ok, maybe they're not as similar as I thought.

In any case, after he left the Argos I assumed that Andre Rison would write a book, or land a job in the Arena League or with the Oakland Raiders.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  Instead Andre, along with Kordell Stewart, is promoting the next season of Spike TV's "Pros Vs. Joes".  Luckily for us, Spike invited deadspin.com to challenge Andre.  We highly recommend you spend a few minutes reading their account. 

Now I've got to admit that seeing Andre in a #80 jersey instead of his Argos #3 was a little hard to take... OK, maybe retired athletes and old flames are pretty similar. 

With it being well into 2007, 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. (And we promise to finish this up before training camps open)

Number 6: Shake Severs

It would be criminal of us not to recognize the contributions this year of Mr. Shake Severs. Sure, he may have played somewhat poorly at the start of the year.  And, yes he became a big enough distraction on a team that featured Ricky and Bernard Williams that he was released, but he did help the Argos out immensly by choosing his rap career over a stint in Winnipeg.  Given how close the East semi was, a Bomber receiving corps featuring Uncle Milty, Derrick Armstrong and Shake Severs may have put Winnipeg over the top.

The UGA mascot apparently had no love for Shake Severs' rhymes while he was at AuburnOur lone disappointment was that Shake was unable to secure a place on the Grey Cup week bill with Tom Cochrane and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.  Maybe next year.

For thwrating the hopes of the Bombers, and releasing his much anticipated followup to It's Critical (thank you to commenter Big Lou for the heads up), Shake Severs receives the prestigous honour of being number 6 on our top 10 of '06.

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're genuinely sorry to hear the news of Don Matthews' apparent health problems, cited as the reason for his departure from the Als. Despite having become somewhat of a nemesis to the Argos in Montreal, he did deliver two Grey Cups to Toronto and has been a source of innovation and excitement in the CFL for as long as we've been following the league. He was also especially talented at pissing off the Montreal media, which can't be a bad thing.

We look forward to the day, twenty years from now, when Matthews' general surliness is described as "gritty" or "tough," and to being there when he's inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame. By "being there" we pretty well mean being in a bar somewhere watching the game on TV, but we'll at least raise a pint to The Don.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, a few lingering questions and thoughts about Wednesday's announcement:

• If (God forbid) The Don needs to have an operation, will Jack Todd be there to ask scalpers how much they're getting for seats in the operating theatre?

•  If this is in any way related to our suggestion that The Don try to spruce up the Als-Lions rivalry by taunting Wally Buono with delicious, high-cholesterol poutine, we sincerely apologize.

• If there's a silver lining to this whole thing, it's valuable medical information it's provided - namely, that incuabtion time for the stress caused by "Ted White Is My QB In The East Final Syndrome" is approximately 2 years. 

• Wait a minute... is this all just a ploy by the Als to get someone to send them a backup QB as a get-well-soon present?

• Dare we hope that, as opposed to being sick in the sense of illness, The Don is just sick in the sense of his hit single? Because if that's what he means by being too sick for the Als, we're going to stop typing right now and go pray that he'll hereby be spending his time collaborating with Shake Severs.

Even in Toronto's cuthroat sports blogging market, we're prepared to concede when we've been bested. So full credit to Raptorblog - which, we learn from Chris Young's reliably enjoyable JABS, has brought on Butch Carter as a new contributor.

For the uninitiated, or the forgetful, Butch was briefly the most successful coach in Raptors history (admittedly not saying that much, but still). But he's better remembered for the spectacular meltdown that saw him celebrating the team's first playoff appearance by simultaneously launching a $5-million defamation suit against former Raptor Marcus Camby (for calling him a "liar") and a bizarre coup attempt in which he very publicly tried to take then-GM Glen Grunwald's job.

This obviously makes the decision to convert Butch into a blogger one a thoroughly brilliant one. Considering all the crazy stuff Butch was doing when the Raptors were paying his bills, we can only imagine what he'll come up with when he's freelancing his opinions. 

But if there's one thing better than a slightly unhinged  ex-coach offering daily analysis of his former team, it's a completely unhinged ex-coach offering detailed analysis of his former team. And so, clearly, there's only one thing for us to do now that Raptorblog has forced our hand.

We have no idea what John Huard is up to these days, and frankly we don't really want to know, because there's an excellent chance it's something vaguely creepy. But whatever it is, we need him to drop it forthwith. Because if there's ever a man who was born to blog, surely it's that guy...and our next choice, John Faragalli, actually appears to have a job.