Okay, so it's mid-week and we still don't know if either Damon Allen or Spergon Wynn are good to go against the Lions on Saturday. Eric Crouch is untested as a starter. Even Darnell Kennedy - yes, it's come to Darnell Kennedy updates - appears to be hobbling. So with Doug Flutie apparently sticking with broadcasting, we've done the obvious thing - trolled around to see which other QB from the Argos' relatively recent past might be available.

Problem is, it's not just Flutie who's got a promising post-football career going. Rickey Foggie - who somehow played arena ball through 2004 - is now offensive coordinator for the storied Macon Knights, and being hailed as some sort of arena football genius. Andre Ware, Flutie's former backup, sure as hell ain't coming - not when his burgeoning acting career has him landing plum roles like "Fireman" on an episode of According to Jim. Even the lamentable Kerwin Bell appears to have found work coaching high school football in Florida. (If there's a better mentor for kids, we sure can't think of him.)

But there is one man we think might be up to the job. Now, admittedly, we didn't see Romaro Miller play much; we think we might have watched him start for the Ottawa Renegades once, but like the Renegades' entire existence it might have just been an elaborate dream sequence. But we do know we saw Romaro at the Argos' post-game celebrations when they won the Grey Cup in '04, and that was enough to convince us.

See, there was lots of good stuff going on there. Arland Bruce in a pinstripe suit with matching hat...a drunken Tony Miles telling strangers in the bathroom how much champagne he'd had...Andre Rison double-fisting what appeared to be Courvoisier, and trying his best not to impregnate anyone. But absolutely nothing topped Miller making an early exit by hopping into a waiting limo with not one, not two but three comely ladies on his arm.

We have no idea how a journeyman third-string CFL quarterback could afford a limo; we'd have expected him to be asking us for cab fare. But it doesn't much matter. First off, we know that Romaro has the Spergon Touch, which is all we can really ask of our fill-in QBs. More importantly, whatever he's doing right now, we can't imagine it involves any of the side benefits he enjoyed back in his '04 heyday. If there's one guy who's sitting by the phone waiting for the Argos' call, it pretty much has to be this guy.

Okay, this has been bothering us all week, and we need to do something about it.

On Monday, we’re driving along, minding our own business and listening to some music, when local radio host Barry Taylor begins telling a story about Rod Black. This is promising; we’re not especially fond of Rod Black’s playcalling, so we’re intrigued by the possibility of a little dirt.

Then things get sketchy. According to Barry, a friend who works for the Ticats encountered Black prior to last Friday night’s steamy encounter with the Stamps at Ivor Wynne – and was asked a most uncomfortable question. Alluding to the extremely hot weather, and presumably with his mighty mustache glistening majestically, Black is alleged to have asked what was no doubt on everyone’s mind: “So, how sweaty are your balls right now?”

Yeah, we know: You didn’t need to hear that. Neither did we. In fact, we so don’t want to believe it that we tried to track Barry down in hope it was all some terrible joke. Since that didn’t work, we turn to Black himself.

Rod, please help us out by setting the record straight. Tell us you did not, in fact, discuss what was going on in your pants that night. Because we don’t even want to think about what was happening in there once Sandro DeAngelis took the field.

When word reached us yesterday afternoon that John Avery would be doing his first headlining stand-up comedy set at this place...well, we just wouldn't be able to live with ourselves if we hadn't gone. And naturally, we weren't disappointed.

For one thing, it's always nice to go into a room full of football players as they try to figure out who the hell you are. Full credit to Jerome Davis for taking the initiative, although we're pretty sure he thought we were someone else based on the hearty "Hey!" he greeted us with. The considerably meeker "Hey" we responded with seemed to throw him off a bit, which led to some awkward introductions before we turned away as he asked Peewee Smith if he had any idea who we were. Naturally, Peewee had no idea.

It's a bit difficult to judge Avery's set itself, since his biggest laughs came with his Argos-related material - which might not go over as well in a normal club as it does when about 80% of your audience is either a player or sleeping with one. (Note: We fall into neither category.) But bottom line is, the guy came nowhere close to embarrassing himself in a 30-minute set, doing best when he went off the cuff. Equally impressive is that he was willing to risk his job by poking fun at Keith Pelley, and risk his life by taking some shots at Robert Baker.

Naturally, the Ricky jokes were flowing fast and furious, including a great bit about trying to get Ricky stoned so he could get his job back, and a suggestion that on this team, Ricky could buy from his teammates. And so were the Spergon Wynn jokes, which brings us to the night's most surprising revelation.

See, you watch the games lately, and you're thinking Spergon's not much of a quarterback. Then you watch the dude working a room, and you know he's got the role down pat.

Actually, "working" may be too strong a term. While his teammates hovered around the bar, Spergon had his own booth, front-and-centre. Now, granted, the booth was a little crowded...but that's just because it was loaded up with admiring women.

It probably didn't hurt matters that Avery devoted an entire routine to painting Spergon as the Milton Berle of the CFL, which is going to put some unpleasant images in our heads the next couple of days. But if this is what greets an 0-3 starting quarterback, we're thinking that even Charlie Peterson probably wasn't much of a Mormon by the time he left town.

Among the great joys of the CFL are the random encounters with its personalities - players, coaches, broadcasters et al. We know of what we speak: In the past couple of years alone, we've been yelled at by Matt Dunigan, been stopped by our favourite player in a public washroom because he saw us wearing his jersey, and tried in vain to make conversation with Michael Bishop. With time, we'll elaborate on all this, probably more than anyone really wants. The victory party we snuck into after Grey Cup '04 alone should be enough to keep us going for weeks.

The thing is, though, we don't just want to bombard you with our stories - we want yours. Now that we're finally organized enough to have an e-mail address (boatmenblog@gmail.com), we want to know about your awkward, drunken conversation with players, and what lines they used to try to pick up your girlfriends.

Admittedly, we're a little terrified of a CFL equivalent of Deadspin's infamous "You're with me, Leather" scoop with Chris Walby in the Chris Berman role. Fortunately, that one strikes as improbable. But Darren Flutie...that we can see.