Rich

Agreed on Frolik. No way you can trade him. A lot of people (media) say that you can't lose Frolik for nothing, but then go on to talk about how the Jets are likely to be in a playoff hunt this year and may be buyers at the deadline. If you could get a Frolik for a 3rd or 4th round pick at the deadline, would you do it? Of course you would. Well then why would you trade him when you could keep him without giving anything up. Yes you are losing out on potential assets coming back, but this playoff push is more important then that. You look at the assets the Jets do have coming up in the pipeline, and Frolik is more valuable for the rest of this year then adding to that list. Even if you do lose him in free agency.

From an NHL perspective, I can see them not wanting to do this in March because it would cost an extra $500k - $1M (depending what reports you want to believe) to keep IGF open that long. That is an extra $500k - $1M in your pocket if you do it earlier in the year. From a Bomber perspective, I can understand them being worried about ticket sales. Not sure I agree with it entirely myself, but can the Bombers really can't afford the risk of a screw up on the Grey Cup. This whole kerfuffle proves that most of the sports fan in this city has the Jets #1 and everything else after that, so there may be some just cause for their concern. They get this event once a decade, and this has to be a cash cow to sustain them. They can’t mess up this Grey Cup. (Despite the Twitter outrage, I highly doubt the “delaying” of the classic will cause people to boycott the Bombers or Grey Cup, at least not in material numbers) Lawless made a good point last night, that ALL organizations dropped the ball on this. That a marketing strategy where the option to buy both a Grey Cup ticket and Outdoor Classic ticket as a package would have been a great sell. However, this would have had to been negotiated months ago as the Bomber Season ticket renewals (which include buying Grey Cup tickets) went out in the fall after the season was over. The CFL would also have to be involved and approve the co-marketing of the event. This doesn’t seem to work for the NHL because they weren’t in a position to announce the Winter Classics at that time. Who knows if this was delayed due to the Bomber negotiations or other stadium negotiations, or simply the NHL’s time frame on when they make these announcements. The fans seem to be making more of this then there really is. Reports from Lawless (who is very connected to both organizations) has said that there is no animosity between the Bombers, the Jets, and the NHL in this. No one has left the table in a huff. They tried to negotiate this event, and they couldn’t find a solution that worked for all parties involved. This isn’t about Wade trying to flex his muscles with the big boys. This is about 3 different organizations, with different priorities and interests, wanting what is best for them and the only solution that all could agree to was delaying for a year. The NHL loves these classics, and Winnipeg is a prime location to host one due to interest the fan base here would have in selling it out. This will happen, just not this year.

Remember the Bombers were pushing or under the impression to have the event in February. Banjo Bowl is in September, Grey Cup in November. September to November is 3 months. Now extend that out to February. That means having the seats in place for 6 months. Doubling the time the seats would have to be rented. Therefore the cost is split half. I don't know how rental agreements work on those seats, but I can't imagine it is by the event, since those seats could be used elsewhere if they weren't up at IGF. If the outdoor classic was to be in December, sure maybe the cost would be less. But that was a deal breaker for the Bombers, so that wouldn't have been the terms they were negotiating under.

Why should the Bombers pay the entire amount if they were going to be used by the NHL too. Why should the NHL pay half the cost for something the bombers are using twice and using regardless of the NHL game? Why should the NHL profit on an extra 8000 seats that wouldn't otherwise be there? There is a cost to keeping those seats longer, they are rented. The cost share would be a fraction of what those seats would bring in with ticket sales and concession sales. This was negotiated as part of the "deal". The NHL saw a benefit and was fine with this part of the deal. The contentious part was the dates. When you rent a venue, isn't the price often based on its size. This was the cost of renting a 41k seat venue as compared to 33k. Also, the original plan was for the game to be played in February. An extra 2 - 3 months of keeping the seats.

You don't need the extra seats for the classic. If the cost of putting them back up is more then projected revenue the you go without the extra 8k seats

Tom Anselmi (born c. 1956) is a Canadian sports executive who most recently served as the President and COO for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. Anselmi is an alumnus of Ryerson University and University of Saskatchewan. Not sure what qualifications an investment banker would have to be commissioner of the CFL.

This is what I thought at first as well, that he wanted that 500k cash grab. Then I read the rest of the article and he it seems he is more concerned about the Heritage Classic cannibalizing Grey Cup ticket sales. They overpriced the heritage classic in Vancouver and struggled to sellout, giving deep discounts before the event. You are going to be asking a lot of the same people to spend $300+ on Grey Cup ticket and another $200 - $1000 on a heritage classic ticket. Based on prior seasons, the Bombers are by no means guaranteed to be in the Grey Cup, so no guarantee you see your team, but you are guaranteed to see the Jets. Then again, when was the last time the Grey Cup didn't sellout. Maybe this is just a cash grab. I do agree that if Wade wants to play chicken with the NHL, he will lose.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/football/cfl/Outdoor-Heritage-Classic-game-could-be-postponed-289193531.html

Just curious, what contents of an announcement would have made you thought them to be unusual and that would have led you to believe there was "sitting". I really don't know if the Bombers were sitting on the announcement or not. But I'm not sure how the contents of that announcement could lead you to believe they delayed it or not. There really is no link between the two. It isn't like they are going to say we signed him last week but our PR guy was on holidays so we waited until today to announce it. Just not how things work.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=749417

Sure its a hockey play, but it is an illegal one. It is called cross checking. And he did it to Perreault at the end of a play where it wouldn't normally be expected. Unfortunate for Carcillo, but they suspend based on the result and reputation. He has a bad reputation and the result was he took Perreault out for at least that game.

This has now been resolved. Sorry for the downtime and thanks for your patience.

A few interesting tweets after the game.

Been working to get this fixed but getting push back between the people who make the forum software and the hosting provider. Both think the other needs to fix it. Chat room unlikely to be working for tonights game.

I know there are a few people that use the chat room during Jets games so I'm posting this notice in here. The site’s hosting company had a bad outage yesterday that sent a whole bunch of their websites down (some of you might have noticed that the board was down for 10 – 20 minutes yesterday afternoon). I suspect they had a power outage or something and all of their servers crashed badly. There are some funny logs on the website that seem to correspond with that time frame, and software support has said that those events are the likely reason the chat room isn't working, and some things need to be cleaned up. I do have a support ticket in right now with the hosting company to get this looked at and fixed. My guess is they are pretty swamped right now cleaning up the after math from their crash yesterday, so I don’t yet have a time frame on when it will get fixed and working again. I will keep you updated.

average: a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number. The average fan does not check this site multiple times a day and obsess over coaches and announcements. The obsessive or hard core fan does. Face it, those of us that obsess at sites like this are not “normal”. And there is nothing wrong with that. The Bombers know that they don’t have to try very hard to get the attention and money of the hard core fan. They do have to try harder to get to the average fan. This is why announcements in the off season are often strategically scheduled to get the Bombers name out into the news at regular times, and not necessarily the minute a signing is a done deal. It doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate the hard core fan or are trying to upset them. They are just doing what a smart organization does to remain in the conscience of a wider fan base. And yes, those people are real fans. They spend money on season tickets and merchandise just like hard core fans else (maybe not as much on a per fan basis, but they spend more money as a group). If the only fan this organization had was the hard core fan, it wouldn't be an organization for long.

Off season and people are on holidays? Often, for things like this they want all the players (GM, head coach, maybe Miller, etc) in town to do the press conference, and it sometimes takes time to coordinate those schedules.

Keep in mind that the Riders have said they are open to keeping Hall on staff, just not as DC. Normally it would be hard to imagine someone wanting to be in that situation but Hall's ties to Regina are very strong, so it is a possibility. Perhaps a remote possibility, but a possibility nonetheless. For sure anything is possible. Assuming he would stay as a defensive coach (and not special teams), can you imagine being demoted to work under a rookie DC who is basically there to run the defense of the head coach who fired you. Awkward situation to be in and would have the makings for a dysfunctional staff / toxic atmosphere. If I was the Riders administration, I wouldn't let that happen.

On the flip side of the coin, with the Saskatchewan job filled, who else is looking for a defensive coordinator? I suppose it is possible Hall decides he just doesn't want to work next year like Benevides, but there isn't much other competition right now for DC jobs. Most teams have kept theirs from last year.

If you find the NFL boring, it could be because a telecast consists mostly of players just standing around between plays (35.5%).