History and More Archives - Page 42 of 42

It’s CFL playoff time, and I’m excited

It’s playoff time in the Canadian Football League and for some of you, that means absolutely nothing.

**Out of Left Field is written by Scott Adamson. It appears weekly and sometimes more frequently if he gets up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

You might be completely unaware of which teams are even in the playoffs. Shoot, you might not even know what teams are in the league.

But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret; the CFL might just be my favorite brand of tackle football.

And come playoff time, it gets a lot more of my attention than the NFL.

(Granted, being a New York Jets fan in November means it’s a pretty easy to look elsewhere for gridiron entertainment, but still).

I’ve been following the CFL since the 1970s and I’ll continue to cheer for it as long as it lasts, which will likely be much longer than I last.

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, Canadian football isn’t just football played north of the border.

It has its own rules and, ultimately, its own personality.

Teams have just three downs to make 10 yards and a first down; they play on a ginormous field (110 yards from goal line to goal line, 65 yards wide, end zones that are 20 yards deep); there are 12 players to a side instead of 11; all backs are allowed in motion toward the line of scrimmage; and a team can score a single point if its kickoff, punt or missed extra point is downed in the end zone.

You can even make an onside punt, which is about the coolest damn thing in sports.

And maybe what I like about it most is that it isn’t stocked with players who make seven figures.

I don’t begrudge NFL guys for their multi-million dollar contracts; more power to ‘em. But I like watching a league comprised of guys who really want to play for the (cliche alert) love of the game.

Certainly, the NFL has far more talent, but I couldn’t care less. I watch sports for entertainment, and the CFL has been entertaining me since I was a kid.

In the early days of my fandom I adopted the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as my team. There was no compelling reason, I just liked the nickname and thought black and yellow made for a great color combination.

But when the league experimented with expansion into the United States and granted my hometown of Birmingham, Ala., a franchise, I was thrilled.

Even though the southeastern US expansion team had a stupid nickname (there aren’t a lot of Barracudas in central Alabama), I snatched up as much apparel as I could find and was firmly convinced that I’d be watching the ‘Cudas for years.

After all, the CFL was stable (it was officially established under that acronym in 1958, although it existed years earlier as the Canadian Rugby Union) and I just assumed its American clubs would be stable, too.

I was wrong because, ultimately, the “American experiment” failed.

In 1995, the CFL had franchises in Baltimore, Birmingham, Memphis, San Antonio and Shreveport (it had previous stops in Sacramento and Las Vegas).

By 1996 it was strictly Canadian again; only Baltimore had a decent fan base among the expansion teams but – as the odd team out – the Stallions relocated to Montreal.

I was disappointed, of course, but I didn’t hold it against the league.

I resumed rooting for the Ti-Cats and continued to follow the CFL closely.

And that’s what I’ll do this weekend, even though there are no teams in the postseason I have traditionally cheered for.

The Ti-Cats didn’t make it, and even if they had, I’ve put them in “timeout.”

The organization fell out of favor with me during its attempt to hire disgraced former Baylor coach Art Briles, an astonishingly tone-deaf move that, fortunately, received so much backlash the offer was rescinded.

Still, that Hamilton had to be shamed into not hiring Briles still pisses me off.

That caused me to change my allegiance to the Montreal Alouettes, who were so terrible this season I just figured they needed my support.

No, the playoffs that start Sunday will feature Saskatchewan vs. Ottawa, with the winner playing Toronto a week later, and Edmonton vs. Winnipeg, whose survivor faces Calgary on Nov. 19.

The finalists compete in the CFL title game, the Grey Cup, on Nov. 26.

I’ll watch for the enjoyment of the games themselves, not necessarily caring who wins any of them.

But come next June – when a new CFL season gets under way – I’ll again rejoice in the fact that a great league is off and running.

I’m not sure if it’ll be Hamilton or Montreal who’ll be the main object of my affection, but I’m certain my love affair with the Canadian Football League will be as strong as ever.

MLS and relegation

In many ways, I count myself as a soccer purist.

Decades before there was a stable domestic league in the United States – and Major League Soccer is now firmly rooted – I was pulling for teams such as Celtic FC and Manchester United, and living for those rare times when a soccer match might pop up on ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

In the era that preceded cable television, the Internet and social media, much of my soccer information came via the library, meaning I wasn’t exactly getting up-to-date reports. It was like a shooting star … by the time news reached me, it was already history.

Still, I learned as much as I could about the Beautiful Game, and accepted something that seems odd to American sports fans – the lack of a postseason tournament in most international football leagues.

If you ended the regular season with the most points, you were the champion – period.

There was never playoff fever because there was never a playoff, but that was just part of a deal. If a club clinched a title with three weeks left in the season, so be it.

And of course, there was relegation.

Just as baseball as a hierarchy, from the Majors down to instructional leagues, soccer has divisions. And teams at the bottom of the top league have to fight to stay there, because there are always teams in the division below it looking to earn promotion.

I’ve always felt this system was brilliant. Some of the most competitive soccer matches I’ve ever seen involve English Premier League clubs battling it out in the twilight of a season in an effort to avoid being demoted to the First Division.

Beyond that, it prevents team owners from holding “fire sales” to unload talent. Stakeholders won’t be happy if you allow your team to drop down a rung, and promotion/relegation serves as motivation.

Jump to the present, where there has been talk of a relegation system in the United States. Guys like me would love nothing better for the bottom two teams in MLS each season to drop down to, say, the United Soccer League, while the top two USL teams move up.

Only problem is, MLS isn’t talking about it. And I’d be stunned if it ever agreed to such a system.

You might remember over the summer MP & Silva, a media rights company, offered MLS a staggering $4 billion for media rights that would extend through the 2023 season.

Had there been no strings attached, it’s likely MLS officials would’ve jumped on the offer.

Ah, but there were, indeed, strings.

The MLS would have to work with USL as well as the North American Soccer League, in the formation of a promotion/ relegation system.

And that was a deal-breaker.

The sports culture in the United States is vastly different than just about everywhere else. And while the EPL and most top-tier international leagues accept relegation as part of the sport, MLS would recoil at the thought of a franchise like the New York Red Bulls or L.A. Galaxy slipping into a lower division, replaced by the Charleston Battery and Rio Grande Valley FC Toros.

MLS has a single entity ownership structure, and its investors never want to see a situation where a major market slips to a minor league.

Personally, I think it would be great. I’d even be fine with the European system in which there were no playoffs at all.

Had that been in effect this year in MLS, Toronto FC would already be taking its victory lap as league champions, and not have to worry about facing Columbus twice to make the MLS Cup.

I suppose there might be a day where relegation comes to professional soccer in the United States, but I wouldn’t count on it. The entire landscape of American pro sports would have to change dramatically.

I think the best we can hope for are stable second and third division leagues, and the United States Soccer Federation still has plenty of work to do to unify the system.

Bill Clark … the coach who saved a program

When the UAB football Blazers started the 2017 season on Sept. 2 – ending a competition hiatus that began on the evening of Nov. 30, 2014 – I felt like I had a little something to do with it.

After university president Ray Watts shut the program down based on a bogus “study” (and with the support of some trustees who wanted only one football team in the University of Alabama system), alumni and Birmingham business leaders with deep pockets and big influence fought back.

I and many others made a five-year financial pledge to help revive football (as well as bowling and rifle, programs caught in the crossfire of the gridiron assassination), and the city’s movers and shakers shook Watts into “rethinking” his position.

Jump to today, and the reincarnated Blazer football team is back and better than ever.

At 6-3, the Conference USA member is already bowl eligible, and with USTA, Florida and UTEP remaining on the schedule, there are likely more wins to come before making its second-ever postseason appearance.

The program now has a football operations center and a covered practice field. Just a few years earlier, UAB wanted to install artificial turf to work out on, but was allegedly denied by a board member – even though the money was part of a pledge that would’ve involved no funds from the UA system.

And of course current Florida State boss Jimbo Fisher was famously offered the head coaching job at UAB before the 2007 campaign, and accepted. However, the deal was nixed by the same board of trustees that seemed to take great pleasure in playing Lucy to the Blazers’ Charlie Brown, cheerfully snatching away the football during the follow through of his kick.

Although I don’t know of a single UAB fan who trusts Watts or the board – and with good reason – the bitterness is giving way to giddiness thanks to the remarkable work of head coach Bill Clark.

And while I’m deeply grateful to those whose influence and substantial monetary commitment breathed life back into “Birmingham’s Team,” to my mind it was Clark who ultimately saved the program.

Had the shutdown come in 2013, I’m not sure UAB football would be around today. It’s hard to convince me that enough people would’ve been inspired to save it.

Before Clark took over, the Blazers were in a downward spiral that seemed irreversible.

The beginning of the end started when the board forced Neil Callaway on UAB. A friend of board president pro tempore and chief power broker Paul Bryant Jr. – who never tried to mask his hatred for all things Blazers – Callaway was a position coach in zero demand as a head coach.

UAB had originally hoped to promote assistant coach and Heisman Trophy winner Pat Sullivan to the top job, but the board blocked the promotion.

Then came the Fisher fiasco.

Callaway’s era lasted from 2007-2011; his first season ended in a school-worst 2-10 record and he was 18-42 over five years.

After he was canned, Bobby Petrino protégé Garrick McGee was hired, and there was hope he could provide a fresh start.

He couldn’t.

McGee was 5-19 in his two seasons in the Magic City before rejoining Petrino at Louisville as offensive coordinator.

By the end of the 2013 season, which ended with another 2-10 record and several humiliating losses, Blazer football was at an all-time low.

Its season finale at Legion Field was watched by 6,383 fans, and what they watched was the Blazers lose 62-27 to previously winless Southern Miss.

As much as it pains me to admit this, had Watts announced the day after that game that football at UAB was finished, I might not have fought it.

I like to think I would’ve been indignant and inspired to act, but at that point I felt the program had been hijacked. After all, if the board wasn’t going to allow the team to be competitive, why keep going through the motions?

Clark, of course, had other ideas.

With no facilities and no support to speak of, he snatched a team in a death spiral and caught it before it crashed.

His 2014 Blazers finished 6-6, which was a huge leap forward for a squad that had absolutely no business winning that many games.

The team’s last contest at Legion Field that season came against No. 18 Marshall.

It ended in a 23-18 loss, but it also ended with nearly 30,000 fans cheering on a team that was reversing course.

Clark gave us wins, but more than that, he gave us hope.

If he could take a group of kids beaten down and counted out and turn them into a .500 team in his first season, what might he do going forward?

And then, with one visit to the team by the Grim Reaper (who looked amazingly like Watts), all hell broke loose.

Shutting down UAB football was met with outrage, but it was also met with resolve.

Because Clark believed he could win at UAB, business leaders, boosters and old alums like me started believing again, too.

We put our money where our mouths were and were finally able to shout down the people who seemed to be making it their business to put Blazer football out of business.

I’m biased, of course, but Clark should be the leading candidate for national coach of the year honors in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Two years after Watts executed an innocent team they sprang back to life, and their leader has been the architect of this year’s greatest college football Cinderella story.

Sure, I’ll always be proud of the role so many of us played in UAB’s football resurrection, and thankful we all worked together to make it all possible.

But without Clark, it might have never happened.

Fortunately, we’ll never know.