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| Colton Klassen has been signed by the Alouettes. |
Three popular Saskatchewan products in Colton Klassen, Evan Johnson and Jon Ryan all cemented CFL homes for the potential 2021 campaign by signing contracts. While there is still legitimate worry about what the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that has gripped the world will do to the 2021 campaign after the CFL was unable to take the field in 2020, the signings provide a moment of joy, celebration and optimism.
On Monday, which was a day before free agency opened, the Alouettes announced they signed Colton Klassen, who is a star utility offensive player for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies football team in the U Sports ranks. The Alouettes selected Klassen in the eighth round and 69th overall in the 2020 CFL Draft.
The
25-year-old had been looking forward to playing a 2020 campaign either in the
CFL or using his final year of U Sports eligibility with the Huskies to show
how well he has bounced back from a major injury.
On October 26, 2019, Klassen went down with a gruesome dislocated right ankle near the end of the first quarter of 22-9 victory over the University of Alberta Golden Bears at Griffiths Stadium. The contest closed the regular season for both sides, which meant Klassen wasn’t able to play in the Huskies two post-season games.
Miraculously at the beginning of March of 2020, he recovered to the point he was ready to attend CFL scouting combines.
At that point, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic took hold in North America causing massive shutdowns to occur starting on a big scale on March 11 and 12 of 2020, especially in the sports world.
Ignite Athletics held testing in late March of 2020 and Klassen ran the 40-yard dash in under 4.6 seconds which showed the incredible progress he had made.
During the Huskies eight regular season games in 2019, Klassen caught 37 passes last season for 456 yards and two touchdowns and was named a Canada West Conference all-star.
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| Evan Johnson (#64) has signed with the Roughriders. |
After joining the Huskies, Klassen made explosive plays as a running back, receiver and kick returner. The Alouettes will like the he can be used in various roles.
While
Klassen got his deal done on Monday, the opening of free agency on Tuesday was
a big day for U of S Huskies football grad Evan Johnson.
The
26-year-old offensive lineman and Regina product signed with his hometown team
in the Saskatchewan Roughriders. After graduating from the Huskies in 2016,
Johnson was selected in the first round and ninth overall in the CFL Draft by
the Ottawa Redbacks.
With the
Redblacks from 2017 to 2019, Johnson, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 280
pounds, played in 52 regular season games becoming a starter part way through
his rookie campaign. He started games at left tackle, right tackle and left
guard.
Johnson’s versatility
as a starter will be the biggest asset he brings to the Roughriders. The graduate
of Regina’s Campbell Collegiate is also the Tom Brady of offensive linemen in
the looks department, so he might get some endorsement deals that could potentially
attract causal fans and those that might not normally have an interest in
football.
On
Wednesday, the Roughriders announced they were bringing back all-time punting
great Jon Ryan back for a second season signing him for the 2021 campaign.
The
graduate from the University of Regina Rams football team in the U Sports ranks
played for the Roughriders in 2019. He appeared in all 18 of the Roughriders
regular season games punting the ball 107 times for 5,222 yards for an average
of 48.8 yards per punt.
The
39-year-old is best remember for his time in the NFL where he played with the
Green Bay Packers in 2006 and 2007 before spending 10 seasons with the Seattle
Seahawks from 2008 to 2017. Ryan, who stands 6-feet and weighs 217 pounds,
helped the Seahawks win Super Bowl XLVIII following the 2013 season.
With the
Packers and Seahawks, Ryan appeared in 191 career regular season games punting
the ball 914 times for 40,895 yards and averaging 44.7 yards per punt.
Before
making the NFL, Ryan had two stellar seasons with the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue
Bombers in 2004 and 2005.
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| Jon Ryan (#9) has inked another contract with the Roughriders. |
In his
final season with the Rams in 2003, Ryan was named the all-star punter in the
Canada West Conference and a first team U Sports all-Canadian all-star
averaging 45.9 yards per boot on 67 attempts. Ryan also had 27 catches in eight
regular season games to lead the Rams with 501 receiving yards with four of
those catches going for touchdowns.
While these
current days in the COVID-19 pandemic often feel like tough sledding, it is
great to have the chance to celebrate the signings of Saskatchewan products like
Klassen, Johnson and Ryan.
Bucs don’t win Super Bowl without Brady
 |
| Tom Brady raising the Super Bowl on TV is a beautiful sight. |
Even the fact the world is in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t stop Brady from winning a seventh Super Bowl title. Of course, the big difference was Brady was quarterbacking the host Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 thumping of the Kansas City Chiefs, who were the defending Super Bowl champions at the time, at Raymond James Stadium.
Of course, Brady had a divorce from the New England Patriots following the 2019 season. After 20 seasons together, the Patriots decided they wanted to go in a different direction.
On March 20, 2020, Brady signed a two-year contract with the Buccaneers. He ultimately brought best friend in tight end Rob Gronkowski with him to Tampa Bay.
“Gronk” came out of retirement to rejoin the legendary signal caller on the field.
Brady convinced some other friends to join him with the Buccaneers. Running back Leonard Fournette signed a one-year deal with the Buccaneers in early September 2020 after being waived by the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Brady was able to talk beleaguered receiver Antonio Brown into joining the Buccaneers on a one-year deal in late October of 2020. Brown had been cut in early 2019 by the Patriots.
The newcomers accounted for all the Tampa Bay touchdowns this past Sunday. Gronkowski caught two touchdown passes from Brady, and Brady hooked up with Brown for a third TD toss.
Fournette had a 27-yard touchdown run in the romp.
Before the arrival of Brady and company, the Buccaneers were a team on the rise. With a younger roster, they posted a 7-9 record in 2019.
The Buccaneers defence had a good mix of youngsters with some solid veterans.
Tampa Bay was looking for a way to get over the hump.
Buccaneers management decided they weren’t going to wait anymore for signal caller Jameis Winston to keep developing. In 2019, Winston played his fifth season for the Buccaneers at age 25 completing 380 of 626 passes for 5,109 yards, 33 touchdowns and 30 interceptions.
The turnovers from the quarterback position ultimately caused the Buccaneers to have a losing record in 2019.
In 2020 with Brady at age 43, the Buccaneers posted an 11-5 regular season record, and Brady completed 401 of 610 passes for 4,633 yards, 40 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
As the season went along, all facets of the Buccaneers team in offence, defence and special teams began to jell together that much better. They finished the regular season winning four straight and extended that streak to eight straight victories on the way to the second Super Bowl title in franchise history.
By the sounds of things, this Buccaneers team could return pretty much as a whole for next season. They have to be considered the favourites to repeat as Super Bowl champions.
Brady seems to have a good sense of humour when it comes to dealing with haters too. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live to read some mean tweets, and in the process, Brady produced a classic piece of television.
#BellLetsCut aims at all-sports radio, other
notes
It was a dream come true at 24 to get the phone call telling me I would be joining the team at TSN 1290. Can’t say I worked much since then...talking sports with all of you and sharing laughs in the studio wasn’t much “work” at all. Thank you all for the messages and kind words.
— Ryan Brandt (@Ryan_Brandt) February 9, 2021
TSN all-sports radio stations in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Hamilton are no more.
On Tuesday, TSN 1040 AM in Vancouver, TSN 1290 AM in Winnipeg and TSN 1150 AM in Hamilton went off the air while broadcasting their morning programming. All three stations are owned by Bell Media.
Later that day, Bell Media announced the Vancouver station is being converted to a BNN Bloomberg station covering business, innovation, technology and sports.
News also leaked out the stations in Vancouver and Winnipeg will be converted to comedy stations. That sounds like an interesting choice on that front considering it is harder to do comedy in the current day because you always have someone objecting to jokes saying they are offended, but I digress.
The Province newspaper story in Vancouver written by Scott Brown and Patrick Johnson listed a lengthy list of names of on-air personalities who lost their jobs due to the change at TSN 1040 AM.
The story stated TSN 1040 AM morning hosts Mike Halford and Jason Brough started their morning show like normal at 6 a.m. on Tuesday only for the show to get yanked at the start of the third hour to be replaced with U.S. radio programming from ESPN.
During those hours, the Twitter account for TSN 1040 AM was deactivated.
As Tuesday went on, there were more stories of staffers from the three stations in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Hamilton telling stories they found out they lost their jobs that day without any notice.
Included in the cuts was Ryan Brandt of TSN 1290 AM in Winnipeg. Before moving to Winnipeg, Brandt was a sports reporter for 650 CKOM in Saskatoon.
The cuts were done in a heartless way, and Bell is making a habit of making cuts.
The week prior, Bell Media made a huge number of layoffs, which included letting go 210 staffers at Bell outlets in Toronto and area.
Walking papers were given to four prominent TSN staffers in Brent Wallace, Dan O’Toole, Natasha Staniszewski and Tim Moriarty, who was best known as “Producer Tim.”
All those cuts came after Bell Media held its annual Bell Let’s Talk day fundraising campaign for mental health charities and to promote mental health awareness on Jan. 28.
Bell was also recently criticized by Ontario-based regional rival Teksavvy for taking more than $122-million in government aid through the form of wage subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic even as it was raising its payout to shareholders and cutting jobs.
Last week, BCE Incorporated announced its quarterly profit rose to $889-million in the fourth quarter of 2020 up from $672-million the year before.
In the end, these cuts will ultimately hurt Canada’s sports scene, which will even less media coverage than it was getting before.
- In a bit of news that was missed, Tom Schnitzler, who is a defensive lineman and a graduate of the CJFL’s Saskatoon Hilltops, signed with the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Jan. 21. Schnitzler, who is 25-years-old, played for the Hilltops from 2013 to 2017 and spent the 2018 and 2019 campaigns with the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds in the U Sports ranks. The Tiger-Cats are looking for Schnitzler to potentially become the team’s new long snapper. On Feb. 1, the Tiger-Cats released veteran long snapper Aaron Crawford, who signed a one-year deal with the Calgary Stampeders one day later.
- I helped produce new content for the Howe Happenings blog that supports the Gordie Howe Sports Complex early this week. The new content went live on Tuesday. I put together a feature on the Sentinels Lacrosse Club and a photo post that contains a number of my pictures around the complex. The Sentinels are an elite program that aims to expand the horizons of the sport for young players. The story on the Sentinels can be found by clicking right here, and the photo post can be found by clicking right here.
- Tickets are now on sale for the February jackpot for the Saskatchewan Amateur Football Mega 50/50 lottery. The funds from this 50/50 lottery will go to support the CJFL’s Saskatoon Hilltops and Regina Thunder and the WWCFL’s Saskatoon Valkyries and Regina Riot. One prize will be drawn per month, and the remaining draw dates are Sunday, February 28, 2021, March 31, 2021, April 30, 2021 and May 31, 2021. Tickets can be purchased by clicking right here, and purchasers must be in Saskatchewan in order to buy tickets.
- On Monday, the World Curling Federation announced the 2021 women’s world curling championship was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was slated to be held March 19 to 28 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. This marks the second straight year the women’s world curling championship has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- On Tuesday, the Sask East Hockey League senior circuit announced it has cancelled the rest of the 2020-21 campaign due to time constraints caused by restrictions from Public Health Orders that have been put in to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. The circuit has decided to plan for the 2021-22 campaign. The league has been on pause since late November of 2020.
- On Wednesday, Hockey Alberta announced all remaining competitive seasons for junior and senior hockey in the province in the 2020-21 campaign were cancelled due to restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alberta Junior Hockey League junior A circuit was exempted from that decision. The last competitive games on Alberta were played in November of 2020 before all circuits went on pause.
- In the realm of sports entertainment, a scary situation is unfolding involving WWE superstar Alexa Bliss, whose real name is Alexis Kaufman, having to deal with an online stalker since June of 2020. Authorities have been notified, but the situation with the online stalker, whose current Twitter account handle is @AlbertLittle666, is getting more and more disturbing. The stalker has threatened to kill Bliss’s fiancé, Ryan Cabrera, and made false statements claiming to be married to Bliss. The stalker account has made threats to visit Bliss’s home in Orlando, Florida, and threatened Bliss fan accounts that have been reporting and continue to report his online activities. Bliss didn’t make an appearance on WWE’s Monday Night RAW program this past week as the most recent disturbing messages poured in at times coming in five-minute intervals. On Wednesday, the offending stalker account sent a disgusting message to another female WWE star in Sonya Deville, who escaped a kidnapping attempt from a stalker in her own home in August of 2020. Deville’s attempted kidnapping incident is still being dealt with in court. It is easy to find the play-by-play of these stories from the media outlets that cover the WWE via a Google search. These celebrity stalker situations are a couple of the worst I’ve heard of, and I can’t believe things like this are allowed to happen. People like these stalker types need to be taken off the streets immediately and locked up forever.
If you have any
comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them
to stankssports@gmail.com.
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