Wideleft

Notes to self to avoid MBB backlash: Do not make a claim about anything Do not even make a partial claim about anything Do not even make a partial claim that is someone else's claim about anything Hire a lawyer on retainer to deal with people picking your words apart Pick up one 66 of Weiser's Blended at the liquor store There's a deal on chips at Sobey's - better hop on that

Bro-Country half-time acts gotta eat too, I guess.

Forgot how sh***y the Bombers looked for a good chunk of last year's Grey Cup (yes, the wind had a lot to do with it). I have a very good feeling that won't happen this year.

And also have Zach enter the closed practise in a wheelchair.

It's not a raid if the players are pursuing those opportunities.

It's all gravy now, but gravy makes everything better.

I just wanna ask one question: How many 3rd year starting National Offensive Linemen are playing for more than 80K?

Or a masochist

https://www.cfl.ca/tag/grey-cup-portal/ I did not know this existed I weep for the cool things I have lost with PVR replacements.

In case you haven't noticed, TSN is replaying the 2021 Grey Cup tonight at 7:30 on TSN1. I won't give away the ending.

I won't admit it because I hated the Patriots winning even once. I will agree that it takes time for dynasties to be appreciated. In the short term, it's not necessarily a great thing for a league.

There's much more, but I think I got most of the most interesting parts. I wish the Freep had a gift article option.

Have not seen any reference to the long feature on Collaros the Freep published in the Above The Fold section last Thursday (a half-hour read). Credit to Jeff Hamilton on a great piece. A few highlights for you: Collaros was born Aug. 27, 1988, to parents Dean and Michelle, who is affectionately known as Shelly. His sister, Lanae, is two years younger, and his brother, Dimitrios, came as a pleasant surprise seven years later, after Shelly was told she could no longer have children. As the oldest child, Collaros adopted the role of protector, something the family says he comes by honestly from Dean, who is the director of finance at a local automobile dealership. “He’s always cared,” Lanae says on a mid-October evening as she sits in the dining room of her parents’ bungalow in an upper-middle class part of town. “I thought all older brothers or just any brother, was like Zach. But then you realize later that they weren’t. “But Zach was and still is the most competitive person I’ve ever met in my life.” ..... Dean doesn’t exhibit any ego as the father of a homegrown star. Instead, he is hesitant to gush about his oldest child. However, he doesn’t deny Collaros was special at a young age, capable of doing things beyond his years. “My brother-in-law and I would throw a Nerf football to him when he was four years old,” says Dean, “and we’re throwing five, 10, 20 feet and at that age he’s running and laying out for it and catching it. It was like, holy s—.” When Collaros played T-ball, he would retrieve every weakly hit ball before running — not throwing — out each batter. When Dean called out his son’s behaviour, Collaros would complain others weren’t able to catch the ball, to which his father countered they never would if they didn’t even get the chance. ....... When Dean started coaching basketball, Collaros would question every time he was taken out of the game, and later be reduced to tears in the car ride home. When he began playing baseball and a teammate botched what Collaros felt was a routine play, he’d slam his glove to the ground. “I’d tell him to run over to the player, pat him on the ass and tell him he’s good. Be a leader,” Dean says. “For whatever reason, he was a bit above everybody else at those ages. I told him, ‘You need to be a leader, and if you make kids feel bad, they’re never going to want to play again.’ And he caught on to that.” .......... Collaros may be a star in Winnipeg, but it’s in Steubenville where he’s a legend. At Steubenville High School, Collaros was a force in basketball, averaging 19.8 points a game and being named to the All-OVAC (Ohio Valley Athletic Conference) first team. He was a talented baseball player, the first in head coach Fred Heatherington’s decades-long career to start as a freshman, playing all four years at shortstop, his success leading to scholarship offers from NCAA Division I programs such as Kent State and Marshall. But it’s what Collaros accomplished on the football field that made him a household name. Steubenville and Big Red football are synonymous. The city’s pride in the program, which began in 1897, and is touted as Ohio’s original dynasty, has been passed down through generations and culminates each week with Friday night high school football games at Harding Field. Take in a game inside the 10,000-seat stadium in the heart of the city and you quickly feel the passion of a community that lives and dies with every win and loss. The noise of the marching band and cheerleaders offers the only respite from the constant stream of cheers and jeers from the crowd. ........... And win Collaros did. As a two-year starting quarterback, Collaros led the Big Red to a 30-0 record across the 2005 and 2006 seasons, capping each year with a state championship. Collaros played on both sides of the ball, including at defensive back, with several of his coaches saying it was rare for him take a play off. But it was at quarterback where Collaros excelled — he holds the school’s single-season records for passing yards (2,513) and touchdown passes (30). ........ Even before joining the varsity team, Collaros dominated, going unbeaten through Grades 7 and 8 at Harding Middle School, and losing just once in Grade 9 — which, locals will be quick to remind you, came against a junior varsity team and not a fellow freshman club. ....... The football team ran through Collaros, who, as the quarterback, made sure everyone got a chance to touch the ball, Mills says. But his desire to have everyone involved went beyond the gridiron. “I get chills just thinking about it. Here at the school, we have no mandatory seating and about 400 seats in the cafeteria,” Mills says. “Zach would often go sit with the kid that had no one to sit with, and then all of his friends would follow, too. Even though he was popular, handsome and was the star athlete, he never celebrated that and always wanted others around him to feel good.” ........ While Collaros dismisses any credit for what he believes is a responsibility to give back, his friends don’t mind singling him out. DiCarlantonio provides a window into what it was like to call Collaros a close friend. When DiCarlantonio had serious health issues in Grade 8 that required surgery in Pittsburgh, Collaros spent the entire night calling him and making sure he was OK. When DiCarlantonio’s grandma passed away years later, Collaros was sure to attend the funeral. It wasn’t always grand gestures. It could be as simple as how Collaros interacted with people, always wanting to know more about the person he was speaking to, rather than focusing on himself. “Just that genuine care, that genuine love, he’s always the first one there,” DiCarlantonio says in a phone interview from his home in Columbus, Ohio, as words catch in his throat, requiring him to take moment to gather himself. “It shows he’s family, right? Yeah, he’s like a brother.” ..... Fred Heatherington, Collaros’s high school baseball coach, is convinced he would be playing professionally, possibly in the major leagues, had he stuck with baseball. Collaros started to attract some major attention from baseball scouts by his senior year, catching the eye of one in particular, Scott Stricklin, who was recruiting for Kent State at the time, but is now head coach of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. When Stricklin saw him excel at a local tournament, he tried to get a formal commitment. Without consulting his family, Collaros initially agreed. That didn’t sit well with his parents, who weren’t thrilled with not being involved in such a big decision, not to mention Kent State, which was also offering a spot on the football team, was only willing to cover half his schooling. Meanwhile, there were intense efforts to get Collaros into an NCAA Division I football college. Haney, Collaros’s high school quarterback coach, mailed DVDs featuring Collaros highlights to about 100 colleges. “I just wanted to make sure people knew what he was doing and how special he was,” Haney says. Pierro, Big Red’s defensive co-ordinator, was also working the phones, including a call to longtime mentor Pat Narduzzi. Narduzzi, now at the University of Pittsburgh, had just taken the head coaching job at Michigan State. “I was begging him to give Zach a shot while he was at Michigan State, and he was this f—ing close,” Pierro says, sitting on a bar stool in the basement of Dean and Shelly’s home. “We’re actually on the phone, and I say, ‘Coach Narduzzi, I’m telling you this kid’s a player. I would not just say this, he’s a f—ing player.’ And right when we’re talking, he goes, ‘Coach P, Kirk Cousins (current quarterback of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings) just walked through the door — we don’t need a quarterback.’” ........ Collaros would eventually catch the eye of Brian Kelly, then-incoming head coach at the University of Cincinnati. With a full scholarship, Collaros initially played football and baseball his first two years as a Bearcat, before committing to football exclusively for his final two seasons. In 2010, his third season and first as the team’s starting quarterback, Collaros led the Big East with 2,902 passing yards and 26 touchdowns, and was selected as the first-team All-Big East QB. At around 5-10 and less than 200 pounds coming out of high school, several college football scouts thought Collaros was too undersized to be effective. It was the same story when it came to his NFL draft year in 2012, with all 32 teams electing to take a pass. Collaros would end up signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but lasted barely a weekend before they cut him loose. It was the first time he had been cut from any team and Collaros considered calling it quits. “I wasn’t rattled, like… it broke me down for a bit, for like a week,” he says. “It was more, wow, I’ve never had that feeling before. So, that was weird.” When the CFL came calling, he hesitated before deciding to give it a shot. “He was upset. He wanted to be in the NFL,” Shelly says. “But with Zach, his mindset has always been whatever position he’s put in, he’s going to make the best of it and he’s going to do the best that he can.” ........ Now 34, Collaros has seen it all — from near career-ending injuries to an inspiring comeback. And that ability to see? Well, that was there right from the beginning. “I always felt when I was a kid, and I never said this to anyone before, but things kind of just moved slower for me,” Collaros says over a pizza supper at his Winnipeg home. “When I was playing basketball, I could dribble to get to a point where I would know that in one second a teammate would be there and I could throw a bounce pass. It was the same thing with baseball, I just knew for some reason where the ball would go off the bat. And in football, especially as a defensive back, I just knew where the ball was going to go.” “He’s not fast. He’s not quick. He’s not elusive. But he feels,” head coach Reno Saccoccia, who has led the Big Red the last four decades, says while sitting in his office at Steubenville High School. “He can feel what’s going on around him without seeing it. Some quarterbacks have knowledge. Some quarterbacks have feel. He has both.” ........ Then, there was the work Collaros put in with Big Red offensive co-ordinator, Bob Radakovich, who often stressed the mental side of the game. Radakovich would get Collaros to read academic papers on psychology, and it was through that research he discovered the benefits of visualization. Together they would go through an entire game plan with their eyes closed. To illustrate, Collaros gets up off his chair and grabs a nearby play sheet and starts calling out different plays, his eyes now shut, while going through various throwing reads. It’s something he still does to this day, and has passed on to his fellow quarterbacks with the Bombers. ...... Since joining the team, Collaros is 32-4 as the club’s starting quarterback, his sensational run on the Manitoba prairie all but guaranteeing a future place in the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame. But it’s at home, where the love Collaros has for Nicole and their daughters is clearly evident, is where he’s doing everything he can to rack up more wins. Family has always been the most important thing in his life, and to be able to build his own has been a highlight more meaningful than anything he’s done in sports. “Just the way I was taught growing up — from a work ethic standpoint, from an accountability standpoint, from a teamwork standpoint — all those lessons, and there’s a million of them, I’ve carried with me through life and they’ve moulded me as a person,” Collaros says over dinner. “I want to be the best dad I can be, I want to be the best husband I can be, I want to be the best at my job as I can be, and it all stems from not wanting to let those people down who invested so much in me and did it for nothing in return, just out of the love for me or love for the community.” ............ Nicole is more like her husband than she thinks. She has stuck by Collaros through all his CFL stops — from Hamilton to Regina to Toronto to Winnipeg — a journey that has meant making several sacrifices, including putting her teaching career on hold and leaving the house they built in Ontario for half the year, but she’s not interested in being singled out. Such is life for a football family, as professional sports can be anything but stable. It’s for that reason they’re both grateful to be in Winnipeg, where Collaros’s stock only appears to be rising, fresh off signing an extension that will keep him here through the 2025 season. Shortly after signing his new three-year, $1.8-million contract last month, making him the league’s highest-paid player, Collaros noted the blessing he got from Nicole and how important it was to him to make sure it was the right decision for their family. “We make all decisions together,” she says. “It was very easy, even for the past few years, a no-brainer to stay in Winnipeg because of how happy he is here. “I’ve seen him in so many different scenarios where his stress was constant and you could tell it was affecting his desire to play. You have to be in the right situation, and here it’s special, the entire organization is special, and it feels like home.” Collaros is cut from the same cloth as head coach Mike O’Shea and there isn’t a teammate with whom he wouldn’t put in extra hours watching film or grab a beer. With several players also having young children, Nicole feels lucky to create meaningful friendships with other families, all of which have been nothing but gracious since they arrived late into the 2019 season. Neither of them knows what the future holds, even if there is some added security with a long-term deal now complete. Nicole teases the possibility of adding to their family, while Collaros jokes about having to play until he’s 50 to afford living near Toronto.

Siri: Explain Alberta politics.

1 million. Just to make a point about option year contracts.

I'm very confident in predicting a threepeat. Although I've expressed concerns about a red hot gunslinger and motivated Harris, I honestly would have found Trevor Harris and William Stanback stronger adversaries.

He's already handling stairs better than Trump ever did.

Name checks out.

From Jeff Hamilton's column" 4) It wasn’t all good news for the Argos, as it’s looking like they’ll be without all-star linebacker Wynton McManis on Sunday. McManis was sidelined after injuring himself on the first play of the second quarter and Dinwiddie said after the game that it might be a torn bicep, though he stopped short of making any definitive statements until further evaluation on McManis could be done. McManis had just returned to the lineup after being out with a knee injury suffered in Week 17.

Two interesting tidbits in the Free Press this morning: Wynton McManis is out with a torn bicep T.J. Lee has announced he's going to free agency instead of signing with BC before hand

I somehow forgot all about his amazing touchdown in the playoffs last year. Super impressive. (2:54 in case the link didn't work properly)