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You Call THAT Olympic?

Posted by :James Howden On : February 17, 2006
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Snowboard cross. Yes, friends and neighbours, if the inclusion of snowboarding in the Olympics didn’t strike you as JunkSportFriendly enough, we get to combine it with braying hopped-up motorbikes ‘n’ mud (and, of course, roller derby) to get this goofy thing. “Boardercross” the cool kids call it. Oh, it crossed the border, all right. OUT of the Olympics, say I! It emphatically lands on the Howdy Hitlist of alleged sports to be dumped from the Summer and Winter Olympics. More on the List anon.

One good thing about “boardercross”, though: it did get me to snap the friggin’ television off. The women’s final, I decided, was something I would watch because there were, after all, two of our great Canadian girls in it, ranked one and two, Ricker and Maltais, an Anglophone and a Francophone, storybook time! Storybook, that is, if you like trainwrecks. So Maëlle Ricker goes down in a scary heap for no reason the cameras picked up. (And has at least a concussion, apparently.) Dominique Maltais goes flying through the netting. Two to go, ye smiting and petulant gods, but I’d had enough. “This is ridiculous.” Click.

This was almost as bad as an overmatched but fabulously lucky Australian somehow becoming the short-track speedskating champion in Salt Lake City. (Yes, the Steven Bradbury factor. “To Bradbury” is now in the Aussie lexicon, a verb meaning to succeed when you had no business doing so. Luckily – well, by “virtue” of being slower than his competitors – he avoided the crashes of the fast guys. I like it when “slow and steady” works in the steadfast course of a long life, but not in an Olympic race.) (Yes, and short-track speedskating is out, too. What’s next in the Summer Olympics: 400 metre hurdle races run in high school gyms? Now there’s an idea…) Anyway, back to boardercross: I flipped it off in disgust, and therefore missed the Olympifarcical sight of the (should’ve been) easy winner, the American Lindsey Jacobellis, falling flat on her hot dog buns and allowing a surprised Swiss, Tanja Frieden, to Bradbury her way to one of the silliest gold medals ever awarded.

Boardercross is too random, too made-for-TV, and the Olympic event has little enough importance to the competitors themselves that a show-off move is worth the risk of winning, and chaotic results are met with a shrug. That’s boardercross. Yes, my point, exactly. Gonzo. (And don’t come back.)

Hockey, Russian Style

Posted by :James Howden On : February 16, 2006
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Did you see the Russians today? Lord, they play a dazzling brand of hockey! The Red Men looked spectacular in a dominating 5-0 win versus Sweden. Gosh, I wish we were paying more attention to how the Russians train their kids to skate and handle. They are sometimes accused of being selfish, but much of that comes from the resentment of the less-skilled. You know: “Oh, so-and-so’s a hot dog. Yeah, he’s good BUT…” You could even see it in the way that Reverend Cherry rumbled and threatened brimstone last year (remember this?) when Sidney Crosby scored with a lacrosse-like high-altitude wraparound goal. Sounds like sour Grapes to me. (Yes, I meant to do that.) (If you missed the pun, please proceed directly to the next paragraph.)

I like to make sweeping diagnoses that lend gravitas and grandeur to things like, oh, hockey. Try this on for size. In Canada, we still have a lingering and rather Puritan suspicion of the arts, and you can see it even in our approach to hockey. We like determination, a workmanlike approach, aw-shucks humility, and straight lines. Up and down the wing. Shoot it out. Dump it in. Keep it simple. Don’t be a smarty-pants, young fella! Who do you think you are? Russia, meanwhile, has a deep tradition of reverence for dance, music, poetry and all forms of expression. They revere (too much in some cases, no argument here) the great ones, the Talents. They are much less likely than we are, it seems from the outside, to routinely cut down their “tall poppies” for being so gosh-darned, well, tall. So skill and speed and creativity and, yes, artistry are all valued and nurtured in their players. So they don’t play in straight lines. Their number one objective is not to throw the puck into the corner and then grub and grunt to get it back…

At a certain point in the history of our great rivalry, the Russians realized that they could learn something from the legendary Canadian “grit” that we all love to talk about. They will dump the puck and chase it now when teams sit back and clog the blueline. They can be tough in the corners (after all, there’s not a long learning curve for those skills — you have to be tough and you have to be willing). They can cycle the puck in those corners, too, because who else can turn so nimbly and accelerate so quickly? But what have Canadians learned from Russians? Not every Russian can dazzle like Alexander Ovechkin — he is a prodigy — but why is it that seemingly every pro-ready Russian can stickhandle at top speed and get that wrong-foot shot away instantly while even the great Canadians can’t? I answered this question more fully in an article you can find here, but basically it comes down to Canadian chauvinism: we think we’re the best, and therefore have nothing to learn from anybody.

Canada still has far more players in the NHL, the world’s best league, than any other country. We still do lots of international winning, and our juniors did it again this year. But if we weren’t so arrogant about it, maybe we’d have more of the showstopping stars and not only the guys in the orchestra pit or the corps de ballet. Sorry for the arts references, but you know what I mean. Maybe football’s a better example: we produce the hockey equivalent of offensive lineman and tight ends, but the QBs and RBs and wideouts are rare. (And this is no mere analogy: ask any CFL roster!) I want the Canadian lads to lead in the skills department as much as they do in the realms of desire and toughness, and I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive. Not, at least, if we’re willing to learn something from the Russian (or Czech or Swedish…) way of developing hockey players. As the saying goes, It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Competitive Greatness. Or Not.

Posted by :James Howden On : February 14, 2006
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First candidate for Howdy’s Handy Olympic Hitlist: snowboard halfpipe. Reason One: see “made for TV” comments from a few days ago. Two: “Look. Another guy did a 720. Wow.” They all look the same to me. Three: the athletes themselves don’t even care that much. With all their rebel, streetcore, skateboard-north cool, the Olympics are no big deal, and they’re determined to demonstrate it. Groovy. Go back to the X-games, then.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Damn! It happened to our man Jeremy again. Wotherspoon seemed to self-destruct in an Olympic race in which he was favoured, the long-track speedskating 500 metre sprint. It wasn’t quite a reprise of the Salt Lake Two-Step, but he must be bitterly disappointed. If he was a baseball player, we’d say he was gripping the bat so tightly it was turning to sawdust. In the great basketball wizard John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, the top block of the triangle is titled “Competitive Greatness”. It has changed a little to reflect more peaceful themes, but I like the original contents of the “CG” block: “Be at your best when your best is needed. Real love of a hard battle.” But beyond a certain level, you can’t coach this. I have no doubt that Wotherspoon wants this more than most elite athletes do. “Try easier,” I would have liked to tell him. (Yes, if Coach Howdy had been there, gold medals all ’round!)

Jerk that I am, I’m on my couch doing psychological assessments of this gifted and dedicated athlete, one of the great skaters in the sport’s history. This brings me perilously close to that most immature tendency of the sports fanatic: to resentfully criticize a homegrown athlete or my favourite team for their failure to make me feel better about myself. That can’t be good.

Running Up the Score

Posted by :James Howden On : February 12, 2006
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Welcome to the Olympics, Italian pucksters! The Canadian women whacked ‘em 16-0 yesterday, and no doubt there will be accusations of running up the score. (Disclosure: I was the goaltender on the receiving end of a 22-0 shellacking when I was 11 or so, and rather enjoyed it; made some of my best saves and learned a lot about being a goalie and about how hard I could focus and try. My team was awful, my coach made a terrible error in scheduling, and I couldn’t lose. Bliss.) The red and white are on a mission, though, and the goal differential as a tie-breaker is a big part of the problem.

But this wasn’t necessarily the worst humiliation for the Italians. Sometimes you can shame a team worse by obviously going through the motions; it may not be so obvious to TV viewers, but the players always know. Hey, it’s the Olympics, kids. You embarrass people all the more by laughing and chuckling while you beat them by 6, and you sure as skatin’ don’t get yourself ready to play the USA.

Skaters and Skiers and Flair, Oh My!

Posted by :James Howden On : February 11, 2006
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Well, the Mighty Winter Olympics began yesterday with the usual herd of underemployed dancers getting their Big Gig in the Sun (along with 5000 of their closest colleagues), and despite my being not that into it, it was pretty and occasionally spectacular. I always get most jazzed, oddly enough, by the parade of the athletes. What a tremendous thing it was when the athletes from the two Koreas entered as one body in Sydney in 2000! Naturally, I loved to watch the Canadians enter, to hear the Italians get the roars of their people as they closed the deal. But I find it wonder FULL to see, for example, the lone Kenyan, a cross-country skier, enter to a warm and supportive cheer.

Canada may not “Own the Podium”, but our girl Jennifer Heil bumped and shimmied and flipped her way to gold, straight off. 30 seconds to gold. Like a lot of the new sports, it seems too contrived, too made-for-television, and too brief. It was just a sight bite. All the same, I am a jockhead Canuck and I enjoyed the view. And what a smile on Ms. Heil!

Super Bowl Forty

Posted by :James Howden On : February 5, 2006
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Well, as almost appears inevitable, The Big Game was a letdown after all the hype. Super Bowl XL (“Extra Large”, as the marketing grads predictably and unerringly labelled it) in scenic Detroit was a 7-3 dud at halftime, and not that the defences were Steel Curtains or particularly ‘hawkish. Mainly, we were treated to dropped balls and nervous-Nelly penalties, whether incurred by hypertastic players or anxiously hankied by jittery officials (like the Seattle touchdown that was called back).

I feel for the players, though. No, really! Huge contracts and unhealthy levels of fame aside, they’re still athletes and have to work under some serious handicaps. The build-up to the game is a Monster. For all their “We shocked the world!” bravado – which is an even more narrow definition of the planet than baseball’s “World” Series – the athletes are overwhelmed when the larger world (well, of entertainment and fashion and Corporate America) pays its most greedy attention.

The pre-game festivities are sombre and endless. (Football gets socially relevant: Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King are remembered, for a minute or so.) Aging legends are trotted out. My son couldn’t stop laughing during the anthems, Dr. John and Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin having been so accurately sent up the night before on Saturday Night Live. (But it was, after all, the Detroit-remembers-New-Orleans-not-only-for-its-musical-heritage-but-also-for-its-tragic-hurricane angle.) Of course, more aging stars at halftime made the break about twice as long as the normal one, so coaches can think and talk more and the players can get more antsy and more stiff. (Obligatory Rolling Stones take: they are definitely old, and it’s a bit like seeing your grandmother shaking her booty-licious charms, but they can play. It was just a bit creepy, but so much better than the Black-Eyed Peas at the Grey Cup.)

And as someone who played a high school season at quarterback before Coach Woody sighed and gave the reins to the grade 10 kid, I see the balls as the ultimate symbol that the game itself doesn’t much matter anymore. They bring in a new (read: shiny, slippery) loaf for every play, so they can give away a hundred footballs that were Actually Used In The Super Bowl! I’d like to think that they go for charitable causes, but I’ll bet they end up in fat-cat living rooms and boardrooms. (Things baseball does right: they don’t let Spiderman movie ads on their bases, their bats are made of wood, and they have every game ball rubbed up with dirt so they are game-ready.) Weird stuff happens to a game when the needs of its most skilled performers, in this case the QBs, are given such obvious disregard. Imagine if the NHL required the fastest game on earth to be confined to an archaically small ice surface where relatively unskilled players can dictate the pace! (Oh, wait, that’s what they do. My bad. Mind you, they are actually calling many of the penalties in the rulebook this year, but will they in the playoffs? Not counting on it. Hope I’m wrong.)

Clearly, I did not consume enough beer during the match, but I watched it all. Surely that counts for something. And the football did get better in the second half, but once again, the Game Itself was pale compared to the Grey Cup game for Canadian football. “Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little,” said the American writer Edna Ferber, and she never even saw a Super Bowl. (And looky there! A literary quote from a dead chick! And you never even saw it comin’…)

The Athletic is Political

Posted by :James Howden On : February 3, 2006
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I wonder if you’ve heard of Dave Zirin. I hadn’t until a couple of months ago, though I pay absurd levels of attention to life in the lucrative sandbox of professional sport. This guy is on fire. Apparently, he’s written on pro basketball for quite a while — I guess Slam is a bit too hiphophappenin’ for me — but what I’ve come across is his weekly email column “The Edge of Sports”, in which he writes on marginalized issues beyond the scores and the winning streaks and the all-star teams: racism, social justice, athletic fame and influence, the meaning of these gladiatorial entertainments. (He loves the games and many of the athletes, the more contrarian and individualistic the better.)

He’s written a book – it awaits me on my bedside table – called What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. For those of you with good memories and long-ago birthdates, you might recognize the title as Muhammad Ali’s early insistence on having his abandonment of his “slave name” respected. Zirin is sometimes a bit strident for my taste, but he’s definitely every radical activist’s favourite sportswriter. He has the Michael Jordans of the world in his sights; MJ’s famous “Hey, Republicans buy shoes, too!” as his reason to avoid political involvement is a target of considerable contempt.

Dave Zirini has been powerfully angry on the Tookie Williams execution, wistful about Carlos Delgado’s on-again, off-again protest of the war in Iraq, and insistent about applying the simple standards of the common good to the uncommon world of big-money athletics. Today, his rant on the cosmetics of a Super Bowl hosted by Detroit, by most accounts a smoking hulk of a city, is RIGHT ON. He picks on the way in which sports have come to embody and emphasize one of the greatest obstacles to justice that we face. He zooms in on the extremes of wealth and poverty, as they are seen amid the glitz of the biggest single sporting event in the world. The Super Bowl has long been an example of gleeful and sometimes cringe-worthy excess, and here’s another take. Zirin quotes some sports writers, especially the great Mitch Albom (yes, he’s also the guy who wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, a wonderful book, and The Seven People You Meet in Heaven, which I’m not so sure about, but he’s probably the best sports columnist in North America), who are also not afraid to bite the hand the feeds them. And aware enough. And outraged enough. Leonard Cohen wrote it this way: “Everybody knows the fight was fixed / The poor stay poor, and the rich get rich / That’s how it goes…”

Dave Zirin’s column is called “Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink” and it can be found here.  And yes, I will be watching the SB. It’s research. I’m a Man of the People. (And Troy Polamalu rocks.)

Hammer and Tongs on the Hardwood

Posted by :James Howden On : January 17, 2006
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Wow! In one of the best ballgames I’ve seen in a long time — one of the highlights of the Ottawa sports scene (sorry, Senators, and to all the hockey-heads for whom this was not even on jock radar (Jock Radar! Now there’s a good name for an ex-athlete detective)) — the Carleton Ravens followed up their loss last week to Brock with their first home loss after 56 consecutive wins in the Nest. Even more compelling, it was to their hometown rivals, their main competition for Ottawa basketball talent, the U of O Gee Gees. It was a renewal of the Battle of the Daves, Carleton’s Smart (“what rivalry?”) and Ottawa’s DeAveiro (who had not beaten the Ravens in his head coaching career, something like 14 attempts).

It was what we all wish Canadian university sport could more often be. There was a sold-out audience in a quality athletic facility (in Canada, that means 2000 people – compare that with the “quaint and undersized” Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke, where demand is feverish for the 8000 seats, or North Carolina’s on-campus Dean Dome” and its 21,000 bumholders). There were student fans with energy and imagination, and well-trained and talented athletes playing for their lives. 63-62 was the final count, and neither team ever led by much. It was tense from the opening tip, and the Gee Gees had an answer for everything Carleton had, including holding its star and leader Osvaldo Jeanty in check. Alex McLeod hit big shots for the Gee Gees, but it was an unlikely three from their quick but poor-shooting point, Teti Kabetu, that gave Ottawa a 5-point lead late and sealed the deal.

They call it the Canal War, and if you were too attached to your television and its through-the-motions January Blaw professional sports offerings, you missed something great. I’m only gloating because I was there, and proved to myself, once again, that sports can be a vibrant spectacle even without bright lights and TV timeouts. Especially then. When I was a high school teacher and coach, kids would ask me who my favourite team was. I’d say, “The Blue Devils, of course!” and I didn’t mean Duke. (I like them, too.) These were the McKinnon Park BDs, and try as we might, we had limited success in getting guys to take off their Yankees caps and Raiders jackets and come watch athletes they actually knew.

“Small service is true service,” wrote Mr. Wordsworth, and hometown fans may be the truest of their kind, too. (Hey, get a load of that — I got a poetry reference into the hoop scoop!)

Bruins, Badgers Beat Ravens: The Streak Bites

Posted by :James Howden On : January 8, 2006
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The sun has (barely) risen today, and there are no signs of earthquakes in the Ottawa valley, but a rumble has sounded over the broad horizons of homegrown university basketball…
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Bytown – mighty Carleton has streaked out.
     (with apologies to Mr. Thayer, Mr. Casey, and his Bat)

Yes, friends and neighbours, The Streak is over, and the Mighty Ravens have lost a game that counted in the standings. They were bushwhacked 69-67 on the road by the Brock Badgers.

(A note on alliterative naming: when you are a young university, with no hoary traditions that require your teams to be called the Fighting Blue Hens or the Banana Slugs – and I’m not making those up – a predisposition to cutesy alliterations like Brock Badgers suggests lousy luck, crazy karma, stilted style and inadequate imagination. Isaac Brock was a British general, people! Couldn’t we come up with something vaguely related to the school’s namesake? Or its history or geography? Are Badgers even native to the Niagara peninsula?! I desist.)

But the Badgers and their Tiny Perfect Pointguard, Brad Rootes, got it done. With Rootes and a dominant big man, Kevin Stienstra, Brock has two elements that this year’s Ravens don’t, which has made the continuance of their 87-game winning streak in regular- and post-season play all the more incredible. It also looks like they’ll lose their hold on first place in the Ontario Universities East conference for the first time since the millennium, or thereabouts.

There’s more than a hardworking Rodent Road-killer at play here, though. There’s no doubt about it: the Ravens’ wings were actually clipped by Walton Gang Karma. Even though a couple of pre-season losses to Canadian and American teams — including the fabled Bruins themselves at Pauley Pavilion this year — had always placed an asterisk beside The Streak, 87 straight counters and three straight national titles make for a potent resumé. Still, the gods of basketball, at the certain behest of Bill Walton, Jamaal Wilkes and Greg Lee and the rest of the early-70s UCLA Bruins, had decreed that the Ravens Must Die. Those John Wooden-coached teams, with their astounding (asterisk-free) run of 88 games, remain on the top of the college basketball heap. Not that the Ravens ever tried to pass themselves off as sharing the same level as UCLA – for all their domestic greatness, they would be at best a marginal NCAA D-1 team that could hang tough only in the weakest of conferences – but a tiny stir of anxiety in the hoops pantheon has been safely squashed.

But listen: the Ravens rock anyhow. They may be relieved, after all, and Coach Dave will surely have their attention now, if focus was missing. (And I doubt that it was.) At least they didn’t lose to the cross-town Ottawa Gee-Gees, who come to the Ravens’ Nest soon. (Gee-Gees. Gee-Gees? But no, no more rants on team names. Not today.) I’m sure some of the joylessness of Bytown hangs over the Ottawa gym, where they thought they’d be the giant-killers. Still, the lead dog in Canadian basketball has stumbled, and the pack is restless. Should be fun to watch from here.

A Night With the Raptors

Posted by :James Howden On : December 14, 2005
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I’ve made the big trip to The Big Smoke, seen lots of fine things and met some great and interesting people. The Raptors game was a mistake, though. Watching the Raps/Bulls from the upper deck of the ACC (Air Canada Centre, not the Atlantic Coast Conference, for anyone out there in the Bozone who might care about the difference) was an isolating and disappointing experience. Don was (W)right: it is better to watch it on TV.

It’s been years and years since I’ve seen a game live. The sideshows at an NBA game, even one as undistinguished as this one, are sociologically interesting; annoying to an Actual Hoops Guy like me, but still fascinating in an I’m-only-here-for-tonight way. The Dance Pak tries so hard, and I wonder where they think they’re headed, what they think they’re auditioning for: musical theatre? the arm of a well-paid athlete? Or are they just keeping fit and funding their medical education? All that hair-flinging must be a chiropractor’s nightmare. (Hey, look, what else was I going to look at during timeouts?) The music pounds, would-be VJs ask inane questions, scoreboards give me noise-making advice (with helpful video handclapping graphics), and at regular intervals a ballgame breaks out.

It’s been so long since I’ve been at a game that I thought I might be able to get down close to the floor during warm-ups, maybe even get in a quick word with Jay Triano, the only Canadian coach in the NBA. I’ve followed his career since he was The Big Stuff of a high school tryout camp where I was the short plucky unknown. There’s this idea I have, but I’ll have to find another way to pitch it. The security is pretty tight, Artest knows why …

The MapleRaps lost, by the way. Their unfortunate draft pick, Senor Araujo, still starts but is utterly free of confidence when the ball is in his hands. (I was in the upper deck, but the fear was obvious.) They don’t defend very convincingly, even the fine young star, Chris Bosh. And here’s a thing: I watched for Mr. Triano to speak with players, during timeouts or while on the bench. Didn’t see it. Don’t quite get it. What do assistants do during games, other than charting? I sure hope he’s not a lameduck Canuck, the token local who wouldn’t have an NBA job in any other city. I think he was stiffed from the National Team headship, and the jury is going to be out for a long time on Leo Rautins in his, apparently, first coaching job at any level. It’s amazing to watch the ins and outs of elite basketball in a hockey-mad country, even when not many of us do.