We're scattershooting and CBC is an easy target

1. Hey, CBC, the Pan Am Games are in Canada. You are the host broadcaster. You are funded by taxpayers. When the Canadian men’s baseball team is in the championship game, you have an obligation to televise the game. When the Canadian women’s basketball team is in the championship game, you have an obligation to televise the game. . . . You didn’t. Therefore, you get a fail. . . . The fact that both Canadian teams won gold medals means you get a big, big fail. . . . And please don’t give me any of that junk about streaming. . . . It is decisions like these — and who knows the people or the reasoning behind them — that make you such an easy target.
2. There have been a lot of people complaining about all the flags in CFL games this season, and there have been a lot of them. But shouldn’t fingers be pointing at players and not the on-field officials?
3. The NHL’s TV ratings in Canada were down from last season, both in the regular season and playoffs. Might the length of the season have had anything to do with it? The NBA regular-season started 20 days later than the NHL’s, but ended just one day later.
4. Of course, it could be that the NHL has found the saturation point among viewers, what with so many games available on TV.
5. After the Cleveland Cavaliers lost 105-91 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, LeBron James told reporters: “I'm confident because I'm the best player in the world. It's that simple.” . . . Question: Does the best player in the world have to tell the world? Or does he let his actions define him?
6. Earlier this summer, when Washington passed a law that exempts the state’s four WHL teams from minimum wage legislation, who spoke on behalf of the players?
7. The WHL hasn’t announced it yet, but you can bet it will be going to 3-on-3 overtime in the upcoming season. Why? Because it mirrors the NHL, that’s why.
8. I just wish at least one hockey league would give three points for a regulation victory, two points for an OT victory and one point for a shootout victory, with zero points for losing at any point. Just try it for one season and see what happens. Please.
9. There apparently is no truth to the rumour that former Edmonton Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish will be the next head coach of the Kelowna Rockets. MacTavish is still with the Oilers; he’s now the senior vice-president, hockey operations.
10. Putting Oilers and Rockets in the same sentence brings back memories of this tweet:

Email convo with Kelowna Rockets' owner Bruce Hamilton...on Draisaitl's WHL rights being traded "Nothing going on. All talk. No action."

— John Shannon (@JSportsnet) December 24, 2014

There has never been a subscription fee for this blog, but if you enjoy stopping by here, why not consider donating to the cause? Just click HERE. . . and thank you very much.

Scattershooting . . . on a Thursday evening

1. You would have to think that NHL commish Gary Bettman is livid to have had the Arizona Coyotes mess blow up right in the middle of the Stanley Cup final. But isn’t there something wrong with an arrangement under which a city is paying an NHL team $15 million to hang around?

2. If you have dog in the hunt, perhaps the NHL final has some magic to it. But if you don’t the first four games haven’t offered up a whole lot of excitement. The NHL has to find a way to open up the game and I don’t know if those presently in power have the gumption to do it.

3. Someone said the NHL combine was on last weekend. Sure enough, I looked out the back door on Saturday and the farmer was in his field, taking off the first hay crop of the year.

4. If you are on Twitter, don’t you find it at least a little bit funny that there are so many would-be comedians out there?

5. I had dinner with a friend on Saturday. He couldn’t stop smiling. Why? Because he had played golf earlier in the day and he shot 84. That, of course, was one stroke better than Tiger’s day.

6. You don’t have to be an NBA fan to enjoy what is going on with that league’s championship final. So far you have to give the edge to LeBron James over Steph Curry, too. The Warriors got something going in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s Game 3 loss in Cleveland, so it will be interesting to see if they can sustain it tonight.

7. Football is the ugliest sport of them all. And it showed its ugly side again on the weekend when the B.C. Lions released kicker Paul McCallum. They wanted him to retire; he wants to go out on his own terms so asked for his release. All he did last season was hit on 90.5 per cent of his field-goal attempts. But the Lions are looking for one kicker to handle kickoffs, punts and field goals, and that guy wasn’t going to be the 45-year-old McCallum.

8. It’s worth noting that this is a rather important season for those same B.C. Lions. There are whispers on the Left Coast that the Lions now are the No. 3 team in that market, behind the Vancouver Canucks, of course, and soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps.

9. Michael Ferguson, Canada’s auditor general, spent $23.5 million on an audit of the Senate. That audit recovered $975,000. . . . Sheesh! When the then-community-owned Kamloops Blazers were looking for about a million missing dollars a few years back, they spent $300,000 on recovery efforts before calling a halt to it without getting back even a penny.

10. It won’t be long before observers are wondering where Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt ranks in the pantheon of right-handed hitters in MLB history. Yes, he’s that good.

There has never been a subscription fee for this blog, but if you enjoy stopping by here, why not consider donating to the cause? Just click HERE. . . and thank you very much.