Results tagged “football”

"The way I've approached it, to make it right in my head, is you start a series off at 2nd-and-10," Bart Andrus, the former NFL assistant hired in January to coach the Toronto Argonauts, told the National Post. "That's my thought process." It might just be a throwaway comment, but it might reveal deeper implications that the fifty-one-year-old California native is approaching the season with assumptions that are fundamentally at odds with the Canadian game. Argos fans have heard it before.

The 1982 Grey Cup game was not a pleasurable one for Toronto football fans. The major disappointment was not that the Argonauts fell apart in the second half and lost to the Edmonton Eskimos 32 to 16—it was the bone-chilling, rainy weather. Downpours caused fans in fully exposed sections of Exhibition Stadium to risk injury in order to find shelter. Among the fifty-five thousand people in the stands observing the miserable experience were Metropolitan Toronto Chairman Paul Godfrey and Ontario Premier William Davis. As the Globe and Mail observed, as Godfrey "surveyed the scene from his dry seat in Section 42 at the 55-yard line, the falling rain brought a twinkle to his eye. There must have been visions of a domed stadium dancing in his head.” While Davis sighed that the Argonauts "played well," Godfrey told a Star reporter that “if you ever needed proof of the need for a domed stadium, this is your day.”

A spring weeknight. A fan planning to go to that night's Blue Jays game flips on the radio to check on the traffic heading to the ballpark.

The Buffalo Bills are back—and this time, it's for real!

Anticipating the arrival of the NFL's Chicago Cardinals for a pre-season exhibition game against the CFL's Toronto Argonauts on August 5, 1959, The Star's Jim Hunt asked the obvious question: "Argos against the Chicago Cardinals—the mismatch of the century or a football game?" The Argos, who'd dominated the CFL for most of the early twentieth century, were now in the early years of what became known as The Dark Ages. The league's perennial bottom-feeders between 1953 and 1983, the Argos went nineteen years between Grey Cup appearances and thirty-one years between Grey Cup victories. As if to make up for their on-field futility, according to Jay Teitel's The Argo Bounce (T.H. Best Printing Co. Ltd., 1982), the franchise simply tried to play with big league style by signing one big-money player after another. In this, the team seemed to reflect Toronto's post-war insecurity and its ambition to prove itself a world class city. With the huge success of the 1959 exhibition game—with 27,770 fans in attendance, it was the largest crowd to watch football in Canada at that time—the Argos hosted similar exhibition games in 1960 and 1961.

The Varsity Blues’ forty-nine-game losing streak is officially yesterday’s news. They must’ve enjoyed their first victory since 2001, because two weeks later they won again, a notable accomplishment for a football program that hadn’t won a game in almost seven years. It was also a highly symbolic victory: as the seconds ticked away, a torch was passed in Canadian university men's football.

Two months after Cito Gaston returned to the dugout for the Blue Jays, Don Matthews is back in double blue as head coach of the Argonauts. Can it be long before Pat Quinn's back with the Leafs? Let's hope not, but like Gaston's return, Matthews's third stint in Toronto will likely have a positive impact on the team.

One of the most ignominious streaks in Canadian sports history is finally—finally—over. As we mentioned on Monday, the University of Toronto men's football team snapped its frankly mind-boggling forty-nine game losing skid. It was their first victory since October 13, 2001.

Toronto's latest dalliance with the National Football League is underway—and while yesterday's Buffalo Bills/Pittsburgh Steelers game was a predictably tepid affair, we're guessing the organizers will be reasonably happy with the way things played out.

Toronto's NFL experiment begins this Thursday—and while we still don't know where it'll lead, we do know it's beginning not with a bang but a whimper.

Not so many of those bright red packs would be seen at an Argonauts game nowadays due to legislation, unless one pokes out of a fan's pocket.

Photo by John Griffiths.

Stéphane Dion says that Canadians are smart enough to accept a carbon tax, and he seems willing to bet the next election on it. It's awesome that we have an opposition leader too naïve to recognize that however revenue-neutral and environmentally beneficial his plan is, this may not be the most politically savvy time to hike gas prices.

180,000 people have applied to buy tickets for the eight games that the NFL's Buffalo Bills will be playing at the Rogers Centre between now and 2012. The tickets will range as high as $295 (pre-scalper), which is still better than having to go to Buffalo. Because it's such a long drive, we mean. Geez, stop being so sensitive, Buffalo.

Many of us were looking forward to welcoming the Buffalo Bills to Toronto. The eight games they'll play here over the next five years could've been the perfect complement to our existing football diet of live Argonauts games and televised NFL matches. Now that the details have been announced, more than a few of us have been priced out of attending. The majority of tickets average into the $350 per game range, and are only available if you ante up for all eight games at once. As Dave Perkins laments in The Star, the arrangements clearly lay the groundwork for Ted Rogers and Larry Tanenbaum to bring the NFL to Toronto full-time. Granted, there's the unlikely possibility that Bills owner Ralph Wilson is using the games as leverage to extort further concessions from the taxpayers of Buffalo, but he's not exactly denying the possibility of eventual relocation. This is simply the latest chapter in Toronto's long-running soap opera love affair with "big league" American football. A couple past episodes in this drama are indicative of how this pursuit has evolved from quiet self-confidence to the fervent desire to be validated as a "big league" city.

Almost half of all Toronto-area residents are foreign-born. This is the first little tidbit released from the 2006 census, which the government is doling out as if it were a movie trailer or something. (Will Smith versus zombies: probably more entertaining.)

There were 4 more murders in Toronto on the weekend, meaning we only need 11 more to tie the all-time record of 89 set back in 1991. A spokesman for City Hall said that sure, the numbers look bad now, but crime would drop once all the thugs had killed each other.

If you're like us, and you attended a Canadian university, you probably watch U.S. college football with a mixture of bemusement and envy—bemusement because you can’t quite fathom how a hundred thousand people could turn up to watch collegiate athletes, envy because you wish you could’ve had that experience at your school. This past Friday, for instance, over 90,000 fans packed Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks knock off...

Toronto declares first cold alert of the winter season. John Baird immediately points out how the existence of cold weather might mean that we're all wrong about global warming.

An up-close look at the Grey Cup trophy reveals countless dents and scratches attesting to the long and colourful life of probably the most disrespected and abused trophy in sports. Since being donated by Canada’s 9th Governor General, Earl Grey, the trophy has been head-butted, sat on, and snapped in half. It’s been abandoned for years at a time in bank vaults and hall closets. It’s been forgotten in empty stadiums and hotel rooms...

Some Canadian cattle will now be allowed into the United States following a 4-year ban in the wake of several cases of "mad cow" disease. American Homeland Security regulations will still require that any bovines wishing to cross the border carry a valid passport.

City Council considers removing the downspout removal subsidy. This news item brought to you by The Council For Reminding You That Municipal Politics Are Often Incredibly Dull Even If They're Necessary. (The group promises to come up with a better, catchier acronym as soon as possible.)

The Toronto Argonauts can turn this Sunday’s Eastern Final into the perfect kickoff for the upcoming Grey Cup festival. If the Argos beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to reach the championship game, it'll give a huge boost to the week-long party, also known as “Canada’s national drunk.” Brad Watters, general manager of this year's Grey Cup, says that the team winning the 95th Grey Cup at home "would really turn the town on its...

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has announced that the rich pay the lowest tax rates of all income groups. Heather Reisman, Jim Balsillie, and everyone who lives on the Bridle Path celebrated this by heating their gigantic mansions with a fireplace full of money and cackling. Maniacally. Dalton McGuinty is adding to economic fear-mongering by claiming that the rising loonie is hurting Ontario’s economy and that interest rates should be lowered. Meanwhile on...

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.

The NFL is coming, sort of, to Toronto—and already, rumours of the CFL’s imminent demise are being greatly exaggerated.

After MasterCard agreed to ante up $160k to keep city skating rinks open this December, local newspapers spoke with one voice in reporting the story. The Star offered the headline "Private bailout of city rinks...priceless," the Post weighed in with "Skating in December...priceless," and the Sun daringly dropped the ellipsis with "Donation: Priceless." The Globe alone experienced a spasm of originality, settling for a subheading of "Skating still in the cards."

Ontario Conservative leader John "The Tory" Tory has promised that if elected a Conservative government would allocate $800 million to public transit in the province. Tory also confessed that it has been a long-time dream of his to one day ride on a streetcar, but that his chauffeur wasn't yet licensed to drive one.

The Toronto sports media have never met an axe they couldn’t grind—especially when it involves the Toronto Maple Leafs. Contrary to what you might’ve read, however, the Leafs actually are not the worst franchise in the history of professional sports. We know they haven’t made the playoffs since 2004; the way they’re covered in the local media, however, you’d think they hadn’t won a single game since 2001.

Photo by Flickr user captiveight from her Rider Nation album.