Blue Bombers run fake plays off the field, too

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This article was published 19/09/2017 (2402 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some days, a column idea grabs you by the throat.

Other days, a lot of column ideas grab you by the throat.

This was the second kind of day:

 

It was hard not to laugh this week at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers touting their big website “exclusive” on the news defensive end Jamaal Westerman was done for the season.

Barely an hour after head coach Mike O’Shea told reporters Tuesday — with a straight face — that it still wasn’t clear how serious Westerman’s injury was or even if it was upper body or lower body, the club announced on its website that Westerman was done for the season via an “exclusive” that included quotes from Westerman, who was declared off limits to the real reporters on Tuesday because he was injured.

Now, I suppose it’s possible that in the space of one hour, the club fully diagnosed Westerman’s injury, confirmed it was season-ending, interviewed the player and then wrote a pseudo-story and posted it on its website.

But more likely, O’Shea already knew exactly what was wrong with Westerman and that he was done for the season even as he was claiming the opposite to reporters, presumably to preserve his team’s big “exclusive” an hour later.

And so it goes in an age when pro sports teams everywhere are increasingly trying to pass off team propaganda as news — and massage any bad news with their own spin before they let the legit reporters take over.

Fake reporters doing fake news — available at a team website near you.

* * *

Jonathan Drouin’s announcement this week that he was donating $500,000 to a Montreal hospital makes him the second member of the Montreal Canadiens in the last couple years to make a major — and public — financial donation to the community.

Former Habs defenceman P.K. Subban set the standard for hockey player philanthropy, of course, a couple years ago when he announced he was donating $10 million of his own money to a different Montreal hospital.

In addition to the half-million he’s donating, Drouin — who’s heading into his first year with the Habs — also pledged to help raise a further $5 million for the hospital.

NHL players get fabulously rich off the backs of fans in their communities and both Subban and Drouin are to be commended for giving a little back.

It’s one thing for an NHL player to make a team-organized annual visit to the local children’s hospital — with cameras in tow, of course. It’s quite another for that same player to put his money where his good intentions are and actually write a meaningful cheque with a few zeroes on it.

For the record, the Winnipeg Jets players are currently projected to earn US$67.6 million in salaries in this community during the upcoming season.

* * *

From the world of players behaving well to the world of players behaving badly, how about Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul taking to Instagram over the weekend to get this — complain about the Leafs wanting to pay him more than $5 million not to play hockey for them this year.

The Leafs have no use for Lupul and haven’t for a while, so it came as a surprise to no one but Lupul that the team claimed last weekend that he failed his team medical for the second consecutive year.

By failing him medically, the Leafs still have to pay Lupul his full $5.25-million salary for 2017-18 but it doesn’t count against the salary cap.

But that wasn’t good enough for Lupul, who took to Instagram to write: “Ha ha, failed physical. They (the Leafs) cheat, everyone lets them.”

Lupul later deleted the post, but the damage was done and we’ve been reading stories since about whether the Leafs concoct medical reasons to massage the salary cap (they do) just like some other teams in the NHL (ditto).

For the record, I would gladly not play for the Toronto Maple Leafs for a lot less than $5 million a season. Just putting that out there, Lou Lamoriello.

* * *

Speaking of being paid not to play hockey, the Jets are paying former defenceman Mark Stuart $1,458,333 this season not to play for them this year and will pay him another $583,333 not to play for them next season.

The Jets bought out Stuart’s contract, which is different than what the Leafs have done with Lupul. But the net result is the same — both men are getting paid millions not to play hockey.

It’s a good country, this Canada.

* * *

As if parents needed another reason not to let their children play football, a new study released this week by the groundbreaking concussion experts at Boston University found that kids under the age of 12 who play youth football face significantly elevated risks of health problems later in life.

The study by researchers at BU’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center found preteen kids who play football have twice the risk of behavioural problems later in life and triple the risk of depression and other psychological problems.

The BU study comes a year after researchers at Wake Forest found MRIs on the brains of football players between the age of eight and 13 showed diminished function in certain parts of the brain after just one season of playing football.

“I’m at a point where I feel comfortable saying that, based on logic and common sense and the growing totality of the research, I don’t think kids should be playing tackle football,” BU researcher Robert Stern told the Boston Globe this week.

* * *

And with that, the ‘referee-ization’ of professional sports continues.

Just when it seemed like the refs couldn’t possibly be more front and centre than they already were, the NHL instituted a new rule for this coming season that makes even the most delicate of love taps on a well-padded wrist to be an infraction.

The result has been a comedic parade to the penalty box in pre-season games so far; one meaningless match in New York last weekend featured nine slashing penalties.

Look, I’m all for giving the NHL’s most talented players room to showcase their talent, but no one ever bought a ticket to a hockey game — or a football game, for that matter — to watch the refs work.

And yet with all these petty penalties now being called in both hockey and football, not to mention the elephant in the room that is video review in both sports, I swear there are some nights I see more of the guys in the striped shirts than the actual players.

It’s the revenge of the nerds — and the nerds are winning.

* * *

When did defence become a bad thing?

With a new all-time home run record set this week in Major League Baseball, it’s starting to seem like all those pitchers who’d been complaining earlier in the season that the ball is “juiced” weren’t such conspiracy crackpots after all, and maybe MLB really did quietly pump up the baseballs to pump up the scoring.

And in the same week as that happened came the news that the NHL’s continued quest to increase scoring in the league hit a snag with the revelation that new league-mandated smaller chest protectors for goalies won’t be ready for the start of the season.

It tells you all you need to know about the dwindling attention spans of the smartphone generation that leagues are twisting themselves inside-out to try and pump up the scoring, lest anyone get bored for even a minute.

 

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek