johnzo

It's weird how Popp just suddenly fell apart as soon as Trestman left. He wasn't just coasting on Calvillo, he recruited and built some genuinely great teams for a decade. Those teams were loaded with talent everywhere. Kinda sad, I like seeing Montreal lose after all the miseries they've put us through but I don't want any team in the CFL to be a complete gong show.

Damn, I haven't listened to Isaac Hayes in forever, thanks for the prompt iso. Taynted's Highway Star got me thinking about this album, the only Black Sabbath with Ian Gillen on vocals. A lotta people bag on this record, but I think it's fantastic and that cover is perfect ugly.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I think the NFL's great (even though it's tiresome to watch it jerk itself off) and I love watching Hawks games with my friends here, it's just that I grew up on Clements, Reaves, Murphy, Jones, Battle, etc, in royal blue and so that's where my heart is. I'd gladly trade the Hawks super bowl win for a Bombers grey cup win. (And also I know nothing about locker-room culture in any league, so I got no inside information on how Pete Carroll manages his stars.)

You're right. Popp would never do anything that made absolutely no sense.

I'm not really sure, I'm a pretty casual seahawks fan. Don't even watch the NFL until the Grey Cup's over, unless I get gifted tickets.

I bet if Henoc announced he'd switched sides to play QB, he'd get a ludicrous contract offer from Popp within an hour.

Dominique Davis has rocked #6 for his entire time with us, was surprised to see it on the sidelines during a game last year.

Man we gotta get those guys playing a Grey Cup before Neil can't play drums at all.

I've been told by my immigration attorney that a green card is way way weaker than actual citizenship. You can't vote, it can be revoked for a variety of reasons, etc. I've gotta keep my nose clean in this country or I'm kicked out. I have heard of cases where green cards holders are seriously hassled at the border and threatened with loss of their green cards unless they cooperate. And some of those are white Canadians. Presumably it's harder for brown Somalis -- especially in a world where millions of Muslims are named (for instance) "Saladin Mohammed." I asked my new friend why he didn't get his citizenship, he said he is working on it, because he wants to vote in this election. Now losing one's green card at the border might not be a realistic anxiety. But more generally, you have this climate where a demagogue guy can make serious hay politically by pointing the finger at Muslims as the problem in the world. Even if Trump isn't elected, it has got to be seriously frightening to see giant crowds eating up that kind of hate. You know how you've got those progressives who believe that white people (men specifically) are the whole problem with whole world, what with their sexism, colonalism, neoliberal capitalism, slavery, pretend meritocracy and so forth. When I hear that kind of stuff, I get angry, I can't help but take it personally because I'm a good guy and I've worked hard for my ****. Now imagine that it's not just some loudmouthed tumblr activist or low-level politico talking about how white men are The Problem, but instead it's a serious candidate for the President of the USA who is running his mouth while tens of thousands of people roar their approval. This is the guy who would control Homeland Security, the various immigration services, the FBI, a number of creepy espionage services, and the military. The right wing press in this country constantly harps about how Obama is out of control, how he is an imperial president who operates unconstitutionally and without regard for the will of Congress. Now you take that, and you wonder, who is going to be the checks and balances on President Trump if he goes nuts? That's when my anger would turn to fear. (For as much as I didn't like President Bush Jr., I always admired the way he refused to paint the entire Muslim population as the enemy, especially right after 9/11 when the USA was clamoring to carpet nuke everything from Indonesia to Istanbul )

I don't know if they are illegals. I didn't ask to see their papers. I did talk to one guy at length about his story. He came to America as a child. He was a refugee legally admitted during the Somali civil war of the 1990s. He arrived here alone, his family and parents had disappeared in the chaos. A few years ago, after growing up in the USA, he made contact again with his family via the Internet. Now he sends them money regularly and hopes to someday bring them here, at least for a visit. He's worried that Trump is going to seize those renumerations, as he's vowed to do to Mexicans. He's also worried his family will never get to come to visit him, and that if he goes to visit them he will not be allowed back in, even though he holds a U.S. green card.

Yup. Build up in public, tear down in private. Best way to do it.

My wife and I went to an Ethiopian restaurant in the neighborhood the other day. There were tons of Somalis in there and they all wanted to talk to us about Donald Trump. They're scared of him.

Preseason's gonna be pretty vanilla in terms of schemes, though, right? Aren't they holding back the special sauce for the regular season?

I'm pumped for: - The bombers looking awesome in their new duds! Except I'll be listening to the radio stream so I'll just have to imagine it. - Waggoner and Loffler taking reps - Carlos Anderson tearing up the field. Seriously rooting for this guy. - Macho Harris playing himself out of the MBB whipping boy role. - Punting. Billy Pavs has a big leg but does he have Medlock's precision? - Hoping for a flash from the bottom two QBs and hope it's not a Marve-type illusion.

11 and 85 is where the line is for me.

Thanks bigg jay, I'll give that one a shot.

Checked out Wild Bill's thing, the trial didn't work for me because the kodi plugin is buggy and the trial expired before I could really debug it. Took a tour of other Kodi gray-market plugins -- best I found was a really laggy TSN stream. Gonna try to borrow some friends' cable credentials to watch on ESPN3 I guess. Also, not a soccerr fan but damn you gotta respect those guys' conditioning. A soccer game is basically a half-marathon of interval training. Just thinking about that makes me puke. So I don't hate on the futbols.

Nichols should've gotten two more wins last year, in Edmonton and Calgary but for some hard-luck placekicking that I'm sure everyone remembers. Nichols and Crompton seem like they fill pretty much the same role. They're not gonna sling it all over the field and blow up the league, but they can play clean and get wins if the rest of your house is in order. They're good guys to have around as backups on winning teams, basically the bottom tier of players who should ever start a game in the CFL. Didn't Nichols have a pretty great set of wheels before he had that massive injury a few years ago? Back when he and Reilly were head-to-head for the Eskies' starting job?

Welcome Kirk! With Cole and Richardson being Corney's buddies on the DL I bet we'll see some stuff in his journal about their situations.

Corney's training camp journal is a great read. He's a pretty good writer and it's really interesting to read his self-evaluation and the hip flip technique he's trying to master. Also cool to see the DL who are competing for jobs helping each other out. Must be a totally weird dynamic, you want to be a good team guy and help out the rookies, but those rookies are the guys who are maybe going to take your job. and holy hell, just reading about Ian Wild's hamstring exercise and the one-armed pushup contest made me sore. And on top of two-a-days, Corney is lifting. These guys are freaks.

Jones publicly negotiating with JSJ through Hardaway and Rod Pedersen. That right there is a brutal game of telephone. Real interested to see who blinks first. Have there been any other cfl training camp holdouts that compare to this?

Oh hell yeah, that faire du bruit thing sounds awful on TV. Strangely, live it's not so overpoweringly loud. I was expecting to get blasted out of my seat by it but it was just above the background of the crowd.

Okay. Say it's 2008 in an alternate universe and you're starting up the expansion Nipigon CFL Horseflies and you can draft any one CFL receiver for your team. Also, you have perfect knowledge of how all those receivers played in our universe through 2015. Who would you take?

Wow, some dude is straight-up selling iptv services out of his game store in Winnipeg? That is exactly what I need! How good is his service?

No way we can reliably start three Canadian hogs with only six candidates -- especially with one being injury prone and two being super raw draft choices.