Gio Urshela, the yankees (besides DJ?) best player all year is now hurt as well, and it appears Sabathia is headed for his third stint of the IL this season. Unbelievable.

Bianca Andreescu defeats Serena Williams 6-2, 7-5 to win Canada’s first ever US Open And she’s only 19 taking out the most victorious her sport has ever seen!

Antonio Brown is an incredible, colossal asshole. What in the fuck.

Yep.

yep

Strong win by the Raiders, fuck AB. The offensive line didn't give up a single hit, and Carr was surgical.

WHO DAT! Even if that last quarter play calling basically handed Houston the game. The Saints didn't deserve a W.



I didn't watch the game, but that's surprising. I would have never put Derek Carr and "surgical" in the same sentence in 2018.

2018 was Carr’s personal best season for passing accuracy and yards per pass. The Raiders’ abysmal record last year was not on him.

I'm eating my own words, because I'm starting him in fantasy over Mitch T. I swept all of my leagues last weekend, hoping for a second hat trick.

I'm excited for Saints/Rams. That game will be GOOD. #WHODAT

Considering the Chiefs just got fairly diced up by something called Gardner Minshew, Carr should do just fine for you. I fully expect a shootout.

Well, the Redblacks have just gotten their arses kicked by the last place teams in each division in back-to-back weeks. Last night 29-5 at the friggin’ BC Lions, with two of those points coming from a safety touch. When your defence outscores your offence, all you can say is please, please let this be rock bottom!

Gardner was solid in college. Carr, not so hot this week. I lost because I picked him over Josh Allen. I'm 2-0 in my favorite league, and 1-1 in my other two.

I'm more concerned about my Saints. They looked lost without Brees.

I was starting to doubt whether anyone wanted to win Bears-Broncos Three tries for Denver’s convert, I don’t know if I’ve either seen such a simple play bring out so much incompetence in both teams! End result, eh, I like Eddy Pineiro and I’m happy for his moment, but that roughing the passer call that kept Chicago’s drive alive was total BS. So I have mixed emotions.

God, that game was awful. Montgomery's three tries to get 1 yard for the TD was pathetic.

RIP Steelers

Roughing the passer calls are so often highly controversial and subjective, and many times, out and out BS. It happens to a lot of teams.
So I feel for Broncos fans here. Back in my day, it was called a "Sack." Plain and simple.

I sent that exact quote to a friend yesterday. This season is off to a bad start as far as injuries.

Japanese people beating Russians at rugby, I have trouble picturing that in my head, I should have watched.

https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/09 ... -patriots/

Welp, that didn’t take long.

GOOD. On top of all the Gardner Minshew memes today...great day for football.

Watching the Ottawa Redblacks and BC Lions, but twice now the little virtual yards-to-go markers that pop up for the TV audience have identified the teams as the Raiders and Rams. Come on, TSN get it together!
Also it’s 7-2 BC after the first quarter, so in the last five quarters, Ottawa’s scoreline reads
Defence: 4
Special Teams: 3
Offence: 0.
This is really getting pathetic.

UPDATE: Christ Jesus It’s now a game and a half, and the above scoreline holds. God help me, I miss the Renegades. They never made the playoffs, but at least they never rolled over and died like these arseclowns.

UPDATE II: sainte ciboire de crisse, the final is 40-7. Which means now 5 out of 13 games where Ottawa hasn’t mustered one single friggin touchdown. This is the worst football team Ottawa has ever seen, and we’re a city that went 40 years without a championship in a 9-team league; also zero winning seasons from 1980-2014. So when I say this is the worst, that means it is truly astoundingly godawful.

UPDATE III: Things are looking up We’ve managed at least one touchdown (sometimes two!) in three of our last four losses - I mean games - but yeah, all losses. Dammit I tried to be positive... but today’s ass-biting brings the Redblacks’ total number of asses bitten this season to 11.
Yeah we’ve lost more games than that before, but this is an Ottawa single-season record for ass-bitings.* And when our latest failure comes against the feckin Argos, who have one win against the rest of the league but have now swept us 3-0, that’s pretty sad.
* I accept that the difference between a Loss and an Ass-Biting is a matter of opinion.

I would like to thank Rick Campbell for six years as the Redblacks’ only head coach to date. Three of those six were among the greatest CFL football Ottawa has ever seen, 2017 was okay, and the inaugural season was fun just becuase we were happy to be back.
Only this season was a failure, and it shouldn’t have cost Campbell his job. It’s not the coach who allows the QB, RB, two leading receivers and countless key pieces of the O-Line and secondary to bugger off and does little to nothing to address the holes. The GM has much more to answer for, but Campbell takes the fall

As they say, shit rolls downhill. The person with the least amount of influence getting a team what it needs will always be the first with their head rolling on the floor. The Edmonton Oilers have been guilty of this very thing more times in the last 20 years than is even vaguely reasonable. I mean, they had Pat fucking Quinn as a bench boss, and handed him possibly the worst Oilers roster I've seen since I was even born, and quite predictably, they had an absolutely god-awful year. So to fix the problem, they fired one of the most decorated coaches of all time after ONE GODDAMN YEAR! And then they hired Ralph Krueger, who had success at the start of his one and only season, before the team decided to stop listening to him and wouldn't play the system that made them so successful at the beginning of the season. So what did they do? Well, they fired him, of course! Over Skype! And replaced him with fucking Dallas Eakins. Anyway, the point is, it's typical of upper-management to never take responsibility for their own shortcomings, and in an effort to save the job of... the more expensive guy, they fired the coach to make it look like they were actually attempting to fix what's wrong, which of course they absolutely are not.

Well the story in Ottawa is that Campbell “stepped down”. But it’s painfully clear to everyone here that he decided to quit before facing the ignominy of being fired. It was coming... and it just pisses me off because it’s the laziest option as you say, to make it look like they’re attempting to fix the problem.
Especially in Ottawa, where the Redblacks did not have to look far to see that riding the coach carousel doesn’t change a deeper organizational rot. There’s the Sens, with 7 head coaches in the 12 years since our trip to the Stanley Cup final. Constant upheaval hasn’t turned us into a consistent power in the NHL. Imagine that!

Ottawa Fury FC has announced that it has suspended operations. The franchise isn't taking a break. The franchise is dead and gone. This situation is only explained in three bland sentences on Facebook that are a slap in the face for the numerous supporters. The club's website had already been deleted and was later on replaced by a generic statement. The way the plug has been pulled is simply heartless.

However, one might have seen that devastating end coming by a mile. Ottawa Fury FC started playing in the North American Soccer League back in 2014, still playing at the cold and modest Keith Harris Stadium at Carleton University before moving to brand new TD Place. The team developed an intense rivalry with the only other Canadian team, FC Edmonton and competed fiercely against legendary New York Cosmos with star players such as Raul. The team even made it to the Soccer Bowl final in 2015. The North American Soccer League was however struggling financially and administratively at that point already.

Ottawa Fury FC had no other option but to switch to the United Soccer League, playing its first season in 2017. The North American Soccer League folded at the end of the same year and many franchises either switched to the United Soccer League or had to suspend operations. After a difficult start, Ottawa Fury FC made it to the playoffs in 2019, losing against Charleston Battery after extra time and penalty kicks in the first round. That has only happened a week and a half ago. However, the team had already struggled to obtain permission by the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football to play in the United Soccer League for its last season and the team was heavily pressured to join the new Canadian Premier League that has a much smaller budget, set up quite different rules and features only seven teams. Ottawa Fury FC appealed the decision to not be allowed to play in the United Soccer League and was ultimately allowed to play in 2019.

At that point, the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, owner of the Ottawa Fury FC as well as Ontario Hockey Leagues's Ottawa 67's and Canadian Football League's Ottawa Redblacks, should have known that it had eighteen months to switch from the United Soccer League to the Canadian Premier League. The team would have gone through numerous changes but could have played in a new and strong Canadian league starting in late April 2020.

Instead of switching leagues, the team has now folded and the future for professional soccer in Canada's capital is currently looking quite bleak. It's understandable that the administrative challenges have exhausted the owners. It's obvious that a switch to a third league in such a short period of time goes along with lots of complicated paper work. It's clear that numerous players would have been forced to leave and be replaced by younger Canadian players.

The disappointing thing is that the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group didn't even seem to be trying to solve those issues anymore, that it released its devastating statement in three bland sentences and closed the website immediately as if to erase any trace of a team that thousands of fans had supported over the years.

On a positive note, FC Edmonton folded after the final North American Soccer League season back in fall 2017. The team seemed to be dead and gone but rose from its ashes to join the Canadian Premier League and resumed playing in spring 2019. A similar fate might eventually happen to the Ottawa Fury FC or a completely new team in Ottawa.

It's devastating however how many leagues and teams have folded in North America over the past few decades. Soccer is still overall not sustainable in North America despite significant improvements over the past decade in particular. North America will be hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup. There is a brand new stadium ready to welcome twenty-four thousand fans in the heart of Canada's capital. It would be a shame if professional soccer didn't succeed in the long run in Ottawa. Until then, the fans will be waiting patiently. Canadian soccer fans have already developed elements most hockey or football fans have never known: determination, optimism and resilience. Ottawa Fury FC will not be forgotten.

I followed Fury all through the league-jumping difficulties, but I hadn’t heard about new developments like the website deletion and such. I guess I’ve been optimistically taking a literal understanding of the term “suspend operations”, that is, something suspended can be reinstated. This is very sad if it is really more a termination than a suspension.

Something I thought might never happen has finally happened: Don Cherry has finally been fired from Sportsnet and his show Coach's Corner after criticizing visible minorities in and around Toronto for not wearing remembrance poppies to honour fallen soldiers.

That isn't the first time Don Cherry made derogatory remarks on his iconic show. He called the players of the Carolina Hurricanes ''a bunch of jerks'' for their post-game home victory celebrations last season. He called Sidney Crosby a ''hot dog'' for sliding on his knees after scoring. Don Cherry declared that only ''Europeans and French'' Canadians wear visors because they are softer than tough anglophone Canadian players. He called Winnipeg Jets assistant coach Alpo Suhonen ''some kind of dog food''. The list goes on and on but Sportsnet and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have always protected Don Cherry. This time however, the eighty-five year old Kingstonian has gone too far.

The terrible thing is that public opinion supports Don Cherry. Many people defend him strongly and call those who criticize him ''snowflakes'', ''losers'' and ''communists'' on social media. These people claim that Don Cherry's freedom of speech has been disrespected by firing him.

We have to understand that our freedom stops where the freedom of other individuals starts. Everybody is entitled to have his or her personal opinions. If our personal opinion however harms other individuals, we have crossed a line that shouldn't be crossed. Suggesting that Canadians of all backgrounds should support fallen soldiers on Remembrance Day is perfectly fine. Pointing out visible minorities by generalizing them and associating them to disrespectful behaviour however isn't acceptable. The way Don Cherry articulates himself is hurtful, harmful and disrespectful. That is unacceptable for a public figure in the twenty-first century.

Don Cherry should have never even gotten a chance to deliver such negative speeches on public television in the first place. His derogatory remarks are stuck in a hostile mindset of the fifties of the last century when Don Cherry was a teenager. He claims to be a proud Canadian yet fails to understand contemporary Canadian values such as hospitality, respect and tolerance.

Sportsnet and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation need a younger and more dynamic, intellectual and respectful analyst who understands that modern hockey simply isn't about being physically tough anymore. This person might be less charismatic but that isn't necessarily a negative thing. Being considered an iconic national treasure as some people call him for all the wrong reasons related to closed-minded, controversial and hostile comments isn't anything praiseworthy at all.

That being said, a sports show should always be about sports and not about political opinions, military propaganda and cultural assimilation.

Criticizing a player for “hot-dogging” or being “a bunch of jerks” is not derogatory remarks. It’s just a sports opinion from a sports personality. I had no problem with Cherry on those topics, even though I enjoyed the Hurricanes’ celebrations. Lumping those comments in with things he’s said that are obviously bigoted, is a false equivalence.
That said, Coach’s Corner was getting stale the last few years, with Cherry repeating the same hockey stories over and over again. Even without this latest political furore it was long past time for him to go.

I have to disagree. Calling someone a "jerk" or "dog food" isn't just an opinion but a derogatory remark, an insult. I expect an adult of eighty-five years who is watched by millions, including children, to express himself better than this. In addition to this, Cherry has repeatedly insulted First Nations and Quebeckers who are as much Canadians as he is. His divisive remarks have hurt many people when hockey should unite the country. CBC and Sportsnet have been idle for far too long and justice has finally been served. By the way, if an ordinary man such as a police officer or a teacher had made just one such remark, he would have had disciplinary actions against him in the best case or he would have been fired in the worst case. It's not because you are on television and some white Anglo-Saxon protestants think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread that you are allowed to utter any disgraceful nonsense as you please.

Cleveland vs Pittsburg: Brawl of the century. The end of that game looked like a re-enactment of a zombie apocalypse. Just dudes slugging it out, total bench clearing brawl, guys slamming each other with their helmets, frickin' gnarly. I have nothing particularly constructive to say about either team, and the game wasn't even that interesting, but man, that ending was some crazy shit. Its gonna be all over the sports news tomorrow.

Winning 7 of their past 10 games, and now just 3pts. out of a playoff spot, could it be that the Ottawa Senators are actually sort of good?

Thanks to Cardinals CB Josh Shaw for proving there is some justice in the world! Guy gets suspended for gambling, then loses a bet against his own team
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/12/watch- ... dinals/amp

New England Patriots having some troubles lately.

Oh dear lord, it happened again! The Saints got BS’ed, again, this time by a completely bizarre rule that was correctly applied. But makes zero logical sense. And I’ve never seen anyone else get hit by it before the Saints this weekend:
https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/here-s ... dvkk8yattz
So there is no pass interference on a fake punt. You can totally harass a guy all the way down field, because it’s not a passing formation therefore not a passing play

New England Patriots having some troubles all right. Brady's finally showing his age, he has no recievers except Edelman (he's all they got) and he doesn't have much support on defense either. That's like what; three straight losses now? Talk about a team disintegrating fast.

New Orleans may have gotten robbed on that one P.I call, but near the end of the game, they benefitted from an equally dubious one called against San Francisco- One of those deals where the contact with the reciever was incidental at best. That gave them a "Freebie" first down and led to the go-ahead touchdown with less than a minute left. Heck, if three of their defenders hadn't tried to rip Kittle's helmet off by the facemask all at once (on the ensuing drive), they might have hung on and won.

I did not know in the nhl non-goaltenders could catch the puck.

Players can catch and drop a puck to their stick, but cannot throw it or grab it to prevent a scoring play.

Thanks. I do not know the rules of that game.

Anybody here excited for the UFC fights this weekend? I'm a big fan of both Holloway and Nunes. Can't say I care either way about the Colby/Usman fight but it's a stacked card.

Also looking forward to the QUINTET grappling event tomorrow. Really cool concept for that. Good week for us fight fans!