Brent Butt was on TSN talking up some damned thing he’s doing with the Roughriders and he mentioned that Duron Carter runs funny. I thought I was the only one who noticed that. Yeah, Mr. Carter runs like a young Jerry Lewis, if you’ve ever seen Jerry Lewis run. Or know who he is.
I saw Brent Butt’s first-ever stand-up performance on Thursday open mic night in Saskatoon’s Yuk Yuk’s back in, I wanna say, 1989 or so. He killed. Seriously. And one final note. The cartoon Brent Butt on the T-shirt the real Brent Butt was hocking on TSN is wearing a watermelon helmet. I invented the watermelon helmet; I was the first person to do that. Me.
Anyway, the Mighty and Most Holy “Staff” at CFL.CA has decreed its Nissan Titan Power Rankings for week three in the Canadian Football League. This wretched scribe seeks to respectfully comment upon the divine Staff’s pontifications.
- CALGARY STAMPEDERS
The Holy Staff has declared that, at week three, this “could be the best Stamps team we’ve seen.” Really? This Calgary Stampeder team? This team that was realistically one interception away from losing at home to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in week one? Look, folks, this is a good team, but best ever? Puh-lease.
- EDMONTON ESKIMOS
This ranking is too high. I don’t know where else they should be ranked, but not number two.
- HAMILTON TIGER-CATS
Johnny Manziel must be wondering what the holy hell he has done by signing with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, only to languish as the backup to some guy named Jeremiah Masoli. How many Heisman Trophies has Mr. Masoli won? How many NFL games has Mr. Masoli played in? How many times was Mr. Masoli picked in the first round of the NFL draft? None, none and none. But who cares? He’s shooting the lights out up here.
I really like Mr. Masoli, but to get an idea of how little respect Mr. Masoli gets, if you google “Hamilton Tiger Cats quarterback”, google provides a picture list of ten former Tiger-Cat quarterbacks, including Zach Collaros (who, ahem, Mr. Masoli replaced last year) and Hall-of-Famers Everett Golson, Timmy Chang and Don McPherson (along with actual Hall-of-Famers Matt Dunnigan, Anthony Calvillo and Damon Allen). But no Jeremiah Masoli.
If you are not on google, you don’t exist.
Anyway, number three looks good on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, especially when they might arguably deserve to be number two. Those Box J Boys must be pretty happy right now, whatever they’re supposed to be….
- OTTAWA REDBLACKS
These guys are really starting to piss me off. Just start losing and fold already.
- WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS
This Chris Streveler guy; I like the cut of his jib. Is he possibly the next Mike Reilly? I know one guy who hopes not.
Oh, and hey, CFL, I just received an email from the CFL fieldpass@cfl.ca that was nothing more than an advertisement for Cingal™, Monovisc® or Orthovisc®. This email wasn’t a little news about the CFL and then an ad. It was just an ad.
You want to know how to get people to unsubscribe to cfl.ca? Keep doing this. It’s like going to a movie theatre and having to watch a bunch of TV commercials before the movie.
And the reason I have placed this complaint in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers section of my Not CFL Nissan Titan Power Rankings? Because the guy in the ad you sent me is wearing a Blue Bomber jersey. He looks like he’s so high on Cingal™, Monovisc® or Orthovisc® he can’t feel his knee joints grinding into dust.
- SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS
This is like the Mirror, Mirror episode of Star Trek where there is a parallel universe that contains an evil “Terran Empire”, the counterpart to the delightful United Federation of Planets we all know and love. Instead of Captain Kirk and the Enterprise being all enlightened and good, they’re just a bunch of assholes flying around space being total dicks to everyone and each other. It’s actually quite a refreshing change of pace from the holier-than-thou Federation and the so-called Prime Directive that Kirk violates only when he feels like it.
We know the Terran Empire is evil because the Enterprise female crew members all dress like it’s Halloween and wear evil sexy versions of their uniforms, and Mr. Spock is wearing a goatee, which is the universally accepted sign of an opposite evil twin. Also, everyone greets each other with a vaguely Nazi-like salute, although I suppose it could just be an ancient Roman Empire salute which, on the scale of salutes, is generally regarded as being far less bad.
So which Roughriders team will we get this week? Will it be the competent and steady Roughriders that beat the Toronto Argonauts, or will it be their alternative-universe opposite-twin, the Softriders, that lost to the Ottawa REDBLACKS in a demoralizing display of across-the-board phlegmatic incompetence?
More to the point, which of these two teams is the evil team? Is the week one team the evil team, or is the week two team the evil team? I don’t care if Head Coach Chris Jones grows a full beard and the team begins each game with a bloody satanic ritual; as long as they win I’m fine.
So anyway, this week the Roughriders get fed the Montreal Alouettes, soon to be the Moncton-based Atlantic Schooners. All I have to say is this: if you can’t beat the worst team in the league, then you are the worst team in the league, so the Roughriders (or Softriders, I don’t care which) better beat the Alouettes this week.
- TORONTO ARGONAUTS
I predicted a season-ending injury to Ricky Ray and I was wrong. It looks like he might only be out for half the season. And Zach (Zack) Collaros lasted almost one and a half games before being concussed. Neither one of these guys took an illegal hit, and you can’t even look at a CFL quarterback funny without getting a roughing-the-passer penalty.
Here’s the thing. The most valuable and well-paid players on any team should be the offensive line. I remember the Roughriders stocking up on young studs in the years preceding and through the 2007-2014½ Golden Age. You can build a championship team around the offensive line and it has the added bonus of protecting your quarterback, too. A good offensive line can turn a good quarterback into an MOP (Kerry Joseph) and a solid quarterback into a beloved hero (Darian Durant). And you get to appear in multiple Grey Cups!
A good offensive line makes a CFL running back think he might make it in the NFL. A good offensive line makes an entire set of receivers think they can all hit 1,000 yards. A good offensive line keeps their defense well-rested and off the field. A good offensive line can make a General Manager look like a genius. And a good offensive line will keep a quarterback out of the Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital.
TSN asked the question: Would it make sense for the Argonauts to trade for Ticats QB Johnny Manziel after Ricky Ray’s injury? I was too lazy to watch the Breakfast Club but I hope the answer was “no”, for chrissakes.
- BRITISH COLUMBIA LIONS
The Lions belong down here unless they beat the Edmonton Eskimos this week. I doubt that happens even with half the Eskimos injured right now.
- MONTREAL ALOUETTES
Duh. This team….
What is there to say about his team that has not already been said about every lousy CFL team in the history of this league?
It’s like someone wrote a book on what not to do when rebuilding a CFL team and the Montreal Alouettes bought all the copies.
And is Vernon Adams Jr. a human hot potato? I just read that he’s back with the Alouettes.