One Week

In exactly one week I will be sitting in the friendly confines of the Rogers Centre SkyDome with the fine folk that I will attend most every Tiger-Cat game with in 2010 (Richard, Adam, Pops, Emily), watching the Hamilton Tiger-Cats play for the first time since November. I know it's only a pre-season matchup with the Argonauts, but I'm excited that the CFL is back!

In honour of the season beginning, I have decided that this week will be Tiger-Cats Week. What I will be doing is sporting only Tiger-Cats apparel (t-shirts, jerseys, hats) during the week. I will wear a different Ti-Cat emblazoned article of clothing every day, culminating on Sunday when I will wear my Otis Floyd away jersey to a game. I said last season that if Floyd was re-signed, that I'd have his jersey made up. Back in March, I did just that.

I will admit that since I spend four days a week in Toronto, some of this idea came to mind as a way to try to annoy as many Torontonians as possible. I've been booed at the Rogers Centre SkyDome, heckled at Cats-Argos games and had many a sideways glance shot my way for wearing the Black & Gold while riding the subway. Sometimes it's a lot of fun playing the bad guy.

One week everyone, one short week.

What Happened to Richie Williams?

With training camp officially beginning tomorrow, there will be one player that will not participating be in any team's camp: Richie Williams.

Remember him? Yeah, he was the guy that came in when Casey Printers couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, and from what I remember, he played pretty darn well. I know Williams was well liked in my house, and I imagine the same holds true in other households around Hamilton as well. When the Cats brought in Kevin Glenn last off-season, they decided to part ways with Williams. I understand that move. Glenn is better than Williams, but Williams wasn't bad by any means.

After being released by the Tabbies, Williams crossed provincial lines and signed with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for the 2009 campaign; he didn't last past the first month of the season. Once Michael Bishop arrived in the Peg, Williams was given his walking papers. Hindsight being 20/20, perhaps the Bombers would've been better off releasing the ineffectual Stefan LeFors instead. LeFors was then-coach Mike Kelly's anointed star, and I guess Kelly didn't want to look like a fool (don't laugh) by releasing a player he talked so highly about during the off-season and early part of the 2009 campaign. LeFors was handed the starting QB job and struggled mightily. The terms "sub-par" and "mediocre" would be putting it nicely in regards to LeFors's performance; he was downright awful. Yet despite those struggles, Williams was never once given a chance in Winnipeg; once Bishop came in, Williams was let go.

Williams has disappeared since then. He was not signed by any teams after being released by Winnipeg last July, and he wasn't even given an invite to any team's training camp this season. I find this surprising. Maybe my Black & Gold tinted glasses are making more of Williams than he was, but he looked like a pretty good player to me. Maybe it's easy to look good playing on a terrible team, as the Cats were when Williams played, but he still looked good as far as I am concerned. But I guess it's possible that when the team wins three games all year, and one guy pilots you to one of them (an absolute pounding of the Argos), winning Player of the Week in the process, he ends up looking like a million bucks in the eyes of some of the fans. Even with all that said, I always felt like Williams should have been given a chance to be the guy in Hamilton. If the team has been patient with Quinton Porter (as they should be), I don't see why Williams wasn't given the same consideration.

I can think of two teams off the top of my head that could use Williams: Toronto and Saskatchewan. The Argos don't have one scintilla of CFL experience at the Quarterback position on their roster, and Williams could have been the guy to provide that. The Riders, even with Darian Durant firmly entrenched as the starter, could have used Williams to fill a backup position, but they chose to sign Ryan Dinwiddie instead. Far be it for me to question men whose job it is to evaluate talent, but I don't see how what Dinwiddie has to offer is any better than what Williams does. In fact, Williams was brought in to replace Dinwiddie in Winnipeg, if I'm not mistaken.

With the need for solid QB play higher now than it ever has been, I'm shocked that Richie Williams continues to remain unemployed. Maybe he will find his way back up to Canada this season when a QB inevitably goes down to injury. Whatever team does give him a call will likely be happy they did.

Gibran Hamdan Retires

File this one under "strange," but Toronto Argonauts Quarterback Gibran Hamdan has decided to retire.

This is quite the head scratcher. Hamdan was signed back in March of this year, and it garnered some fairly big headlines. The Argos pursued him for some time before he agreed to terms with the team. This is a really odd occurrence in that Hamdan was believed to be the favourite to win the starting QB position for the Argos when he signed back in the winter. Maybe the writing was on the wall when the Argos signed Ken Dorsey last week? Very, very strange.

That said, this feels an awful lot like the Chase Clement situation that occurred last year with Hamilton. Clement came into camp and less than two days later retired. Some have questioned why, but that fact of the matter is, he quit. Could this be the same situation? Who knows. Very, very strange.

Ways to Grow the Game

My love for the CFL is obvious. I mean, one doesn't write at length about a subject for fun if that subject isn't something they are passionate about. I happen to think that the CFL is the best pro-sports league in the world. It's a highly biased opinion, but this is my blog, and I can say whatever I want. I am still a huge fan of the NFL and NBA (less so the NHL or MLB), but they don't bring out the same passion in me as the CFL does. Perhaps it's because the only pro-sports franchise I have in my city is a CFL one, but regardless of the reason, the CFL is the nearest and dearest to my heart.

That said, I do not think that the CFL is perfect; far from it, actually. It's a wonderful league, with many positives, but there are things that other sports leagues do or have that the CFL would be wise to consider.

That brings me to the point of this. In my ongoing attempts to bring you, my readers, the best content that no money can buy, I have come up with an idea that I have titled "Ways to Grow the Game." Basically, I will write about things that I think the CFL can use to help make the league bigger. I have a couple of ideas already percolating, and I will roll these ideas out sporadically. This won't be like my previous lists of "Top 5" or "Top 10" that saw a new post come out every day for a week or two. This will be more of a running commentary, with posts being linked together by the idea of helping to grow Canadian football. When an idea strikes me, I will write about it.

I do want to make one thing clear, however. I am fully aware that some of my ideas are not financially viable now or in the near future. These aren't going to be blueprints for how the league should implement these ideas, but more like ideas that perhaps, one day, could be utilized to make the CFL a bigger deal on the North American professional-sports landscape.

Down Time, Draft Picks, Training Camp

A couple pieces of news today. First, I would like to apologize for the down time. There hasn't been an awful lot of news lately, and when that happens, the site tends to go into hibernation. This being my first go-around at this means I'm learning on the fly. Looks like the time after the draft, but before the start of training camp, tends to be quiet... a little too quiet. The lack of news has allowed me to work on a few things, some of which I hope to get posted in the next couple of days.

With that out of the way, let us get to the matters at hand, shall we?

The three players that the Hamilton Tiger-Cats drafted in the 2010 CFL Draft that are eligible to come to camp have all signed. The team announced today that Eddie Steele, Justin Palardy and Samuel Fournier will all be attending rookie camp starting on June 3rd.

Figuring out how rookies will perform is difficult in any sport. It is especially difficult in the CFL. Rarely do rookies come in and play right away, not even the top picks.

That said, I think Steele could be a player. He provides some much needed Canadian depth on the Defensive Line and looks like he could be a stalwart on the line for years to come. Palardy fills the team's obvious need at Punter and is the odds-on favourite to be punting for the Tabbies in 2010. Fournier is a Fullback, which isn't a position that is needed all that much in the CFL, but I would imagine his contributions will come mostly on Special Teams.

All this leads into my third and final point, which is... TRAINING CAMP IS HERE! Yes, I will freely admit to being a little too excited about the start of training camp, if only because that means we are oh-so-close to the start of the season. Rookie camp opens tomorrow, while the veterans report on June 6th. Then it's only one week until the team travels down the QEW to play the Argos on June 13th, followed by the final pre-season game, in Hamilton, against the Blue Bombers on June 20th. Both games start at 1PM, and I will be attending them both. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I need my football fix, and pre-season football will have to do.