Happy Thanksgiving

I should probably do a "Here's what I'm thankful for post" since, you know, it's Thanksgiving and all. But I've been gone so long, I thought instead I'd share some of the things I've been thinking over the last month or so...

...American Thanksgiving is far superior to Canadian Thanksgiving. I saw a story on the news last night that many Canadians take American Thanksgiving off so they can watch football, eat turkey and stuffing and mashed pertaters, and, if you're fortunate, the green bean casserole that Jer's grandma makes. This isn't to argue that we should only celebrate American Thanksgiving, it's that it seems reasonable to celebrate both. Who doesn't want more days off, and MORE Thanksgiving food? Exactly. When I become King of the World, or at least the continent, we will get days off for both Thanksgivings. Also, the Monday after the Super Bowl AND the first two days of March Madness will be official holidays. Who are we kidding? Nobody works those days anyway, so why not get a paid day off?

...I'm not as Canadian in Canada as I am in America. This is just a fact. The two sports everybody talks about here are hockey and the Canadian Football League. While I enjoy hockey, I hate the NHL as currently run. And the CFL? There's 8 teams in the league, and the players are guys who aren't good enough to play in the NFL. Who cares? Many Canadians, that's who. For the life of me I'll never understand why.

...On a related note, the big news up here is Toronto getting a few Buffalo Bills home games. For everybody outside of Ontario, this is supposedly a terrible thing because obviously Toronto is a much better market than Buffalo (TO's in the top 10 for population for cities in Canada or the USA), so it would make sense that the Bills will eventually make a permanent move to Toronto (current Bills owner Ralph Wilson has already said when he dies, and he's 89 years old, the team will not be inherited by his family, but instead be sold to the highest bidder- and there's nobody in Buffalo who could outbid the people in Toronto). Anywho, so when the Bills officially move, it means the CFL's Toronto Argos will fold, and then so will the CFL. People here are honestly angry at Toronto for wanting an NFL franchise because it will ruin the CFL for the rest of the country. This is ridiculous on so many levels, but let's just concentrate on this one: TV ratings for the NFL in Canada are huge, certainly better than that of the CFL. Here in Vancouver we have BC Place Stadium (which is identical to the Metrodome- just remember we built ours first!). For BC Lions CFL games, they close off the entire upper bowl, and a "sell out" is considered filling the lower bowl. Even then, in order to put a Lions home game on TV, they need to sell 35,000 tickets, which they rarely do. And yet the Lions probably have the best attendance in the league. Compare that to the NFL, where a crappy crowd for a game is still 50-60,000, or almost twice as many as a good CFL crowd.

Now, I hate Toronto for reasons I won't go into, but it's just ludicrous to knock Toronto for wanting to get a franchise that will make them hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm apparently a really awful person, and anti-Canadian even, any time I point this out. People here in Vancouver also fail to see that WHEN Toronto gets a franchise, and it's well supported, that the next logical place to relocate a franchise to is Vancouver. We've got a population that's top 20 for the continent, a first-class city that's one of those "Gateway to the Pacific Rim" cities that everybody seems so excited about, and there's a ton of money here. So when the Saints or Chargers or Jaguars are moved, they'll be moved here. Then nobody would complain about the CFL when we have an NFL team. But again, I'm anti-Canadian for thinking like this.

...As you may have noticed from the last item, I refuse to call the NFL the National Football League. People here do it with the NHL too by always referring to it as the National Hockey League. I'm not saying it's wrong to not use the abbreviation, I’m just not sure it's right either.

...For Twins fans that didn't want Torii Hunter to leave: trust me, the Twinkies did the right thing here. $90 million for a 32 year old center fielder with bad knees is not a good investment for anybody, but especially for Minnesota. I know he's a good guy and great clubhouse presence and he was one of the few guys with power in the lineup, but his best years are behind him. Will they miss that bat in the lineup? Yes, but I still refuse to believe he'll keep consistently hitting as well as he did last year. He's also not the defender he used to be, and considering defense is part of the reason he's so valuable, well, under no circumstances is he worth anywhere close to $90 million.

...Also, the Angels will now be paying $53 million for four outfielders next year. Um, you can still only start 3, right? Right?

...I don't buy the argument that the Patriots won't go for 16-0. Have you been watching this team? I understand the position that if they're 15-0 heading into the Meadowlands to face the Giants with home field locked up, it would be foolish to risk injuries by playing your starters in a meaningless game for a silly record that will have no impact on whether or not they win the Super Bowl. While this is logical, it's gone completely against the way the Patriots have played with the ginourmous and collective chip on their shoulder they've been playing with. Winning the Super Bowl? Yes, they want to do that, but I think they also want to obliterate every team in their path, and leave no doubt they're the greatest team ever. It's the only way to explain the rampage they've been on this season. At no point have they showed signs of letting up in a game, so I'm not sure why they'd do so when they're one game away from a perfect regular season.

...If anything, I think Don Shula's comments about putting an asterisk on their record if they go undefeated was the clincher that the Pats WILL go for 16-0. New England is proving that they're taking every slight and negative comment against them, and that for Shula to say things like that, well, call it throwing gasoline on a forest fire. Well done Don: not only will the 2007 Dolphins be the first team to ever go winless, but your whiny comments will now ensured that the 1972 Dolphins will not be the only team to ever go undefeated, ruining the only claim to fame that team really had.

...We are living in a world where the Green Bay Packers are 10-1.

...We are also living in world where the second biggest game of the year, Cowboys vs. Packers, is on the NFL Network, and cannot be seen by the vast majority of television viewers.

...While I hate Canadian sports television 95% of the time, there are four redeeming things about it:
1) No WNBA. Ever.
2) No Stu Scott or Linda Cohen. Ever.
3) During March Madness, one of the sports stations will run a different game than CBS has on. So you get two games for the price of one.
4) TSN (which they say stands for The Sports Network, but really stands for Toronto Sports Network) carries every game the NFL Network does. So I will get to watch the Cowboys/Packers game from the comfort of my couch.

...Finally, I can't think of two NFL franchises I hate more than the Cowboys and Packers. And yet, I'm really excited for the game Thursday night.

...Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and now that it's passed, let me be the first to say MERRY CHRISTMAS!