TrueBlue4ever

In fairness, he is excellent at branding himself, and has played the media at most turns.

So looking at the defence overall, what a formidable bunch! Screams aggressiveness and athleticism. Any quibbles from anyone? In my one alternative universe, I would move West to inside linebacker in place of Barrin Simpson (who would be brilliant as a spell-off coming in on second down passing plays) and keep Tony Norman as a back-up, and promote Elfrid Payton to starter. That way he could switch from outside back to rush end at will, and we could employ a 4-3 or 3-4 whenever it suited us. And I still want to find a way to get Rowland and Casey on the team, but Hefney does offer the added benefit of both punt returns and punt coverage, so I’m content with his selection. Well done all, and great discussion so far about all positions!

Big for the Tabbies. Great chemistry with Masoli. Is a motivated Brandon Banks the most dangerous player in the CFL?

WHAT????? You mean Wikipedia lied to me? I should have know there were problems when they did not have Paul Robson listed amongst the GM’s (at least I now have a Wikipedia edit to my name). Thanks for checking my work, I have corrected Grant’s bio.

Added.

The voting is closed for defensive tackle, and to no one's surprise Doug Brown is an all-timer, but very impressively, so is Stan Mikawos, with a clear-cut victory, over 3rd place, showing that steady excellence over a long period is valued as much as big flashy numbers. The defence is now set, and I have the coach and GM nominees up for voting this week. We will next consider the special teams, starting with the kicker and punter (where discussion has already commenced in other threads). Punter will be a short list (and even shorter voting argument, I'm sure) with Cameron and Ryan in just so we don't have an acclimation. Kicker has a couple of obvious choices in Kennerd and Westwood, but I'm prepared to add Medlock given his accuracy percentage. Any others?

Choose one from each category. Here are the bios: COACHES Bud Grant - Regular Season: 160 games in 10 seasons (1957-66), 102-56-2 (.644), 5 first place finishes (1958-62), best: 14-2 (1960), worst: 1-14-1 (1964) - Playoffs: 31 games in 8 appearances (1957-62, 65, 66), 20-10-1 (.662), 6 Grey Cup appearances (1957-59, 61, 62, 65), 4 Grey Cups (1958, 59, 61, 62) - 1965 Coach of the Year, CFL Hall of Fame Cal Murphy - Regular Season: 138 games in 8 seasons (1983-86, 1993-96), 86-51-1 (.632), 2 first place finishes (1993, 94), best: 14-4 (1993), worst: 7-11 (1995) - Playoffs: 14 games in 8 appearances (1983-86, 93-96), 7-7 (.500), 2 Grey Cup appearances (1984, 93), 1 Grey Cup (1984) - 2 time Coach of the Year (1983, 84), CFL Hall of Fame Mike Riley - Regular Season: 72 games in 4 seasons (1987-90), 40-32 (.556), 2 first place finishes (1987, 90), best: 12-6 (1987, 90), worst: 7-11 (1989) - Playoffs: 8 games in 4 appearances (1987-90), 6-2 (.750), 2 Grey Cup appearances (1988, 90), 2 Grey Cups (1988, 90) - 2 time Coach of the Year (1988, 90) Dave Ritchie - Regular Season: 97 games in 6 seasons (1999-2004), 52-44-1 (.541), 1 first place finish (2001), best: 14-4 (2001), worst: 6-12 (1999) - Playoffs: 7 games in 4 appearances (2000-03), 3-4 (.429), 2001 Grey Cup appearance - 2001 Coach of the Year Reg Threlfall - Regular Season: 36 games in 4 seasons (1938-41), 28-8 (.778), 3 first place finishes (1939-41), best: 10-2 (1939), worst: 6-2 (1938, 40, 41) - Playoffs: 13 games in 4 appearances (1938-41), 10-3 (.769), 3 Grey Cup appearances (1938, 39, 41), 2 Grey Cups (1939, 41) NOTE: Winnipeg was 2-0 in 1940 playoffs, but was denied the opportunity to play in the Grey Cup because of a rules dispute between their Western football league and the Ontario Rugby Union GENERAL MANAGERS Jim Ausley - Regular Season: 112 games in 7 seasons (1958-64), 71-40-1 (.638), 5 first place finishes (1958-62), best: 14-2 (1960), worst: 1-14-1 (1964) - Playoffs: 17 games in 5 appearances (1958-62), 13-4 (.765), 4 Grey Cup appearances (1958, 59, 61, 62), 4 Grey Cups (1958, 59, 61, 62) - 6 Hall of Fame players, 44 divisional all stars (6.3/yr), 5 CFL all stars (1.7/yr)*, 2 CFL award winners *CFL all stars first awarded in 1962 Earl Lunsford - Regular Season: 240 games in 15 seasons (1968-82), 108-127-5 (.460), 1 first place finish (1972), best: 11-5 (1981, 82), worst: 2-14 (1970) - Playoffs: 11 games in 9 appearances (1971, 72, 75-78, 80-82), 2-9 (.182), 0 Grey Cup appearances - 12 Hall of Fame players, 76 divisional all stars (5.1/yr), 41 CFL all stars (2.7/yr), 8 CFL award winners CFL Hall of Fame (Player) Cal Murphy - Regular Season: 180 games in 10 seasons (1987-96), 103-77 (.572), 5 first place finishes (1987, 90, 92, 93, 94), best: 14-4 (1993), worst: 7-11 (1989, 95) - Playoffs: 18 games in 10 appearances (1987-96), 10-8 (.556), 4 Grey Cup appearances (1988, 90, 92, 93), 2 Grey Cups (1988, 90) - 13 Hall of Fame players, 77 divisional all stars (7.7/yr), 39 CFL all stars (3.9/yr), 7 CFL award winners CFL Hall of Fame (Builder) Paul Robson - Regular Season: 64 games in 4 seasons (1983-86), 43-22-1 (.680), 0 first place finishes, best: 12-4 (1985), worst: 9-7 (1983) - Playoffs: 7 games in 4 appearances (1983-86), 4-3 (.571), 1 Grey Cup appearance (1984), 1 Grey Cup (1984) - 10 Hall of Fame players, 37 divisional all stars (9.3/yr), 27 CFL all stars (6.8/yr), 7 CFL award winners Joe Ryan - Regular Season: 36 games in 11 seasons (1931-41), 48-19-2 (.710), 7 first place finishes (1933-36, 39-41), best: 10-2 (1939), worst: 1-3 (1931) - Playoffs: 25 games in 9 appearances (1933-41), 17-8 (.680), 5 Grey Cup appearances (1935, 37, 38, 39, 41), 3 Grey Cups (1935, 39, 41) - 8 Hall of Fame players CFL Hall of Fame (Builder)

I'm prepared to include Medlock if his stats warrant it. I intend to include Andrew Harris with the running backs. Active players are eligible if they are deemed worthy of nomination.

I do realize. Just relaying a story he told. There was great mutual respect between both kicking tandems.

When Ryan was punting with the Bombers, Cameron was the radio colour commentator. Cameron said he'd never seen a punter kick like Ryan. Cameron also told the story about how when Troy Westwood first came to camp. Bob would often try to rattle new kickers, but quickly figured out that Westwood could so easily out-punt him that he would be out of a job, so instead he made friends with him, hoping that Westwood would feel sorry for him and not take his punting job. And it worked, because Westwood said he only wanted to kick field goals and not do both. Westwood told Cameron that when Ryan came along, Westwood saw the same dominance and used the cameron tactic of senior mentor and friend and convinced Ryan only to go out for punting, so he wouldn't lose his placekicking job to a much stronger leg. So if Cameron admitted Westwood could out kick him, and Westwood admitted that Ryan could out kick him, then even Cameron would admit that Ryan would be taken as a punter over him. But I'll say again, BETTER does not equate to GREATER, and Cal Murphy loved Cameron because he was like an extra coach out there. Ryan seemed to handle the same Winnipeg weather conditions just as well as Cameron did.

Actually, his CFL career average was 46.9, the same as Cameron's best single season ever. His NFL average was 44.7 (and his net NFL average was 38.7). Cameron's career average was 42.9.

Here's the newest 10 year hour challenge: THEN NOW

FIFY. Edits in italics mine to reflect reality.

My favorite tweet of the day: "Hopefully Trump's supporters who wanted a wall will be satisfied with the big, beautiful cave he just delivered"

Like I said, Cameron is the GREATER punter, but Ryan was the BETTER punter. But let's not get ahead of ourselves in the voting process.

This is all the rage on the right wing tweets. FBI colluding with CNN otherwise they wouldn't have been there, AND an armed assault on an old white man's house, clearly an abuse of power. Mueller must be fired and prosecuted as a deep state operative for such heavy-handed tactics meant to intimidate Trump witnesses. OR Maybe CNN just noticed the late afternoon special courtroom sitting on Thursday, and remembered that the last time this happened was the day indictments were drawn up and presented to the Grand Jury, and the next day Paul Manafort was arrested and charged (CNN actually put this out on their website Thursday afternoon before any news leaked or indictments came out, almost as if they knew what the counter-narrative from Fox and Friends would be, and thus created a paper trail of their investigative journalism to cover their bases and avoid the "fake news" label). So they picked out the most likely suspects for arrest and camped out overnight. Suspect that news crews were stationed at Bannon's, Kushner's, and Don Jr.'s places too.

Punter is really a choice of 2, the obvious call for Cameron, or the wildcard Jon Ryan, who was clearly a better punter, but maybe not a greater punter, if that makes sense. Kicker could come down to 3 or 4 options. I will be doing returners in a separate category (but will be lumping kick returner and punt returner into one category), and then "special teams player" which will be focussed on cover specialists and long snappers.

Random thoughts: -Trump has been strangely very quiet and twitter-free for the last 12 hours. Can't wait for that dam to break. Whatever your political bent or personal views, it is always "entertaining" when he tweets and the responses it generates. -So, who is next on the indictment list? Bannon now seems squarely in the crosshairs, but what of Kushner and Don Jr.? Is Kellyanne just a lackey mouthpiece, or was she part of the mechanism? And does Ivanka get a pass? Given daddy's very creepy praise of her, I wonder if she's the one person he wouldn't throw under the bus and would sacrifice himself for? And, top dawg aside, does anyone have any personal "favorites" they'd like to see get arrested, for simply schadenfraude purposes? -What's the next diversionary tactic, as asked before? Declaring an emergency to get wall funding would be a "win" for Donald in that he didn't back down and keeps his key campaign promise (notwithstanding those pesky "legal challenges", which will likely take away this avenue but let Trump play victim and save face with his base rather than caving), but I think he's more about chaos to deflect, rather than solutions, so he likes the shutdown noise and will keep it up, and scream about another deadly caravan coming our way, is my bet. -Finally, let's just assume for a second Trump himself never colluded and he is telling the truth the whole time. The fact that pretty much every person in his political campaign orbit has been indicted or implicated would mean that, if he wasn't involved, then he is the biggest stooge in history and has been played like a fiddle by those who put him in power to advance their own criminal agenda, and he was too blind and stupid to even see it happening. Is that possibility even more embarrassing to this egomaniac than being caught as the ringleader? Remember how he bristled when Hillary called him a "puppet" in the debates? I would love to see someone in the media take this slant with him and poke the bear with "too dumb to realize he was just a pawn in someone else's master plan", I don't think he could leave that accusation alone and would put his head further in the noose. (Like Sideshow Bob incriminating himself when an 8 year old Lisa said he wasn't smart enough to pull off election fraud himself and was just a stooge for others, causing his ego to break and out himself as the mastermind - yes, I just equated the President to a cartoon villain on the Simpsons - the world we live in)

I am convinced that "pigseye" is a bot, meant to spam people, giving the selective cherry-picking of facts, willful ignorance of countering facts and information, and blatant one-sided propaganda in simple one sentence blurbs. This reads like the Twitter nonsense from the so called "silent majority". Perhaps the mods should remove this Russian trolling machine lest it corrupt the site with a virus.

It's somewhat astonishing after all of Trump's lying, highly questionable moral behaviour, allegations of conspiracy, suspect financial manouvres, and general political shock tactics including, but hardly limited to: - perpetuating a conspiracy theory about the birth origin of a sitting US President, withholding his tax returns, insulting other politicians with everything from childish nicknames to out and out accusations of their parents' involvement in Presidential assassinations, repeated unproven accusations of criminal activity by his political opponent, made regular demeaning comments about women, their appearance, their intelligence, their character, their menstrual cycles, and their date-ability, up to boasting about openly sexually assaulting them just because he could as a rich guy, mocked a disabled reporter, mocked the family (especially the mother) of a deceased Iraq war soldier, insulted military veterans, military generals, transgender military personnel, a sitting US senator who was a POW, praised neo-Nazis as good people, would not denounce hate groups that supported him, even after one of them committed a murder by ramming their car into a group of people, encouraged a foreign power to hack his political rival's e-mail server, associated with a host of now convicted felons regarding his election campaign, encouraged citizens at his rallies to incite violence against those who spoke up against him, encouraged an NRA member to "take care" of his chief political rival, pulled out of a worldwide climate agreement, met with a dictator who had threated nuclear annihilation against the USA and brokered away US military presence in the region for a vague promise of nuclear de-escalation with no oversight to ensure its progress, bowed down to another dictator who corrupted the US elections and undermined his own intelligence reports in the process, used the government and his foreign political connections to line his own pockets financially, insulted, discredited, and out and out lied about and to the media at almost every turn, supported a foreign leader who was complicit in the murder of an American citizen by all accounts, has bashed his intelligence and police service for corruption and "witch hunts", and has essentially admitted to obstructing justice, that the one thing that has stuck is his one big attempt at accountability: "I will proudly shut down the Government for border security. I will own the shutdown, and I won't blame you for it" This is his "Read my lips, no new taxes" moment Just shows that money rules all - be a sexist, bigoted, criminal, morally bankrupt, corrupt individual, and citizens can overlook it if their personal circumstances are good enough (more money in my pocket from a tax break, and my job isn't threatened by outsiders), but hit them in the pocketbook (higher taxes, or put me out of a job and withhold my paycheck) and there is no forgiveness.

This Schumer look when Trump owns the shutdown (and any blame) on live TV says it all

Exactly what he tweets every day. Economy great, historic lows on unemployment, all-time high number of people working, great trade deals, America first. But dangerous times, fake news, media unfair coverage, caravan crisis, border security including a barrier, need to come together to open government with a sensible plan to reduce crime, secure our borders, keep out drugs, and protect Americans without playing politics. There'd be no chanting "Build the wall" or "lock her up:" from his rally cronies, but the sycophant Republicans would jump up every few sentences to offer a standing ovation. Don't imagine Democrats would stoop to heckling and badgering the Commander in Chief in that venue during his speech, for fear of looking petty. Base would be energized, opponents would be unimpressed, media talking heads on both sides would offer their partisan takes in round table opinion forums, actual news would not be reported. Shutdown would continue, 800,000 would still go without paychecks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

FIFY.

Since Jpan85 wants to kill this new poll quickly, and yet because I am a slave to procedure, I will post the General Manager candidates at the same time as the head coach candidates, so that we may possibly have a little debate. GM nominations to consider would be Joe Ryan, Jim Ausley, Earl Lunsford (whatever you may think of his success, he was the longest tenured), and Cal Murphy. Will also add Reg Threllfall to the head coaching mix. Will put up both categories on Friday.

BUZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!