1st and 10

Mood: Noddin

An utterly uneventful day today, so I will use today's post to go off on one of the topics I mentioned before.

Following the 2004 season, the Canadian Football League announced, after a particularly tumultuous ending to its season (as far as officiating is concerned), that it would be reviewing how the game is covered by its referees, a group that has for decades been arguably the most infuriating aspect of Canada's national loop.

Earlier this month, the league announced that, among other things, refs would now be given the freedom to call illegal contact on a receiver — a 10-yard penalty — even on balls deemed uncatchable. The Pandora's Box that this opens is so unfathomable on so many levels, I'm not quite sure it's possible to address it all in one sitting.

For instance, if a QB is in trouble, he now has yet another bail-out option when fleeing oncoming pass-rushers. With the CFL's already loose illegal grounding rule, the quarterback already just merely has to get the ball across the line of scrimmage to be free from that penalty. Now, if he can muster tossing the ball — hypothetically 50 yards — into the stands (yes, it's an exaggeration), he can get his team 10 yards if a pass defender happens to get tied up in a receiver's path.

It also gives an official in the CFL just one more reason to blow the whistle, a privilege we should be doing everything in our powers to deplete them of. This is not a group that has historically been good with judgement calls, and now the league has given them one more to make.

An article on the topic from Canadian Press reporter Bill Beacon, I paraphrase, made reference to the lack of illegal contact penalties on uncatchable balls in the past was one that had frustrated fans.

Which fans exactly?

I would struggle to find one well-versed fan of football that believes a ball that is thrown 38 rows into the stands should be subject to the same penalty framework as one that remains in the field of play and within range of being caught.

The Canadian league is one that, necessitated or not, has often followed the NFL's lead. Also new this year are penalties for bringing foreign objects on to the field in celebration of a score. It was motivated by Winnipeg Blue Bomber Keith Stoke's harmless, yet questionable in its coolness and timing, decision to pull a magazine out from the padding of the goal post after a touchdown. That was precipitated by Joe Horn's cell phone gag of the same vain during an ESPN Sunday Night game in the NFL.

Previously the CFL has banned removing of helmets on the playing field, another rule change that followed in the footsteps of the NFL. While the NFL was dealing with what it considered an epidemic of celebrations in which players removed their helmets on the field, the CFL had nearly no such history of such atrocities. Yet, the rule exists. It was rash by the NFL and it was not only rash, but also blind of the CFL to follow suit.

During this off-season, Global Winnipeg sportscaster Joe Pascucci was permitted not only to sit in on the league's general managers meetings, he even tabled a rule change on how the league would award single points on missed field goals. The merits of Pascucci's idea aren't of significance here, but the fact that such a random figure would garner the ear of the committee in charge of our game is mind-blowing. The league has the committee there for a reason and allowing outsiders like Pascucci — who used his standing as Global Sports Director to get the invite — to come in and try and affect change makes the league more bush.

The illegal contact rule is one of the instances where the CFL should have followed the NFL's lead, which is to say it should have just used common sense and realized there's no particular reason to adjust the rule. It wanted to answer the hoots and hollers of fans following a season where the incompetence of its officials was finally too bold to ignore, but instead the decision is to let referees who already misinterpret rules and err in their calls at an alarming rate to have even more things to decide, which is to say they'll have even more chances to have the entire league's fan base even more irrate.

The CFL should not be looking to the NFL or listening to sportscasters who happen to have an idea spring to their brain (keeping in mind that countless sportscasters in this country aren't as well-versed in the games they cover as they come off to be.)

In fact, here's my advice for the CFL idea factory: Instead of adding hair-brain, nonsensical quirks that have little to no chance of enhancing the game, listen very closely to your followers. They'll have the right ideas. Because if this month's decisions are any indication, the booing is going to get a whole lot louder.

The List of Five:
The first in a weekly wrap up of what's on the radar.

1. Steelers rookie LB Rian Wallace (1)
2. Bombers QB Spergeon Wynn (2)
3. Common w/Kanye West "The Food" (3)
4. Red Bull and vodka
5. Jerry West throwback jersey
Also receiving votes: Chrysler Crossfire, ESPN Magazine, Tee Martin as starting QB by Week 4, Zack Taylor, Schpladow!, Jake Peavy

Lyric of the day:
Let me voice my concern
So many of my fellow brothers have given themselves a title
That their actions didn't earn
Our ignorance is in the same breath as our innocence
Subconciously, seeking to find an impressionable mind to convince
I've finally come to the realization why Black people in the worse place
Cuz it's hard to correct yourself when you don't know
Who you are in the first place
So I try to find the clue in you
But evidently, White folks know more Black history than we do
Why're we bein' lied to? I ain't know our history was purposely hidden
Damn, somethin' in me wanna know who I am
So I began my search, my journey started in church
It gave my heartache relief when I started to understand belief
Hustlin was like a gift spent my share of time in the streets
Taught me survival from this evil I'm just gonna have to deal with
And I felt like a fool when I tried to learn it in school
It almost seemed like a rehearsal when the only
Science and math are universal
Takin elder advice, read the Bible, the Koran
Searched scrolls from the Hebrew Israelites
Hold on, this ain't right, Jesus wasn't White
Some leads were granted with insight
and it's all in the plan, but it took me some time to overstand
He still created with the imperfection of man
So, with followin' I disagree
By no means have I forgotten or forgiven what's been done to me but
I do know the Devil ain't no White man, the Devil's a spiritual mind
That's color blind, there's evil White folk and evil niggas
You gon surely find there's no positivity without negativity
But one side you gonna have to choose
Any chance to speak I refuse to misuse
So how can you call yourself God when you let a worldly possession
become an obsession and the way you write your rhymes and
Can't follow your lesson
If a seed's sown, you make sure it's known, you make sure it's grown
If you God, then save your own, don't mentally enslave your own
Cee-Lo, from Common's G.O.D. (Gaining One's Definition)