I wish that I was Jesse ...

Meant to post this earlier this week, but got sidetracked...

The Jesse of whom I speak is the one and only Jesse Lumsden, the former Canadian university standout still trying to get his rep as a fulltime NFL running back.

For whatever reason, Lumsden's attention in the Canadian media is so grossly outweighing his potential and ability — as it translates to NFL competition — it's further from reality than Whitney Houston.

Listen, it's a nice thought to ponder a Canadian university-bred player, in one of the skill positions — and not, say, on the offensive line or special teams — taking the NFL by storm, but that's a pipe dream and everyone knows it. What Lumsden's goals are in the NFL, they're probably modest and likely no one knows better than he the major mountain he has to climb to make that lofty goal a reality.

But the national media — I'm looking at you TSN and Sportsnet — can't get enough of the Disney script to the point where they've painted Lumsden as a legitimate NFL hopeful each of the past two seasons he's tried to crack a roster down south.

When Lumsden became eligible for the CFL draft, and the Hamilton Tiger Cats subsequently picked the hometown boy, the ever obtuse "experts" who cover the CFL openly questioned the logic of picking a guy who had his sights firmly set on making the NFL. Never mind that Lumsden was the most talented Canadian coming out of the draft of CIS athletes (by far) or that keeping a local makes PR sense, the experts had fooled themselves into believing that the Ticats had wasted a pick for, as they reasoned, Lumsden wasn't long for the CFL with NFL glory surely awaiting him.

Yeah, right.

Sportsnet covered Lumsden's brief foray with the Seattle Seahawks in 2005 training camp with all the vigour they'd muster if Todd Bertuzzi and Steve Moore opened a coffee shop together on Richards St. (That is to say, with a lot of it.)

If Lumsden broke the line of scrimmage, Sportsnet was there with blanket coverage and this year has been no different as Lumsden tries to make it with the Washington Redskins. TSN has continued the unwarranted fervour with the same type of attention as last year.

Wanna know when that excitement should be toned down a notch? When the guy isn't even listed on the team's depth chart.

Look for yourself.

There's a major difference between a Canadian — and there have been quite a few of them — making an NFL roster and a Canadian attempting to be a running back on an NFL roster. I don't care how many yards Lumsden ran for in the CIS, he could have run for 10 grand in a single season, it still doesn't put him in the NFL elite. An article on Redskins.com highlighted Lumsden's 344-yard performance in a 2004 game. Impressive no doubt, but let's remember this was against the Waterloo Warriors, not the Texas Longhorns. The two-win Waterloo Warriors, I might add.

This is not to say I wouldn't pull for him to earn a place down there, for sure I would, I would just like the media to check their Lumsden for President signs at the door and scale back what is so utterly over the top it's embarassing. After all, what are the expectations for him down there? It can't be to earn a spot as the feature back, that's preposterous. So then what? To spell Clinton Portis? Not a chance. To be realistic, Lumsden's best hopes are to somehow weasel into a role as a third-down back, which would be a tremendous, (read: TREMENDOUS) accomplishment, all things considered. But even if he does, one day, earn that status would that alone be enough to garner the abundance of media attention he's been privy too already? I say no.

I know we as Canadians love to boast about and cheer for our own when they branch out into the big-time of the U.S. but while we're giving all this attention to every one of Lumsden's insignificant moves, it's also forgetting that there are in fact Canadians throughout the NFL.

Israel Idonije is on an NFL roster. Mitch Berger is on an NFL roster. J.P. Darche is on an NFL roster. So too is Jerome Pathon, O.J. Santiago and Brett Romberg.

Jon Ryan just beat out B.J. Sander, the incumbent, for the punting job in Green Bay despite the fact Sander was a former third-round draft pick and the Packers had once upon a time invested a handsome sum in the Ohio State product. That's not a story of note? Instead it has slid under the radar while we're all told what hand Lumsden used to try and high-five Antwaan Randle-El.

Maybe it's because Ryan's a punter, maybe it's because he's from Regina and Regina's not in Ontario. Whatever the case his story is significantly more... well, significant... than that of Lumsden who is bound to return to Canada.

In the meantime, TSN can champion Lumsden all it wants, I'll quietly wish well to those Canadians who will actually play a game this year.

Oh, Big Red

Things aren't always grand in the land of the Cornhusker.

Sophomore quarterback Harrison Beck, touted as one of the best QBs from his recruiting class, has quit the team apparently disgruntled over the number of reps he was getting during Nebraska summer camp.

The loss of Beck isn't so much significant this season — senior starter Zac Taylor is the locked-in No.1 and the Big Red faithful are excited about this season with Taylor — but I think many people were anxious to see what Beck could do if the keys to the car were handed over to him.

Beck burned his red shirt last season and stepped in for an injured Taylor in a win over Kansas State in November and was less than impressive. Still, he is widely regarded as one of the better passers in pro-style, west-coast offences and it's too bad he's moved on.

What's more interesting though is what this does for him as a college QB. Having burned that red shirt and appeared in NCAA games, Beck won't be elligible to play for anyone until at least November, the liklihood of that happening being very slim. The reality is that Beck now has to find himself a place to play — likely back in his home state of Florida where he was heavily recruited by the Big 3 there — learn a new system, work his way up a depth chart and then eventually, he hopes, get himself in as the No.1.

The alternative? Suck it up and take your lumps at Nebraska and battle your ass off for a chance to be No.2 behind Taylor and the favourite to step in for 2007.

Instead, Beck backed down while his mother of all people chirped about how he wasn't getting enough reps behind Joe Ganz, the guy on whom Nebraska future hopes now rest. But all this goes to show a bit of Beck's mentality and far be it for someone to crucify the decision-making of a guy not even out of his teenage years. Lord knows, we all wouldn't want to be held up to that light.

But maybe it stands to reason — through his actions and the observations of teammates — that the competitive juices just aren't there the way they need to be. Would a true competitor slink off because he wasn't happy about his reps, leave town, skip meetings and not tell anyone? Especially when things for the 2006 season haven't even been decided.

And Mom? Stay out of it. Evelyn Beck-Bothwell, Harrison's mother, was quoted in the Lincoln Journal Star as saying maybe her son should have stayed in Florida.

"Maybe if he would have stayed in the SEC, he would've been playing," Beck-Bothwell said. "Maybe he made the wrong decision. He knows that playbook. It's just an issue of not getting respect from the older players."

She then went on to take a shot at Taylor saying her son would beat him out for the starting job if the coaches devoted more time to him.

"It'd be different if he was sitting behind Matt Leinart or Brady Quinn," she said.

Really Ev? Just so happens that QB is a senior, has a full year of live action in that complex offence under his belt. That guy, who isn't Notre Dame's Quinn or USC's Leinart, led the team to a bowl game and a win in that bowl game. And during that game, Ev, while Nebraska's offensive line was struggling and Michigan's defence was unloading on him all night long, Taylor showed the poise and grit you want in your starter, a guy who takes all the beatings, injuries and knocks and still gets back up.

Beck, meanwhile, quit before a real pass had even been thrown. Sounds to me like a player who's been babied at home, pampered as the star quarterback all his life and now everyone in his camp expects the same from the world of Division 1. This is a guy, after all, who has his own web site devoted to all that is Harrison Beck.

You think for a second Evelyn is chiding her son for making a poor life decision right now? Doesn't sound like it to me. In fact, if her public remarks are any indication then she's very likely telling him it was everyone else's fault, when Harrison needs to own up to the fact that things were handled poorly from his standpoint.

Beck will be 19 in September and often times in the world of competitive sports — whether its NCAA or WHL — you have to remember you're still dealing with teenagers and the fanaticism that comes with following your teams very often clouds — if not completely blacks out — that fact. Further, it's a crapshoot when recruiting and drafting kids. In the WHL you're trying to draft 14- and 15-year-olds in anticipation of what they'll be like as 19- and 20-year-olds, a difficult task to say the least. Guess work at best.

Beck will find himself another spot on another roster in another state somewhere down the line. The Huskers will move on and perhaps are fortunate they found out now the character of the kid they thought was the jewel of Bill Callahan's 2004-05 recruiting class.

After all, in a few years when you're searching for a guy who will go to war, I wouldn't be too exhilarated to be lead by the guy who didn't want to enlist in the first place.

Sweet merciful crap!

What the hell was that?

Well I guess I got too big for my britches by predicting the Bombers defence would not allow a 100-yard rusher this season. I knew it was a bet that was bound to fail, I just couldn't have predicted how soon after it would fall.

Nor, to whom would make that prediction fail.

Seriously, Josh Ranek?

Credit the Hamilton Tiger Cats, they absolutely smacked the Blue Bombers in the mouth on Friday night. And watching that debacle at Winnipeg Stadium gave me flashbacks — horrible, life-altering, mind-numbing flashbacks — to the atrocity that was the 2005 season.

Winnipeg fans could make excuses that our star slotback wasn't dressed and that our starting quarterback was knocked out of the game, but none of that would address the putrid effort the defensive dozen put up. It was like watching 2005 all over again, when no one on the defensive side of the ball could wrap up a man and Ron Lancaster's daughter could break through the tackles.

Going back to the offence, watching the Bombers try to move the ball without Kanye West in the lineup should serve as a swift wake-up call to all those who still don't believe they should get behind KG and an even sharper slap in the face to those who were convinced we should have stuck with Russ Michna as our No.1.

Michna and Banks were atrocious, at best. Michna fumbled twice — some slack granted because he hasn't thrown a meaningful pass in weeks — and Banks once again showed he's far from deserving of all the accolades that have been heaped upon him for his potential. Again, I understand the idea that a guy needs to get his reps and his experience in a system, but when are we supposed to finally see that potential come to fruition? Banks flat out missed wide-open men and, I don't care what anyone says, that has nothing to do with the "system" and just "getting it." At some point there has to be some confidence that if No.1 goes down, then the team has someone, anyone, to turn to and pick things up in stride.

Winnipeg surely doesn't have that.

Or maybe it does. If Mike Quinn is healthy, and all accounts say he will be next week, then he's likely to start against the B.C. Lions and he has been the most sure of the three back-ups. In fact, with Quinn potentially starting next week, I don't have a sense of dread that it will be an undeniable failure.

I think the loss to Hamilton also shows clearly that the Bombers still aren't good enough. Championship teams don't lose games in that way, even when being decimated by injuries. Some of the ugly scars were revealed and you can bet that anything short of a win next week against one of the league's best will put the Bombers back in that "are they really for real?" conversation.

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Caught Dave Chappelle's Block Party the other night.

Warning: To some, this next section will likely appear to be overblown, hyperbolic and over-exaggerated. Those people are wrong.

The idea behind Block Party, and the eventual final product, is deserving of status among the most important concert movies of all time. It's not wrong to suggest that this was an utterly significant piece of work in the history of the genre.

For Chappelle to have the idea in the first place — essentially gather as many random people for a street concert in Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant district and keep the star-studded list of talent, as well as the show itself, a secret — is a beautiful thing. That he assembled the kind of hip hop greatness that he did is nothing short of remarkable. And that's to say nothing about the fact that he did what even The Fugees couldn't do: Get The Fugees back together.

Assembling Pras, Clef and Lauryn Hill for their first appearance together in God-knows-how-long, was one of the best things I've seen since I started listening to hip hop. (Alongside seeing Ice-T wearing a Blue Bombers shirt at a 1991 show at the Winnipeg Convention Centre).

But more accurately, Block Party is easily among the best gatherings of hip hop talent and at the very least, the artists are among the most important, influential and significant hip hop voices of any era. From Common, to Talib Kweli to Mos Def — with the undeniable tones of Erykah Badu and Jill Scott mixed in — Block Party is the soundtrack to the true hip hop head's daydreams. Sure, you could have gotten others with equal or more clout; others with longer track records of greatness, but if this group is not at least a part of the roster you'd assemble for the dream hip hop show, then you need to rethink your allegiances to the genre, because you're entirely misguided.

But Block Party's charm also stems from the willingness to assemble people of all creeds and bring a day of good music and happiness to an area and its people who could stand to use more such goodwill.

And when Lauryn Hill belts out "Killing Me Softly", it's nothing short of mesmerizing, a rendition utterly worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as its classic original.

What makes Block Party even more effective is the touch Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) puts on it as director. The film breaks away from the traditional "hip hop guy makes a movie" and allows the thick-accented Frenchman Gondry — a true outsider — to provide a unique angle that likely wouldn't have come across if Chappelle had gone for a director more typical of the genre.

Where Block Party stands out more than any other concert film is it serves as a lesson of what great hip hop music is. The Roots play their own instruments and show their power as a live act, drummer
"?uestlove" (pron. Questlove) works with all the musical acts, showing his versatility, Scott and Badu team up for the first time ever and put new twists and turns on the other acts' classics, and Dead Prez perform to prove that protest music isn't dead and that the voice of hip hop is still a relevant one.

It's more than a collection of great hip hop artists, there's a human element as well and Chappelle comes off as genuine — of course genuinely funny as well — and his interactions with Joe and Jane Blow are worth the viewing time. His idea to bring a black college marching band into the proceedings just elevated what was already a fantastic musical mixture. And when the band performs with Kanye West on "Jesus Walks", forget about it. It's a brilliant new twist and sound to what became a heavy-rotated single.

One final note: Cody Chesnutt makes brief appearances in the film and very simply is an artist worthy of keeping tabs. (Check some of his work out here.) You could call him the next John Legend if you mixed Legend with Bootsy Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Lenny Kravitz (and probably 50 others of varying sounds). He accentuates the penultimate scene singing his acapella ballad "Parting Ways" over a montage of the everyday folks who joined in on the journey.

The song is striking and the images that accompany it serve as a reminder of how enjoyable the two-hour journey was. And utterly memorable to boot.

Steel terrible

Well the Hamilton Spectator took some shots at the Blue Bombers and the city of Winnipeg last week — all in the spirit of competition and rivalries no doubt — and, as I mentioned in here before, vibe around the Steel City weeks ago was that Hamilton fans felt the team's best chance for a win was going to come against the beloved Big Blue.

Really?

Well, lo and behod, the Bombers go and pull a blank job on the lowly Cats, move their record to 5-2 and make those who get paid to be experts on the CFL look ridiculous for their pre-season picks.

If you just joined us, the Bombers were picked by many (read: all) experts to:

A) Miss the playoffs
B) Win no more than five games
C) Both.

If you listened to enough of them, you'd probably have heard some suggest the Bombers put corks on the end of their dinner forks for fear that a group so incompetent couldn't possibly eat without poking an eye out with the pronged utensils.

After all, that's what was being said right?

The Bombers still have a ways to go, but second place is almost all but sewn up for them what with Hamilton being egregiously awful and Toronto right there with them. Sure, 5-2 (with Hamilton at home on Friday) is a nice spot to be in but hopefully it doesn't overshadow the fact that there are still glitches.

A few other randoms:

• A Canadian Press article suggested earlier this week that it appeared B.C. was getting back on its horse with back-to-back convincing wins over the Argonauts and Stampeders. I'm not convinced.

Contrary to the scoreboard, the Lions did not look overly sharp against a Toronto team that was downright awful (more on them in a minute). They left a lot of points on the field, started most of their possessions near centrefield and yet left the Argos hanging around until midway through the second half before finally putting the foot down (thanks largely to Toronto's incompetence.)

• The Stampeders have fallen from grace, meaning they are not the media darlings of the league anymore. Seems the consensus was, after a 3-0 start, that the Stamps were giant killers but now, since losing their last four, it would appear that's a joke too. Very simply, how can you trust a team led by Henry Burris? Undoubtedly he has the athletic ability oft coveted in a CFL quaterback, but it's hard for me to imagine a team winning a Cup with him in charge, especially considering he really doesn't have that many weapons around him. Yes, I know Joffrey Reynolds — who I think is the best all-around player in the CFL — and I know Jeremaine Copeland and Nik Lewis, too. I'd just think you need more, especiallyl when Mr. Two Face is at the helm.

• Toronto is in bad shape. That offensive line might be the worst in the history of the league. If you didn't see that when Ricky Williams was having troubles just getting out of the backfield, then it was evident, too, last week when Damon Allen returned to the lineup and was chased out of the pocket nearly every time he dropped back.

Wasn't it just last year when Kent Austin was being praised as an offensive genius? Yet with Allen returning from his broken finger, Austin and the Argos decided to pick up where they left off and start throwing the ball all over the field. Allen, as veteran as he is, doesn't need a bit of time to get to game speed and into the motions? They talk about how great a back-up RB Jeff Johnson is but in the first half he might as well have had ebola, because Allen certainly didn't go anywhere near him.

So back to Guru Austin. Is it not the most basic of football principles that the run sets up the pass, and the pass feeds off the run? Yet here are the Argos, with a rusty quarterback, avoiding the run like the plague and deciding to live and die in the air. It made no sense and it doesn't seem like the decisions that an offensive genius would make. Good thing he didn't come to Winnipeg after all.

• I hate Montreal more than any team I've ever despised. The Cleveland Browns, Sacramento Kings and New York Yankees could assemble a team in the CFL, have Elvira Kurt coaching them, and come out to music by 50 Cent and I still wouldn't hate them as much as I hate Montreal.

Further to that, tell me one person — other than people in the city he works in — that actually LIKES Don Matthews. He's the biggest puke in the history of Canadian football. In fact, I'm getting on the horn tomorrow to track down Lawrence Phillips to see if he wouldn't mind taking a drive into Matthews yard. If he coached the Bombers, I'd honestly have to re-think a lot of things in my life. Perhaps that would be the straw that would make me leave Canada.

• Saskatchewan still stinks, despite winning on Saturday. What a gawd-awful game that was. I will keep to my assertion that so long as Shivers and Barrett are at the helm there, nothing good will come to the Roughriders. Why no one can see that is beyond me.

• I made Bold Prediction No. 3 today. In case you hadn't seen before, I predicted that Ricky Williams would not run for 100 yards against the Bombers (check) and the Bombers would finish 11-7 (pending). So that leads to:

Bold Prediction No. 3:
• The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will not give up a 100-yard rusher this season.

So that's random, completely uninteresting musings from the week that was.

Here, I'll give you my picks too: Montreal (10.5); Winnipeg (6.5); Edmonton (1.5) and Calgary (3.5)