An insightful (and occasionally uproarious) interview with Fraser Valley Cascades head coach Barnaby Craddock… featuring thoughts on his former team, his current team, his newfound hippie lifestyle, and his love affair with the Brandon media. Also: a plea to the Bekkering brothers, and an episode of Blindside that offers predictions for 2008 and a debate about the worst reality TV show of all-time.
A preview of the 41st annual Wesmen Classic; David J. Larkins on location in Winnipeg; plus, the nation’s fastest growing media sensation - “Blindside” - featuring thoughts on the World Junior Hockey Championship, the Soulja Boy craze, the reckless driving habits of Mischa and Topanga… and a question for the ages: Yul Michel or Erfan Nasajpour?
Just a couple of hours away — in Central time — from it officially being Dec. 25 and, from what I hear, Christmas falls on the 25th this year, so I’m going to honour the birth of Santa with a few of my Christmas wishes. In honour of the 25th, here’s counting down the 25 things I am really wishing for, live from a Scrum satellite office in Winnipeg:
25. I truly do try to play it down the middle when covering the Brandon Bobcats basketball and volleyball teams, but you’re fooling yourself if you think that when you follow a certain group of people for extended periods of time (for me it’s a minimum of seventh months every year for the past five years) you’re going to remain utterly and entirely unbiased to their actions, or always be emotionally separated. That’s bull. With that said, I’ve lambasted the women’s basketball program on occasion in the past on air and in our pages of the Brandon Sun, so here’s a wish for the Bobcats to finally get a win and start turning the ship in the right direction.
24. Furtherto that, here’s a wish for the volleyball programs to crack the post-season for the first time, especially if it means me getting another trip out of my job. (I joke… sort of.)
23. I also wish for Ottawa to prove its naysayers wrong when the capital city hosts the CIS men’s basketball championship in March. Many who were against the move — and let’s be honest some people just hate the idea of it not being in Halifax — are convinced the new host will be a magnificent failure because of certain logistical dilemmas that don’t appear to be getting changed any time soon. An arena in Kanata with most hotels 20 minutes away in Ottawa is just one gripe. For the sake of the tournament itself, here’s to Ottawa pulling it off with skeptics at least approaching the weekend with an open mind.
22(a). A wish for those Ottawa/Carleton boosters to finally stop arguing their case like it makes sense for the Ravens to earn automatic berths to the next three nationals. You can’t even truly believe it when you say it, and we don’t believe you’re saying it. So please, stop. Now.
22(b). A wish for all those who hate the auto-berth thing so much to finally shut the hell up about it and just accept it as it is. We’ll drop it if you do.
20. I wish Henry Bekkering enters the Wesmen Classic dunk competition this week. We’ve seen it before at the Classic comp, players are resting for games or coaches are fearing injury and the best of the best doesn’t always enroll. Bekkering needs to be in this thing if only because pantheon-level dunking performances aren’t often seen around these parts and he’s a guy we know can bring it. I’m not budging on this.
19. I wish that Jeremy Sawatzky would get his priorities straight. His gushing about the New England Patriots, at the best of times, would be disagreeable enough, but to actually publicly pull for a team that is in your beloved team’s division? If the Baltimore Ravens were doing the same thing, you’d better believe every black and gold inch of my Pittsburgh Steelers heart would be palpitating with vitriol towards my hated rivals. I’d even induce a heart arrhythmia if I thought the fluctuating beats would throw them off their rhythm. I almost had to take an editor’s pen to the paragraph of his recent post and strike it from the record. Note: Sawatzky’s thoughts are not necessarily those of The Scrum, The Scrum Corp., Inc., The Scrum Investments or, the parent company, Valutrex Pharmaceuticals.
18. I wish the New England Patriots lose in the playoffs in a most agonizing fashion.
17. I wish the University of North Carolina would paint its basketball court so you could actually see the lines on the floor.
16. I wish Jennifer Hedger would stop talking that way. Seriously. Stop it. In fact, I want the Sports Guy Voice banned. I want broadcasting schools to start teaching a course on NOT talking that way, the unnatural oscillating vocals that are inherent to TV sportscasters and TV sportscasters alone. No one else talks that way, and you’re not allowed to either. The Score’s Steve Kouleas, we’re looking at you too.
15. I want TSN’s Off the Record to, just for once, talk about one other sport. Actually, scratch that. No one watches that show anyway and if you do you already know you’re dumber for having seen it.
14. I wish Kobe Bryant could remain happy as a Los Angeles Laker.
13. I wish more people would comment on our blogs and podcasts.
12. Now that she’s done her university career, I wish Sarah Pavan would play for our national women’s volleyball team.
11. I wish someone would give Basketball Canada a do-over on its managing of the senior men’s head coaching position. I wish, furthermore, that Basketball Canada had a lot of do-overs.
10. I wish someone would tell me who has the CFL rights to East Carolina running back Chris Johnson. The Pirates burner ran for 223 yards in the Hawaii Bowl and set a bowl record with 408 all-purpose yards but, at 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, he might not be NFL big. But dude can skate: He runs a 4.39 40 and playing at a juggernaut like ECU might mean he slips through the cracks and winds up in Canada, namely in a place called Winnipeg (wishful thinking).
9. I wish someone would post on YouTube the NFL Network’s slam-poetry intros to its Thursday Night Football telecasts. I don’t care if someone hates them, I love ’em.
8. I wish someone actually made an issue out of the fact Bol Kong is playing college ball in Canada. It’s the equivalent of a 16-year-old Sidney Crosby playing for the Tuscaloosa Ice Pirates midget team, but we live in Canada so no one cares or asks why, or how, far and away the best talent on this side of the border is playing in a league that serves as a feeder to the CIS.
7. I wish Future Shop would stop airing that commercial of the emo boy singing a song in a tone only dogs should be able to hear. While we’re here, I wish MADD would stop the baby crying commercial. It keeps waking me up. 
6. I wish someone would find Namugenyi Kiwanuka and put her back on the air.
5. I wish people who produced basketball-related TV shows didn’t insist their on-air talent — even though they don’t have an ounce of street in them — still speak with a contrived slang. I’m aware there’s an edginess and street aspect to basketball. I’m aware hip hop is involved. I’m aware of all of this. I’m fine with it. I’m not fine with you trotting out someone who doesn’t represent any of this and then try to convince us that they can pull it off, to horrible results. Is finding people who are comfortable in their own skin really becoming that difficult?
4. I wish the Buffalo Bills had beaten the N.Y. Giants with Kevin Everett back in the stadium. I also wish the Buffalo Bills had made Kevin Everett available to the media or, at least, wish the media had explained in its stories why he wasn’t made available to the media.
3. I wish I didn’t have to pretend that I have an interest in curling. I don’t. I’m sorry Canada. I have friends who curl, I think they’re great people and I wish them well in their ice bowling. But, try as I might, I can’t contain my deep-seeded hatred for the game.
2. I wish, when I say things like “I don’t like curling,” people wouldn’t respond with “oh, that’s just because you don’t understand it.” Yes, I do understand it and I still don’t like it. I also don’t like fingernails grinding against a chalkboard, but it’s not because I don’t appreciate it on as many levels as you, it’s because I find it loathsome.
1(a). I wish championships upon all the teams I cheer for and, failing that, wish I never lose the feeling of “this is going to be our year.”
1(b). I wish you all the best of the season and hope you don’t feel your holiday was ruined by having read this.
–
FRANK: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had - but so did another man. As I rained blows opon him, I realized there had to be another way!
KRAMER: What happened to the doll?
FRANK: It was destroyed. But out of that, a new holiday was born. A Festivus for the rest of us!
–
As Frank Costanza would later reveal, the celebration of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. Traditionally, this takes place at the family dinner; you gather your family around, and you tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year. We here at The Scrum don’t have a family dinner, but that didn’t stop me from creating a list of the top 15 sports people/organizations I had a problem with in 2007:
(Please note that most of these entries are drenched in copious amounts of sarcasm.)
#15-Kobe Bryant: You, sir, are pathetic. You want to be traded, you don’t want to be traded. You hate your teammates, you love your teammates. Sure, everything is nice and rosy now, but we all know it’s coming. It might happen after a 5-game losing streak in mid-January. It might happen a first round play-off exit, when one of the upper echelon Western Conference teams wipes the floor with your sorry face. We don’t know the time or the place, but we do know that your next hissy fit is a foregone conclusion. You, Kobe Bryant, are the worst teammate in the history of the NBA. You make me sick.
#14-Tim Donaghy: You’re on the list not because of your cheating scandal, per se, but because your cheating scandal gave my brother - who hates the NBA - joke-making material for years to come. Granted, your indiscretion did lead to a fantastic reference on my favorite (current) TV show, but that doesn’t make up for what you did. (1:20 into clip)
#13-Chris Myers: Most of my friends would rather watch the WNBA than listen to your in-game reports, but I never had a real problem with you. Until this happened.
#12-NFL coaches who call last-second time-outs to ice field goal kickers: I’m looking at you, Mike Shanahan. You too, Dick Jauron. The ‘last-second time-out that negates a dramatic game-winning field goal’ is the single worst thing to happen to the NFL since FOX started superimposing that giant ‘down & yardage’ graphic on the field prior to every snap. I hate that graphic.
#11-Tim Hardaway: Apparently, there is something wrong with that. At least according to you. It’s one thing to have a quiet, passive disdain for homosexuals (ie. Tony Dungy). But did you really say, “I hate gay people.” That was the wording you chose? To quote Brian Fantana, “Why don’t you stop talking for a while?”
#10-The people who think “SpyGate” is a big deal: Look, I’ve made it perfectly clear that I hate New England. Nothing on God’s white earth could make me happier than for eternal shame to fall upon the Patriots. But was this really that big of a deal? So they videotaped the other team’s defensive signals? So what? Had the cameraman been sitting in the stands or in the press-box or anywhere else, it would’ve been perfectly legal. So where’s the competitive advantage? Former coaches Bill Cowher and Jimmy Johnson both said they used to do this kind of stuff all the time - either with video or by simply writing the signals down. So who cares?
#9-The people who think the Patriots “running up the score” is a big deal: Again, allow me to reiterate - I hate the Patriots. But there is no such thing as “running up the score” in professional sports. It doesn’t exist. It’s impossible for a team to exhibit a “lack of class” by out-scoring an opponent by 50 points. If you’re being paid millions of dollars to play a game, you have no right to complain about what the other team is doing to you. If you don’t want the Patriots to score 60 points, stop them. If you can’t stop them, shut up.
#8-Barbaro fans: Far be it from to criticize the interests of others. I can quote most Seinfeld episodes from memory and I once played NBA Live for 15 straight hours. I’m not what you call a “sophisticated man”. But for crying out loud, he’s a horse!
#7-Chad Pennington: You have a noodle arm. It’s been said a million times, but I’m saying it again. Sure, you’re a “smart” quarterback. You manage the game well. Whatever. I don’t care. You cost us so many wins this year, I honestly lost track. Remember in week one, when you got hurt against the Patriots and everyone at the Meadowlands cheered and the TV announcers were appalled at how heartless Jets fans can be? Count me among that group. When you went down, I was in my living room, standing on my feet, praying to God that you were finished for the season. I hate what you do to me, Chad. I hate the person you make me. You’re probably a real swell guy, and I’m guessing if you lived in Brandon, we could be friends. But I don’t want you anywhere near my football team ever again.
#6-Brandon Bobcats head coach Mike Raimbault: Yeah, Mike, you’re on the list. I’ve got a real problem with you. Me and Larks have been begging for a sideline outburst all season long, and you’ve given us nothing. Nothing! You’re always so calm and cool and collected, strutting around like a man who’s got his crap together. Well, I call poppycock. And how about giving us a quote sometime? Tell us how you really feel! None of this “we played good, we got out in transition, we were able to execute” garbage. Tell it like it is! Just once I want to hear you say, “I’m surprised we only won by 30 points. I’m the best coach ever.”
#5-Steely McBeam:
The new Pittsburgh Steelers mascot was plucked directly from this scene. Tim Hardaway hates him. But give the organization credit: when you create a mascot, you have to choose a figure that your fan base can identify with. Pittsburgh fans work hard, and they play hard.
#4-The CIS: I already ranted ad nauseum about your absurd decision to grant Carleton* three straight Final 8 berths.
#3-The people who run “Sportscentre” on TSN: In Canada, a person only has three choices when it comes to sports highlights on TV – the Score, Sportsnet, and TSN. Because my cable provider doesn’t carry the score in HD, I rarely go there for anything. Because Sportsnet sucks, I never go there for anything. That leaves TSN. Canada’s so-called “sports leader”. To be fair, I like some of your personalities. You show a lot of NFL games. You’ve got PTI. But Sportscentre… Sportscentre, I can’t handle. Thanks to your obsessive love for the Toronto Maple Leaves and the obnoxious parade of personalities you trot out night after night (Jay Onrait being the exception… I like him), I’ve officially sworn off your sad, little show. I now get my highlights online. Do I need 50 minutes of hockey coverage every night? No, I do not.
#2-The play-by-play guy working the USC/Stanford game: Absoutely and utterly inexecusable. You got to witness one of the greatest upset in college football history, and you botched the call worse than any call in the history of sports broadcasting. I don’t what your name is, and I don’t want to know. You should have been fired on the spot.
#1-Saskatchewan Roughrider fans: Yeah, you won the Grey Cup. So what? You beat a Winnipeg Blue Bombers team that was missing its starting quarterback. How impressive. Your first string players are 4-points better than Winnipeg’s second string players. Congratulations. Yet you people treated the Grey Cup victory like it was the greatest moment of your lives. Granted, you’re from Saskatchewan, so it probably was the greatest moment of your lives, but still. Show some class, some dignity, some pride. I’m not necessarily wishing this particular fate upon your sorry souls… actually, yes, that’s exactly what I’m wishing for. Now go back to playing your banjo’s and dating your cousins and harvesting your wheat.
Happy Festivus, everyone!
This is from the 2005-06 season.
David Larkins has an astute eye when it comes to the tanning habits of other men.
An informative/hilarious interview with Winnipeg Wesmen head coach Dave Crook; thoughts on the CIS volleyball landscape; a special edition of Blindside, featuring thoughts on Jamie Lynn Spears, the 12 days of Christmas, the worst play-by-play announcers of all-time, and the Chris Simon suspension; plus… is mommy really having an affair with Santa?
– To be fair, Larkins used to do this kind of stuff all the time…
– We can’t be the only two people on the planet excited for this movie, can we?
– Say what you will about Frank Caliendo, but his impression of Charles Barkley is astounding.
– Canadian basketball players are funny, toothless.
– This is far more damaging than anything contained in the Mitchell Report.
– Speaking of steroids, who knew that one of our favorite 90210 stars was on the juice?!
– An exclusive sneak peak at the gameplan my beloved New York Jets will be implementing this Sunday.
– This is probably a good note to end on.
A look at the first half of the CIS men’s basketball season; an interview with Brandon Bobcats head coach Mike Raimbault; a how-to-guide on choosing a favorite NFL team; plus… thoughts on Bon Jovi and “Don’t Forget The Lyrics.”
Welcome world, to our little spot on the Internet, the first post in what we hope will be many more to come for The Scrum.
You have either intentionally clicked here or stumbled across this site but in case you have no idea why you’re here, let us just introduce you to what we’re all about.
The space is run by Jeremy Sawatzky and David Larkins, two media figures in Brandon, Man., who have taken to devising a new site that is fair game for any kind of discussion in the sports world. Our main target will be the Canadian university scene, with emphasis on basketball, and we’ll bring you discussions, interviews and news from around the country. Larkins, a sports reporter with the Brandon Sun, has been covering university sports for 12 years, the last five in Brandon, and is the colour commentator for basketball (play-by-play for volleyball) on Brandon Bobcats TV broadcasts that are seen weekly throughout southwestern Manitoba. Sawatzky is the voice of Bobcats basketball as the play-by-play man for the ‘Cats and is currently an on-air personality with the Wheat City’s 880 CKLQ.
But we’re not just some other pair of loudmouth bloggers. No, these loudmouths have more than blogs.
Once a week we will upload our very own podcast that will run the gamut of sports topics. With weekly interviews with sports personalities across North America, it will be a tremendous opportunity for university fans across the country to hear the coaches and players they follow discuss every topic from the team they just beat to the breakfast they ate before going to the gym.
Yup, we’re pretty wide open.
Sit back and click away. The site will grow as the days go by and we hope you stick around to read, listen and feedback.
Join the scrum.
Two guys who love sports, almost more than women...
