Fun Fact: The average age of the 2017 Montreal Alouettes is actually higher than the current average age of the 1977 Grey Cup Champion Montreal Alouettes.
Marv Levy sounds better than Marvin Levy. No football players would ever respect a head coach known as Marvin. And don’t say “What about Marvin Lewis?” What team does he coach? The Bengals. ‘Nuff said.
Anyway, Marv Levy looks and sounds exactly the same as he did 40 years ago. Speaking of looking and sounding the same, I think Kumail Nanjiani is the same person as Justin Trudeau.
Given the success of Hamilton Tiger-Cats octogenarian head coach June Jones, Montreal General Manager and gravity-defying CFL executive Kavis Reed should offer Mr. Levy a contract. However, I suppose it would be weird for Mr. Levy to coach a team that was made up of players all older than him, but what the hell?
I was looking over the 1977 Grey Cup Champion Montreal Alouettes at half time of last week’s Hamilton-Montreal tilt. Is it me, or did it look like they forgot to invite any of the black players? They even apparently had one female player. Scrolling through the roster here on the Interweb, I don’t know how many black players they had, but they sure seemed to have a lot of Italians.
Milt Stegall absolutely needs to create the all-pay-cut team that he’s been threatening. Not only would it be funny (and probably excruciatingly accurate), but it would turn him into a league-wide pariah among the players. I’d like to see how that would play out. By the way, Milt Stegall sounds better than Milton. No football players would ever respect a wide receiver known as Milton. And don’t get me started about his middle name.
I wonder if Mr. Stegall ever wonders if he could have extended his playing career if he had played for the Montreal Alouettes. Mr. Stegall looks like he could still play, and with Montreal’s over-30 policy, I figure Mr. Stegall could have been their leading receiver this year.
You know who would make the CFL all-name team? Randy Rhino. Wasn’t he also one of Spiderman’s enemies? No wonder the 1977 Alouettes won the Grey Cup. Did you ever see what Randy Rhino could do to a locomotive? Or, at least that guy who dressed up in some kind of rubber rhinoceros outfit and robbed a Brinks truck (or a “Clinks” Truck) of its gold in order to make a gold statue of himself.
Although the plan itself is weird, I have to wonder about the sanity of the guys who wrote that 1960s Spiderman cartoon script. None of the dots seem to connect. Why would the Rhino even want to rob a truck for its gold if all he was going to do was make a statue of himself? The script meeting must have been weird:
Oh my god, Chad, I am soooo stoned right now.
Not again! Dude, we are totally gonna get fired if we don’t get this Spiderman script done, like, right now.
Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay, so we start out with an endless stock montage of Spiderman spinning webs around the city, at least twice. That’ll take up, like, 90 percent of the time for the entire episode.
I know that part already. We do that every episode. But how do we fill the five minutes of actual plot?
Okay, okay. Get this: Rhino– robs a Brinks truck for its gold.
Wow. Good start. So what does he need the gold for? Build a time machine? Destabilize the international currency exchange? Drop a nuclear bomb on it so it’s radioactive?
Uh, no, man. I’m thinking, he steals the gold– to make a statue of himself.
Wait, what?
Sure. A big gold rhinoceros statue.
Are you crazy? That makes no sense.
It totally makes sense. Think about it.
Think about what? Fine, whatever. We’re running out of time. What does he do with the statue?
Nothing.
Nothing?! We need more than that.
Well, maybe he just kinda carries it around town.
That’s it?
Yeah, he just carries it around.
Why?
Who cares why! This is a fucking Spiderman cartoon! You don’t need reasons for stuff! Anyway, it’s cool! A life-sized gold rhinoceros statue. That would be awesome!
Wouldn’t it be a little heavy to carry around for no reason?
He’s Rhino. He’s super strong, like, rhino strong.
Whatever. How does it end?
Rhino knocks over a fish truck and then Spiderman wraps him up in a web.
Okay, same ending as always, but why the fish truck?
I like fish. And I am soooo hungry right now.
Well, this episode makes as much sense as any other episode. Kids will watch anything when there is only two channels, and one of them is CBC.
Totally.
Anyway, here is my review of cfl.ca’s Nissan Titan Power Rankings for Week 19!
- CALGARY STAMPEDERS
I think that the Saskatchewan Roughriders have broken the Calgary Stampeders. When a team as good as the Stampeders has had success for so long, it takes a while before it becomes apparent that the wheels are coming off the team. The team can coast on its reputation, both among football pundits and other football teams. Everyone is still saying the Calgary Stampeders are the best team in the CFL. But they’re not. Here’s what I predict.
Edmonton will beat Calgary this week. Calgary will then pound the crap out of Winnipeg in the final week and everyone will think the Stampeders are back baby! In the West Final, Calgary will look okay in the first half but play an uninspired second half and lose the game.
This dynasty will end with a whimper, not a bang.
- SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS
I don’t know who comes up with those odds at cfl.ca’s CFL Simulation, but I’m starting to really love this weird cfl.ca feature. I’m not sure I agree with the odds, but I like those odds.
The Roughriders have the fourth best odds of appearing in the Grey Cup, the second best odds of winning the Grey Cup, and of the five most likely Grey Cup matchup scenarios, the Roughriders are in three of them.
So in conclusion, Rider Nation can begin making plans to attend the 2017 Grey Cup Parade in Regina.
- EDMONTON ESKIMOS
I don’t like when the Eskimos play well because Head Coach Jason Maas has less things to lose his shit over during games. Watching him go bananas is riveting TV. TSN should have a camera on him at all times, and then at the end of the season, they could put together a half-hour montage of him going berserk on the sidelines. Darren Dutchyshen could narrate like he does with those other CFL Top Ten shows he does:
Number four is from week 13 in Toronto, when an enraged Maas lost his mind after the second holding penalty of the half. That’s the third headset he broke in that game. The CFL started billing him for replacements after that.
The way Mr. Dutchyshen narrates those Top Ten shows reminds me of the way Keith Morrison narrates those crazy NBC Dateline murder mysteries where the weird coincidences and bizarre turns make it so confusing that by the end you can’t tell who murdered who, or if anyone actually was murdered, but you’re still convinced there must be a killer loose in Tampa Bay and it’s probably the police chief’s ex-wife’s step-daughter’s volleyball coach.
- TORONTO ARGONAUTS
Toronto is taking the week off. Will anyone notice?
I vote no.
- WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS
“Game over, man. Game over.” –Private Hudson, Aliens
Key injuries have claimed another team’s chances of Grey Cup glory. I’m not sure the Bombers deserve to be ranked lower than the Argonauts, but at this point, does it really matter?
No, it does not matter.
- OTTAWA REDBLACKS
Would it be too much to ask that the football gods allow the Saskatchewan Roughriders to play the Ottawa Redblacks in the 2017 Grey Cup, and have the Roughriders win on a last-minute touchdown? Would it be too much? Or not enough?
This is how it would probably actually end. As Roughrider receiver Duron Carter breaks a tackle and races down the sidelines for that last-second touchdown, he punches Ottawa Head Coach Rick Campbell in the head on the way past and the touchdown gets called back.
- HAMILTON TIGER-CATS
On the one hand, I have to apologise for being so critical of Head Coach June Jones earlier this season. He seems to have been the reason behind the team’s second-half resurgence. However, I maintain that if they keep Mr. Jones for next year, the Tiger-Cats will suck again.
I just never learn my lesson.
- BRITISH COLUMBIA LIONS
This is the deepest cut of all: being ranking behind the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
- MONTREAL ALOUETTES
Wow. Last week’s game was nasty. That botched field goal on the bungled first and goal debacle was the Alouette’s season in a nutshell.
That game was so boring, Gord Miller was forced to talk about the birds that show up in the fourth quarter of the Montreal Alouette games. I always thought they were seagulls, but now I think they might be vultures.
During TSN’s coverage of the Alouettes-Tiger-Cats game, Duane Forde said that, for the Montreal Alouettes, the next few weeks are “all about evaluation and deciding where they go next.” My guess? Moncton.
However, TSN.ca is reporting that Alouette owner Bob Wetenhall has no intention of selling the team. In fact, the team is claiming that “much of his focus this season has been on ways to make the Alouettes more relevant to the younger generation of fans.” It appears that this effort was focused on hiring players who reminded that younger generation of their dads.