If you’re wondering why the Edmonton Eskimos fired GM Eric Tillman a week ago, well, it may have been tough to do had the team won a playoff game or two, or even the Grey Cup. Hey, stranger things have happened in the CFL. . . . When Eskimos president Len Rhodes was asked during a news conference why he pulled the trigger on Tillman, he replied: “No reason.” . . . Ahh, only in the CFL. . . . Sorry, fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but no CFL team has ever won the Grey Cup after entering the playoffs having lost four straight games. . . . The 1988 Winnipeg Blue Bombers lost their last three regular-season games and then won the Grey Cup. There isn’t another team in CFL history that has done that. . . . Of course, the Roughriders’ stumbling and bumbling down the stretch has absolutely nothing to do with the football gods paying back freshman head coach Corey Chamblin for barring fans from most of his team’s practices. . . .
Scott Ostler, in the San Francisco Chronicle, after Hank Aaron presented Giants catcher Buster Posey with the Hank Aaron Award prior to a World Series game: “When Hank Aaron presented his hitting award to Buster Ballgame, Posey said he was flattered that Aaron even knew his name. I don’t have the heart to tell Posey that Aaron calls everyone ‘Buster’.” . . . Here’s more from Ostler: “It was nice of cryogenically frozen Commissioner Bud Selig to show up at the World Series to make his annual announcement that there is no timetable for a decision on the (Oakland) A’s future. Fortunately, there is a timetable on Selig. Unfortunately, it’s two more seasons.” . . .
Linda McMahon, the wife of rasslin’ boss Vince McMahon, has spent in the neighbourhood of, uhh, US$100 million on two failed bids to get elected to the U.S. Senate. As Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted: “It would have been way more interesting if she backed the Iron Sheik with her millions.” . . . Steve Simmons, in the Toronto Sun: “Advice for Georges Laraque: Next time somebody comes to you with a great idea, first find out who’s behind that supposed great idea, then politely decline.” . . . “There were so many polls leading up to (Tuesday’s) election,” writes Len Berman of ThatsSports.com, “that at least one of them had to be right on the money.” . . .
Robin Bawa, who played most of five seasons (1982-87) with your Kamloops Junior Oilers and Blazers, was inducted into the North Cowichan-Duncan Sports Wall of Fame last weekend. Bawa, 46, was born in Duncan and now lives on the Lower Mainland. . . . It is so Canadian that sales of beer and chicken wings would be down and it would be blamed on the NHL lockout. . . . Sheesh, where are Bob and Doug, the McKenzie brothers? Don’t they know they are needed to analyze this situation? . . . A note from Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel: “Coming soon: An Apple device for athletes to get instant access to steroids. It’s called an iPED.” . . . The IOC has said it is thinking about taking away the bronze medal that cyclist Lance Armstrong won in the 2000 Olympic Summer Games. To which TBS’s Conan O’Brien said: “A little tip for the IOC. If Lance was on steroids and he came in third, you might want to take a peek at the guys with gold and silver.” . . .
A long-time observer of the NHL and its lockouts admits to me that he has “grave concerns about the journalistic integrity of ‘hockey insiders,’ ” and adds that “what TV journalism desperately needs is a few ‘hockey outsiders.’ ” . . . There are times when I expect members of some of those hockey panels to burst into tears during this lockout. . . . If you want to talk about great single seasons, perhaps the conversation should start with the St. Francis Xavier X-Women, a rugby team that plays out of Antigonish, N.S., and just finished a season in which it went 23-0, outscoring its opposition 1,557-80 in the process. . . . Beth McNeill of Vancouver, who played for the TRU women’s basketball team for two seasons (2008-10), is a member of the X-Women. They won the CIS title on Sunday, beating the Guelph Gryphons 37-0 in the final before more than 5,000 fans in Antigonish. . . .
Headline at The Onion: Dallas Cowboys release Jerry Jones. . . . That was Tuesday, less than 48 hours after the Cowboys lost 19-13 to the Falcons in Atlanta. . . . Later headline at SportsPickle.com: Cowboys owner gives Cowboys GM a contract extension. . . . Larry Read, the sports information director at TRU, has been in Charlottetown with the WolfPack women’s soccer team this week. Had to love the tweet he sent out early in Wednesday’s game in which he referred to opposing players as “flopping more than a codfish.” . . . “Still lead 1-0 over Pack though,” Read continued. . . . The Montreal-Ahuntsic Indiennes went on to dump TRU, 4-0. . . .
Thanks to readers of The Daily News for coming through with the cash that will allow the city’s cadets to get a new furnace for their Briar Avenue digs. It also was nice of you readers to get the elves warmed up for the opening of the Christmas Cheer Fund. Yes, it’s getting close to that time. . . . We close with this from one of our favourites, Ron Judd of the Seattle Times: “Those big sea walls people now are touting as a way to keep the Atlantic Ocean out of New York City are intriguing. Wondering if we could adapt one to keep the Canadians out of our Costcos.”
(Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca, gdrinnan.blogspot.com and twitter.com/gdrinnan. Keeping Score appears Saturdays, except when it doesn’t.)
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