bigg jay

And had a lot of fun doing it!

Has to be a reason why he was available though. Teams usually have their coaching staff in place by this time of the off-season and the Stamps are no exception. The QB coach they hired in January bailed for a US college gig, otherwise we wouldn't even be talking about Baldwin. It's curious that he was without a job in January so if he's that good of a hire, how come they brought in someone else at that point? Obviously there are lots of factors that can go into that but I wonder what changed?

Well he does work in Ottawa and they (Rough Riders) have drafted a dead player before so this does make some sense!

Unless you are in your early 20's or under, you should remember the greatest fullback in Bomber history...

The live feed on the CFL website showed they had plenty of room at the soccer facility. Didn't appear to be an issue at all.

Yep and there are often reasons why a guy is available later in the draft (like NFL interest for example). Eli may have gone in the 4th round but he's not a 4th round guy, talent wise. If anyone else in the league had any idea that he was interested in playing ball again, he would have gone way higher than he did.

Is it still driving up the price when he signed here for much less than what they offered? Maybe to an extent but he was still in line for a big bump. I guess we'll never know what he could have signed for if not for teams like the Lions. Also way to pat yourselves on the back guys. You made the 2nd highest contract offer (Hamilton offered more per year - $275k vs BC's 250ish) so if anyone was driving up the price, it was the Ticats.

The family believes so. https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/chris-simons-family-cites-cte-struggles-in-statement/

How about they bring back the closed captions? I always wonder what guys like Jay Detain or Rory Dough Alert are up to these days.

Off-season, regular season & post-season lunacy:

For me it's not so much the accuracy but the logic behind the picks. For example, you can't convince me that the Bombers will go with 2 FB's in their 1st 3 picks of a fairly deep draft because of a "glaring need" at that position (according to Hodge). That's where he (and their site in general) falls way short. When you look at how the Bombers use a FB, what makes that a glaring need? Mike Miller, over the course of 4 seasons with us had 8 catches (10 targets), and 3 carries. Is that the kind of production you'd want to use a higher draft pick to replace? I get there's more to the FB role than the odd carry or catch but that's easily replaceable without using draft capitol.

The L's went LB with the 2nd overall pick last year (Michael Brodrique) and he played all 18 games for them last year. If they feel he's ready to step up this year, they may not need Dublanko. It's also Chris Jones so logic doesn't always apply and it's anybody's guess what he'll do.

Can you really claim that title if you didn't know that it doesn't start for another 5 days? They've had 14 articles on the combine over the past 7 days (and another 6 the week before) on the CFL website, so it's not like they aren't talking about it. https://www.cfl.ca/category/cfl-combine/

Balance is good. We have things we absolutely love to do together (bombers, camping, traveling) but also have stuff that has zero interest for the other.

It's also tough to promote since it's a best of the rest kind of deal. IIRC, most of the top prospects will not be participating.

Not completely accurate. Calgary did have a PPV event (UFC 149) back in 2012 that was completely ravaged by injuries (9 fighters out due to injury & a couple fights lost due to contract issues) but they did come back in 2018 (UFC on FOX 30: Alvarez vs. Poirier 2). It wasn't a PPV but it was a good event and they only had 1 undercard fight fall off the card.

No, they got rid of his role a while back (2016?) when the UFC shutdown the vast majority of their foreign offices. I think they laid off like 80% of the Canadian office. Not even sure they have one now.

They were set run another show in Saskatoon in June of 2020 (even though their first show only there had like 7k in the crowd). They aren't (or weren't at least) against returning to a city that wasn't a smash hit the last time. That being said, unless things change, most smaller cities in Canada are going to be off their list. Now that they've been running their smaller shows in their Apex Center, they don't really have a need to travel for their Fight Night events. it's much cheaper and easier (logistically) to have those shows there. They're only doing the odd smaller event outside of Vegas which pretty much takes places like Saskatoon or Winnipeg out of the running. There are new laws in place in Manitoba which allows amateur MMA (previously not sanctioned but fights still happened). Hopefully we can get some promoters here to start following the Alberta/BC model that has been very successful out there - a mainly amateur card but headlined with 2-3 pro fights. It helps keeps the costs down for promoters by only having to pay a few fighters and gives fans some higher lever fights to watch.

I was referring to live events, not PPV. There are no active local promotions in Saskatchewan or Manitoba - Alberta does have a few promotions but not at the pre-pandemic levels. The UFC has come back to Canada a couple times now but even that is not the same as before. They were coming up here 2-4 times a year prior to 2020. Anyone (especially a Mike Tyson) has a punchers chance but Paul is the heavy favorite for a reason. A responsible commission is most likely not sanctioning that fight but too many aren't overly concerned with fighter safety. There's politics involved in that stuff though. A lot of the time, the financial benefits for state/city hosting an event like that will over-ride other issues - it's big business.

My main hobby/interest is anything related to fighting. I was a fan of wrestling and boxing as a kid and my favorite hockey players were always the enforcers. Dave Semenko was a cousin so as a kid in the early 80's that was a huge deal and probably influenced a lot of my interests. When the UFC came around in the early 90's, I was obsessed with that and eventually turned it from an interest to a paying side gig. I started out working behind the scenes for a local MMA promotion before getting hired by our provincial commission. I worked my way up to being a fight judge (mma, boxing, kickboxing), to a level that had me travelling across the country, working for the biggest promotions (UFC, Bellator). The pandemic has really changed the industry though (it's basically dead in the prairies at the moment) so I'm back to being a fan mostly now but hopefully one day things will pick up again.

And released two days ago. https://www.si.com/fannation/ufl/news/dc-defenders-release-players-first-wave-ufl-roster-cuts

Walters said they knew that was the case before the season even started. Brown was clear with them after 2022 that he felt he had grown as much as he could here and needed to be on the field more. He knew he was not going to get that chance here so he was leaving. It was not a matter of money or the club not wanting him, they just couldn't give him the one thing he wanted the most - playing time. The only way things may have played out differently is if Zach had gotten hurt last season. A serious injury could have forced the team to move on from Zach before they were ready but it didn't play out like that so here we are. Getting Strevy back just means things worked out for the best for everyone. Dru gets his playing time & we get to roll with Zach/Strevy while we develop a rookie as our 3rd string QB.

He didn't have Canadian status before now so he didn't qualify for the draft. He hadn't been neg listed either so I don't see any issue with it. He's still a rookie since he's played no regular season games in the NFL.

And now he's off to prepare to climb Mt. Everest (legitimately). Just a guess but he maybe the only wrestler to have attempted this.

Just looked outside and saw no signs of this terrible weather you guys are talking about? 😂 Seems like I picked a good time to head south!