Insanity in Sask.

Yikes.
It's hard to know what to make of the Saskatchewan Roughriders these days. At the start of the season, they looked like the best team in the CFL in winning their first three games. The offence looked unstoppable, and Darian Durant looked like the best QB in the league.
Looks can be deceiving, for sure, and the Riders crapped the bed on several occasions in dropping four of their next seven games. Inexplicable losses - to the hapless Edmonton Eskimos on Aug. 28, and a brutal 31-2 capitulation against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Sept. 12 - became the norm.
Then came Friday's home game against the Calgary Stampeders, the CFL's best team. The outcome is best described with a paraphrase from that cinema classic, Dumb and Dumber: Just when you think they can't get any stupider, they go and do something like this . . . AND TOTALLY REDEEM THEMSELVES!
Well, total redemption might be putting it a little strong. Durant was in a brutal slump coming in, having thrown three TDs and 10 picks in his previous six games. He put up some crazy numbers on Friday, throwing for 495 yards. But he threw a pick-six on Saskatchewan's first possession, and made a couple head-scratching decisions down the stretch.
Ultimately, Durant got the Riders into position to beat the Stamps in regulation, galloping away on an electrifying scramble to get into field goal range with the score tied 37-37 and just a couple ticks on the clock.
But this is where the game got strange. In what is sure to become a huge talking point in Saskatchewan for the next couple days, Riders coach Ken Miller sent punter Eddie Johnson out to try to boot the ball through the end zone for a single point. His excellent field goal kicker, Luca Congi, is pretty much automatic from 35 yards, which is the kick he would have been looking at. Needless to say, Johnson's punt was short and Calgary ran the ball out of the end zone, forcing OT.
Now, I generally think Miller provides the Riders with above-average coaching. He is one of the CFL's best. But on this call, he must have been smoking some powerful peyote.
Not to worry, though - the Riders won in OT. Sheer madness. Only in the CFL, right?

RANDOM NFL OBSERVATIONS:
Sunday's best highlight was Randy Moss scorching Darrelle Revis for a long TD, on a ridiculous one-handed catch, no less. Who's the slounch now? . . . LaDainian Tomlinson is the best running back on the New York Jets roster . . . Reports of the Indianapolis Colts' demise have been greatly exaggerated . . . The Seattle Seahawks came back to earth, big time, in Game 2 of the Pete Carroll era. I think that's more along the lines of what we can expect from the Seahawks this season . . . Cleveland Browns fans were utterly unsurprised by Derek Anderson's horrendous bed-crapping against Atlanta . . . Hard to tell who's more overrated: the Dallas Cowboys or Tony Romo. It's kind of crazy, but it seems like a lack of discipline is almost part of the culture in Cowboy-land . . . The over-under on Wade Phillips's tenure as Cowboys coach is 3.5 games . . . Aside from Minnesota Vikings fans, the only folks worried about Brett Favre's slow start to the season are fantasy football leaguers who drafted him three rounds too high. The rest of us just think it's funny . . . Speaking of fantasy football, all those "experts" who were horny for Joe Flacco in the preseason better be updating their resumes.

Some of my fantasies involve football

If you'd been sitting beside me on my couch during the NFL Monday nighter between the San Diego Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs, you'd have a perfect understanding of why fantasy football rules.
First, a bit of background. I'm involved in a 14-team fantasy keeper league. It's pretty hardcore - the buy-in is $100 per year, and you get to keep three players from your roster the year before. You play head-to-head with one other team each week, and whoever gets the most points gets the W. Top eight teams make the playoffs, and the post-season champ takes home the bulk of the prize pool. I won the whole enchilada in 2008. It gets kind of intense, but in all the right ways.
Which brings us back to the Monday nighter. Heading into the San Diego-Kansas City game, I held a 10-point lead over my opponent - last year's champ, incidentally. We both had two players involved: I had Chargers TE Antonio Gates and Chiefs RB Thomas Jones, and he had Chargers QB Philip Rivers (pictured above) and the San Diego defence.
It wasn't a promising match-up for me, despite my lead. Our point system is kind of screwed up - quarterbacks are by far the biggest points-generators. So with Rivers going up against the KC defence, I had reason to worry.
But as the game wore on, my optimism grew. The underdog Chiefs built a 21-7 halftime lead, severely denting the fantasy value of my opponent's San Diego D. Rivers did throw one touchdown pass, but it was to Gates - my tight end. Sweeeeeet.
Rivers got things going in the second half, though. I groaned aloud when he threw a 59-yard TD pass to a wide open Legedu Nanee. And I was chewing my fingernails as he drove the Chargers inside KC's 10 yard line with less than a minute remaining.
I should mention that at this point, I held a 55-51 lead. TD throws are worth four points, so if Rivers completed a pass into the end zone, we'd be tied, with a strong possibility of Rivers racking up even more points in OT.
But the Chiefs defence stood firm, and when Rivers's fourth-down pass fell harmlessly to the turf, I was a little more excited than I should have been.
You just gotta love fantasy football. The NFL, more than any other sport, is well-suited to sports-pool gambling - the fact that most games occur on the same day of the week makes it ideal for head-to-head pools, and you only have to set your roster once a week. And NFL football in HD is like watching a good movie. Even my wife enjoys it.

Soaking up some Colorado culture

Just returned home after a glorious poker-free, TV-free week of vacation in Colorado. I'm always fascinated by the United States, so I figured I'd share a few observations.

-- The first face I saw when I stepped off the plane in Denver was John Elway's. The legendary Broncos quarterback was on a billboard, hawking some product or another. But as my Colorado stay progressed, it became clear to me that the entire state has fallen in love with another QB - Tim Tebow (pictured right). The former Florida Gators superstar - a first-round pick by the Broncos a couple months back - was everywhere. At a closet-sized sports store in the airport, Tebow's No. 15 was the only Broncos jersey available. I ran into a man wearing a Tebow jersey while hiking up a 12,000-foot peak at the Continental Divide. And let's not even start on the blanket Tebow coverage in the media, both locally and nationally.
The thing is, it's likely going to be a while until we see what Tebow can do in the NFL. With incumbent QB Kyle Orton inking a one-year contract extension last week that will keep him in Broncos silks through 2011, Tebow's first legitimate shot at the starting job won't likely come until 2012. But that's good news for Tebow - he's regarded as a work in progress, and will need time to develop. Whether Broncos fans are willing to be so patient is another matter.

-- The major reason for my trip to Colorado was to attend my cousin's wedding. She was married at the Stanley Hotel, a historic building in Estes Park, about an hour and a half north of Denver. The coolest thing about the place, to me, is that it is linked closely to The Shining, the Steven King book that became a classic film directed by Stanley Kubrick. According to Wikipedia, King once stayed at the Stanley, which inspired him to write The Shining. Scenes for the mini-series version of the book were filmed at the hotel, though it was not used for Kubrick's cinematic version. Channel 42 on all guest room televisions at the Stanley shows the Kubrick movie on a continuous loop. How cool is that? All the place was missing was a hedge maze.
-- On our way to hiking at the Continental Divide, we drove through Black Hawk and Central City - former Colorado gold rush towns which are the only municipalities in the state where gambling is currently legal. Thus, casinos dominate the square footage in these towns. It feels like they're practically stacked on top of each other.
The thing that got me chuckling was a banner on one of the casinos that advertised "THE LOOSEST SLOTS IN TOWN!" The ad went on to state that the casino paid out 99.485 per cent (or thereabouts, my memory isn't perfect) of the money that people fed into its slot machines. It completely slayed me that a casino would lay out its larcenous business plan in such brazen detail - "We intend to bleed the cash out of your wallet, slowly but surely!" And the genius of it was that they made it look like they were doing people a favour - "We could be taking even more of your money!" Seems to me, the only smart people involved with slot machines are the people running them.

-- I had a couple of interesting political conversations with Americans. First of all, everyone I talked to seems to believe Barack Obama is intent on driving the U.S. economy into the ground. The main worry is that Obama's business taxation plans will crush an already fragile economy. Take that for what it's worth - I was mainly speaking with Republicans. But at the very least, it does offer an interesting counterpoint to the optimistic portrayal of Obama in the Canadian media. Which is, in a nutshell, "At least he's not George W. Bush. And he seems cool."
Beyond that, I had a fascinating exchange with a man who casually ripped the Canadian medical system during an anti-Obama vent session. The president's medicare plan, he argued, is inherently flawed because it's modeled after the Canadian system. "Everyone who wants to get a surgery done goes down to the States and pays for it," he said smugly. The fact I'm Canadian was not lost on him.
Point taken. We have issues with surgery wait times in Canada. But no more than 15 minutes later, the same guy told a story about a car accident he was involved in. Basically, another vehicle pulled in front of him, and the driver slammed on the brakes to intentionally cause an accident. Turned out, the brake-slammer had a pre-existing medical condition that required a hip replacement. Not having $90,000 to pay for the surgery, he caused the car accident and sued the other driver - and settled out of court with the insurance provider for $140,000.
Aside from the fact that this lawsuit scheme is utterly insidious, it occurred to me that if the hip-replacement dude had Canadian-style medical coverage, he would not have needed to cause a car accident to raise funds. He may have had to sit on a waitlist for a few months, but he would have gotten his surgery. So you tell me - which system is better?
-- On the plane back home, I was somewhat surprised when the 20-something gentleman seated next to me ordered a jack and coke. Before noon. Kind of odd. Then I looked over and noticed he was reading "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" by Tucker Max - a New York Times bestseller that is more or less a how-to guide for womanizing drunks. Suddenly, it all made sense to me. I was grateful to be seated between this guy and my wife.
-- One of the underrated joys of returning from vacation is seeing what wonders have accumulated on the PVR over the course of a week. I've already watched the latest episode of Mad Men (one of the best episodes ever, utterly incendiary), and I'm looking forward to devouring a couple of new WSOP episodes. It's good to be home.