Category Archives: Sports (MC Archive)

Sports columns that appeared on Jason Menard’s previous Web site, Menard Communications.

Fighting For Survival

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By Jason Menard

One of the biggest problems with the sweet science is that too many people believe the fix is in with most matches. But perhaps a fix for what’s ailing boxing is already before us – and it’s the key that will give the sport a fighting chance to survive.

My wife and I aren’t reality show junkies, per se, but we do enjoy a little fix now and again. One of our favourites is the boxing competition/drama The Contender. Combining boxing basics with a concerted efforts to humanize the competitors and present the contests in dramatic fashions, this show has reaffirmed my faith in the sport – and, more importantly, it’s turned my wife into a potential fan.

And there’s the key – if the presentation of a show can make my wife care about the sport, then there’s hope that the sport can reassume its prominence in the North American sporting landscape.

When I expressed my interest in watching the first season last year, my wife looked at me with a mixture of horror and disgust. To me, boxing is the ultimate individual competition – boxer against boxer, with nothing but their skills and their fists determining their destiny. There is no ball, no bat or stick to help reach one’s goal – there’s just your ability to give and take a punch that stands between you and victory.

Conversely, my wife thought the sport was stupid. Just a couple of morons whaling away on each other until one drops.

That is, that’s what she thought until she sat and watched The Contender with me. It was then, when presented with the stories of real human struggle and when she learned more about the boxers that she developed a vested interest. She cared. And, I must admit, so did I. For the most part, I was a casual boxing fan, following my favourites, watching the occasional fight on TV, but in no way was I invested. I could watch a match and not care who won, as long as the fight was good.

But, this reality-based series changed that, making me care about people. Portraying them as heroes or villains, humble or cocky. We watched to the end of the season, cheering our favourites on. And this year, when I accidentally stumbled across the premiere episode of season two on the dial, we both expressed our excitement.

And that’s when it twigged – this is what’s wrong with boxing. And this is how easy it is to fix it.

At no cost to the boxing industry – although any offers of the commissioner’s position will be accepted – here is my solution. Let people get to know the fighters. That’s it, that’s all. Once people care, they’ll follow the sport and become invested in it. Remember, arguably the most famous person in the world – Muhammad Ali – was a boxer.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Boxing is relegated to late nights on pay-per-view screens with fights scattered across the calendar. There are so many federations and belts that the championship scene looks like a spilled bowl of alphabet soup. And tales of corruption and excess tarnish the sport’s already precarious reputation.

First thing: put boxing back on free TV. The PPV idea was and is terrible – it’s a short-term gain that neglects the long-term potential. Instead of focusing on improving mediocre buy rates, boxing needs to think bigger, get the sport back on the networks with free marquee fights, and bring eyeballs back to the screen. With ratings come advertising, and that means more money for everyone.

Secondly, boxing must be shown on a regular basis. Every week, one night should be set aside for fights. And boxers must fight more regularly. How is one supposed to get excited about the sport when their favourite boxer only steps into the ring once every 18 months? Those looking to climb the ranks could fight monthly (health permitting, of course), while more established boxers could fight every second month – at the latest. More frequency means more interest and less chance for another sport to swoop in and snatch up those fans.

Thirdly, there are more than heavyweights out there. The aforementioned The Contenderfeatures welterweights, yet is fairly popular. Some of the most entertaining bouts, in terms of speed and dexterity are in the lower weight classes like feather and flyweight. Heavyweight is the marquee division, but there is incredible entertainment value in the lower ranks – maximize its exposure and watch overall interest in the sport grow. After all, a kid who knows he’ll never be 230 pounds may not be able to relate – but when he sees a 120-pounder with a belt around his waist, suddenly he has a hero to look up to.

Fourthly, one title, one federation, one champion. Having three, four, five, 20 belts simply dilutes the overall meaning of champion. One undisputed champion in each weight class gives fans someone to root for – or against. And it makes a pecking order clear. When someone’s ranked fifth on one list, first on another, and doesn’t even appear on a third, then you have a credibility issue – not to mention how confusing it is for the casual fan.

Finally, tell the stories. All this repeated exposure only works if you allow the viewers to get to know the competitors. If reality TV has shown us anything it’s that we’ll watch pretty much anything, as long as we feel an affinity for the contestants.

Give fans favourites, let them watch them regularly – for free, of course – and streamline the operation. That’s the only way boxing will have a fighting chance to survive.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Marshall Plan Needs a Second Chance

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By Jason Menard

In a game filled with second, third, and even fourth chances, let’s hope that deposed Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach Greg Marshall gets another shot at the big time sooner rather than later. After all, his success, or lack thereof, will go a long way in determining whether a Canuck will take the reins of a Canadian squad in our nation’s football league.

In replacing Marshall, at least in the interim, with a hall-of-fame legend in Ron Lancaster, the Tiger-Cats gave up on the great Canadian experiment – and may put the idea of a Canadian coach back on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.

Marshall worked his way up the ranks, serving as an assistant for the powerhouse University of Western Ontario Mustangs football squad before getting the chance to helm his own ship with the McMaster Marauders. It was there that Marshall proved his coaching prowess, taking the Hamilton squad from also-ran status to perennial power – usurping his former employer in the process.

Back in 2004, the Tiger-Cats took a flyer on a coach who had proven himself in the Canadian collegiate ranks and they were rewarded with a Coach-of-the-Year performance as Marshall led the Tabbies to a 9-8-1 record. Unfortunately, last year didn’t go as well as the Tiger-Cats fumbled their way to a 5-13-0 record. And this year wasn’t looking much better as the boys from Hamilton were staring up at a goose egg in the win column after four games.

There are few better representative of the Canadian game than Greg Marshall. The boy from Guelph enjoyed a stellar career with Western, winning the Hec Creighton trophy in 1980 as the league’s outstanding player. Marshall graduated to the Edmonton Eskimos, earning a Grey Cup as a player, before returning to the Forest City and joining the Mustangs’ coaching ranks. There he won a pair of Vanier Cups before leaving for McMaster and padding his resume with four consecutive Yates Cup championships, representing Ontario collegiate supremacy, before becoming the first coach to make the jump directly from the Canadian university ranks to a CFL head coaching gig.

But that dream rapidly turned into a nightmare. Poor personnel decisions play a part, but the fact of the matter is that Marshall, despite his early promise, wasn’t able to get things done. And now he finds himself unemployed – although presumably not for long – and Canadian coaching prospects find themselves at a crossroads in the wake of Marshall’s dismissal.

The pervasive view is that Canadian coaching staffs are inferior to those south of the border. While Canadian players are welcomed along the offensive and defensive lines in the CFL, the ranks of skill position players are dominated by American imports. Essentially, Canadians are second-class citizens in their own game.

Marshall had a chance to change that perception as coach of the Tiger-Cats. As a home-grown talent, Marshall had the opportunity to open the doors a crack for future coaching prospects in the CIS. Had he succeeded in his two-plus years patrolling the sidelines, then more attention would be paid to those pacing the sidelines in the Canadian collegiate ranks.

After all, there’s no reason that Canadian coaches can’t make the grade. The sidelines are the ideal leveling field, as physicality isn’t the key ingredient for success – intelligence, strategy, and creativity are. Nationality doesn’t define one’s intellect, so Canadian coaches should have a chance.

The only thing holding Canadians back from penetrating the coaching ranks is credibility. Many of the CFL’s players have come from Division 1-A schools, coached by legends in the football universe, and they may not react well to coming north of the border and being coached by some Canuck. Like it or not, football is largely an American-driven game, and respect for Canadians must be earned – it’s not given as it is for a U.S.-born coach.

That’s Marshall’s true test: to show that a Canadian can make it on the biggest stage that our national league has to offer; to prove that a local product can command the respect and passion of a team and direct it to the playoffs. But to do that he needs another chance. Although he’s been kicked to the curb by one squad, to open doors for others to follow through, Marshall has to get back up and start knocking.

The one advantage that Marshall has is that the CFL, like most professional sporting leagues, is one based on recycling. Rather than give an unproven young buck a chance, most owners and General Managers are content to believe that somebody else’s problem can be their salvation – after all, recent Canadian citizen Don Matthews has been with six CFL squads and only is the CFL’s all-time regular season win leader.

It’s unfair to expect one person to shoulder the burden for an entire Canadian coaching industry, but Marshall’s shown that, as a player and a coach, he’s been able to successfully carry the ball for his franchise. And there’s no reason to expect he won’t do so again – as long as he gets a chance.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

An Immunity to World Cup Fever

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By Jason Menard

With the World Cup final upon us and dozens of games in the books, I can comfortably state one thing – soccer fever may be rampant, but try as I might, I appear to be immune to its effects.

I have watched several of the World Cup contests to date. Sorry, let me change that. I have attempted to watch several of the World Cup contests and I have been successful at enduring several consecutive minutes of action on a semi-regular basis.

Note I said enduring, not enjoying.

I have seen great feats of individual skill. I have viewed displays of dexterity and footwork that are so beyond my ability to perform that I stumbled off the couch just thinking about how they were done.

I have seen crisp and beautiful displays of passing and teamwork. I have witnessed elation and utter dejection.

And still I don’t care.

In addition to all of that, I’ve seen long stretches of nothing. Back and forth play in the midfield with nothing resembling a chance. I’ve heard announcers work themselves into an apoplectic lather praising a shot that ended up 13 rows in the stands. I’ve seen grown men drop to the ground like they were shot by a sniper, rolling around in apparent death throes after being gently brushed by an opposing defender.

It’s safe to say I’ve seen the best and the worst that soccer has to offer. And still it doesn’t move me.

The sad thing is that I really, really wanted to be affected by this sport. After all, this is not just a game – it’s a veritable religion for millions, if not billions, of people all around the world. There has to be a reason that this sport incites such a passion – I just can’t find it. Try as I might.

I have posed this question to others and, inevitably, I receive the answer, “Well, you’re Canadian.” This coming from second and third-generation Canadians themselves who suddenly have felt the tug of the motherland’s apron strings. Those same second and third-generation people are ignoring the travails of the Italian team and wrapping themselves in the red and white when Olympic hockey is on. But I digress.

Apparently soccer is a birthright and if you’re not born into the culture, then you can’t appreciate the sport. And there are two problems with that. One, I was somewhat born into the culture. My grandfather played soccer and was an avid fan. Secondly, if that truly is the case, then soccer has a huge marketing and branding problem and will probably never penetrate the North American market.

Successful sports continue to grow and attract new fans. The survival of a sport is based upon its appeal to a wide variety of sports enthusiasts. I wasn’t born into a football culture. I watched the CFL with varying degrees of interest, but I didn’t consider myself passionate about the sport. Now I do. I learned to love it. I quickly became enamoured with its intricacies and ground-level challenges. And, for a long-time hockey fan, I learned to love a sport played on grass almost as much as the one played on ice.

So why couldn’t I learn to love soccer? There’s no field on my birth certificate that indicates which sports I’m genetically or ethnically predisposed to, and I enjoy all sorts of sports – those that I was brought up with and those that I acquired a taste for later. So why is soccer different? Or are the fans simply elitist?

Even playing the sport doesn’t necessarily incite a long-term passion for the game. Since the 1970s we’ve heard how soccer is the Next Big Thing in Canada. Generations of Canadian youth have taken to the pitch to engage in a low-cost alternative to hockey and baseball. They’ve played the game and, by all rights, should be fans of the game on the professional level. But that’s just not the case. Most kids aren’t watching Premier League soccer on their off hours. They’re enamoured with the same sports: hockey, basketball, baseball, and football.

In the end, I’ll just have to face the fact that I’m not a soccer fan and never will be. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I still feel that there’s a big party out there – I just don’t understand what the celebration’s about.

Of course, every four years I’ll get another invitation to the party – but I don’t know how willing I’ll be to attend the festivities in the future.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

NHL’s Blind Stupidity

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By Jason Menard

It’s true that vision decreases as we age, but the NHL’s myopic view of the issue with eye protection is bordering on blind stupidity.

Hockey may be a game, but it’s also big business. As such, the key to having a successful product built on quality and entertainment, owners must look at protecting the league’s assets. In business parlance, low-hanging fruit is a readily identifiable task that can be accomplished when it becomes apparent, without having to go through all the planning, development, and execution.

And really, there’s nothing more readily identifiable in the NHL than the need to protect the game’s assets – its players. Unfortunately, the only thing preventing them from donning visors is their issues with their own low-hanging fruit.

On June 28 th the American Hockey League mandated the use of visors for all its players, starting with the upcoming season. And unlike the NHL when it decided in 1979 to make helmets mandatory, there will be no grandfathering clause. Everyone, from the wet-behind-the-ears newbie to the grizzled veteran will have to affix a visor to their helmet if they want to take the ice.

Sounds simple, right? In fact, it seems that everyone in organized hockey can see the value of facial protection – everyone except for the ones at the top of the pile. Everyone except those with the most to lose.

An NHLer’s career is notoriously short. So while many people are willing to put forth arguments as to why the players should earn as much as possible during that time, why are there not the same arguments for ensuring that the players are available to earn as much as possible, for as long as possible.

With the AHL’s decision to mandate the use of eye protection, that means that players will now progress through their entire career without being able to choose whether they use facial protection. Minor hockey and most colleges require full cages. Junior and now some professional ranks have gone the way of visors. Yet the NHL lags behind, risking the loss of marquee talent with each and every errant stick or wayward puck.

Sure, injuries are a part of sport. But, in large part, eye injuries can be prevented by the proper use of equipment. Obviously, you can still have your Saku Koivu situation, wherein a stick comes up and under the visor in a freak progression of circumstances. However, the proper use of visors would minimize that risk – and give an owner a better chance to maximize on their investment.

One key word in this is “proper.” Visors must not just be worn, but worn in the right way. For years, junior hockey was peppered with players who treated the plastic visor more as a sun roof for their hair than protection for their eyes. The visor was on, but the helmet was tilted so far back that it provided no protection.

The biggest impediment to the adopting of visors in the NHL is the macho culture that permeates some dressing rooms. For some players, it’s a proof of their manhood that they can play an absurdly fast game, with little to no protection on the eyes. It seems their aforementioned low-hanging fruit are threatened by having to wear visors.

The knuckleheads at the sports bar and on Coach’s Corner don’t help matters either. Good Canadian boys, it appears, should be man enough to risk their long-term vision and future earning potential because wearing a visor is sissy.

So here’s a solution to the whole problem. If the NHL doesn’t have the cojones to make visors mandatory and the National Hockey League Players Association continues to value machismo over vision, then the rules should be rewritten. Visors can continue to be mandatory – but those who forgo eye protection must also forgo wearing a jock.

If they’re not going to think with the big head, then we’ll make them think with the one players appear to value more. And, going back to business-speak, if you don’t think those low-hanging fruit issues will be dealt with immediately, then you don’t know how much these players value their “core competencies.”

All jokes aside, hockey is both a business and a game. From a business perspective, it makes sense to protect your investments. That’s why goggles and other protective equipment are mandatory in a number of fields – and hockey should be no different.

From a human perspective, these players need to understand that they are playing a game – they’re being well-paid, but still playing a game. And no game is worth losing your vision, especially not when a solution is in plain view.

Accidents will continue to happen, but we can do much to minimize the potential for their occurrence. Anyone who doesn’t see that is just blindly stupid.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

The Day After

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By Jason Menard

I woke up this morning. The sun continued to shine. The birds continued to chirp. Armageddon didn’t come as expected.

Yes, the world continues to spin on its axis, even though the Hartford Whalers won the Stanley Cup.

Even though the Whalers departed the insurance capital of Hartford, Connecticut for the sunnier climes of South Carolina back in April of 1997, the team’s theme song Brass Bonanza continues to bore a hole in my consciousness. And despite the apocalyptic hyperbole from so-called hockey purists, the fact that the Stanley Cup remains in the Southern United States isn’t such a horrible thing.

Life goes on, hockey continues, and the sun continues to shine as we gear up for the NHL draft, training camp, and the start of yet another season in just a few short months.

While Carolina and Tampa Bay may not be the first places you think of when discussing hockey hotbeds, the fact of the matter is that the sport continues to grow in hot-weather climates. Success like these two can only help to build a foundation for the fastest game on ice in the land of NASCAR and cigarettes. And if, as Canadians and self-proclaimed custodians of the game, we’re truly concerned about the league’s future, we should be happy that the league will garner some attention in non-traditional markets.

After all, if the cup only rotated between Montreal, Edmonton, and Detroit, it would be hard to build up interest in other cities, now, wouldn’t it?

In fact, Carolina isn’t the oddest team name to grace the Cup. The bustling metropolis of Kenora (population approximately 16,000) won the cup back in 1907. Thankfully, they didn’t engrave the city’s original name on the Cup – Rat Portage makes Carolina look high-class in comparison.

Since then, the Cup was shuttled through the Original Six (even Toronto, although the last reference may be fading by now), residing most of the time in Montreal either with the Canadiens, Maroons, or Wanderers. It’s only been in the past few years that non-traditional markets have been allowed into our club.

Sure, Edmonton’s a newer club, but really is there any place more hockey than frozen Alberta? Same thing for Calgary. The Islanders mini-dynasty put the Cup back in the New York area carved out by the Rangers, and the Penguins back-to-back championships was accepted due to the city’s lunch-bucket mentality (and proximity to Philadelphia).

But Carolina? Tampa? Perish the thought.

If hockey fans are anything, they’re snobs. They may call themselves purists, but really it’s nothing more than elitism masking as concern for the game. Even though history will show that the recent rules changes will be responsible for making the game more exciting and dynamic than ever, “purists” were sitting there acting all curmudgeonly and bemoaning the bastardization of “our” game. Instead of embracing change, instead of welcoming new people to the club, these so-called purists are doing everything they can to keep people out of their self-created exclusive club.

Soccer, a sport with arguably more history and a greater entrenchment in the societies in which its played, constantly fiddles with the rules, their interpretations, and even the equipment used. Heck, in this World Cup – the pinnacle event for soccer fans globally – the powers-that-be have introduced a new, lighter ball to improve scoring.

Do we hear soccer purists complaining about the bastardization of the game? Do they look upon this year’s tournament with any less validity than those past? No, they’ve learned that the game must move forward and adapt to remain relevant. Simply doing things because that’s the way they’ve always been done isn’t good enough. Smart organizations – whether they’re in business or in the business of sport – know that constant re-evaluation of accepted business practices is the key to maintaining position in the marketplace.

There are no hockey gods coming down etching the rules of the game on frozen tablets for all to follow. The game has adapted. Remember the rover? Goalies without helmets? No? Probably because the game changed with the times and refined its rules to meet the changing tastes of its clientele. Change is good. Expansion into new markets is good. Closed-minded protectionism is what will kill the very sport these so-called fans claim to love.

After all, Carolina won the Cup and the world continues to spin. Thankfully though, the team-formerly-known-as-Hartford refrained from playing Brass Bonanza for old time’s sake, and scarring another generation of children for life.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved