Results tagged “nfl”

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.

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.

Four children aged approximately 8 to 9 years old were taken to hospital yesterday after ingesting or coming into contact with a pool cleaning agent—believed to be muriatic acid—at a Royal Canadian Yacht Club swimming pool yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with the name "muriatic acid," you will be relieved to find out that it's just another name for plain old hydrochloric acid. Aren't you relieved?

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.

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.

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.

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

Taking a page from David Miller's Big Book of Intergovernmental Panhandling, Dalton McGuinty is complaining that Ontario is going to need a hot cash injection from the Feds if we're going to get those manufacturing jobs back from Bangladesh. Q: What do you get when you have an NDP mayor, a Liberal Premier, and a Tory Prime Minister? A: If you pay taxes in Toronto, pretty much nothing!

Valentine's Day is only a few days away, and we here across the Gothamist network would like to tell you, in the spirit of the holiday, just how much we love you, our readers. Don't let it get to your heads, though. There are plenty of things we love, you included. Just be glad you're not amongst the things we hate.

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to.

So you're stuck at home with the kids. Or you're feeling under the weather. Or you're tired of scrambling around at 11:58 looking for someone to make out with. There are many, many reasons why you might be staying in this New Year's Eve. But there is no reason why you can't be a party of one in front of the tube! There are offerings for any taste Sunday night for those who don't make it off the couch.

Argos fans be very very scared. It seems that Toronto is on a shortlist of five cities that will get a regular-season NFL game next year. The game's success would be a good indicator of whether these cities would be suitable for future NFL expansion.

An audit of litter on Toronto's streets shows that Mayor Miller is on to something. The amount of litter on our streets is down 40% from 2002. The Mayor credits investment in city streets (ie. garbage cans, street cleaners) and you, dear citizen.

With Torontoist's past two "sports" entries being titled "Toronto Bike Posts Both Strong and Vulnerable" and "We've Got a Thing 'bout The Post-and-Ring" (the first installment of the two-part series on our city's bike posts), the Adorable Sports Writer feels like it's time to re-capture the floor.

As mentioned previously, this Torontoist knows nothing of sports. Despite this setback, the willingness to learn (and report on) a thing or two is there.

Kerry Carter can do it all. Not only can he find a hole in the defense, but this NFL running back can help to fill the hole in your heart. The twenty-five year old former Toronto resident has recently added Published Author to his already impressive resume. After attending high school at Father Henry Carr in Etobicoke where he received the Harry Jerome award as the top student athlete in Canada in 1997/98, Carter completed a four year cultural and social anthropology degree at Stanford University before signing with the Seattle Seahawks in 2003. His new book "Fiery Scenes of Seduction" is a collection of poems that he hopes will create an irresistible passion and kindle the seduction in every lover's heart. Fittingly the launch of his first published collection will be held in his former hometown, seven days from today - Valentine's Day.

Peyton could only smile and say "He missed it" as he watched the kick go up yesterday afternoon. Perhaps the grin on his face was at the irony that it will be Vanderjagt who will wear the tag that he placed on Manning three years ago.

Sundays are generally awful. Combine the threat of having to work on Monday with the black-eye/STD/hangover from Saturday night, and then add the closure of all the major banks...Sundays are just no fun. Except of course for Superbowl Sunday. This is a day to eat, drink, and yell at the television. Here are the highs and lows of the Superbowl that was: