TSN does well with bizarre Grey Cup

 TSN has televised better games than Sunday’s Grey Cup, but it’s unlikely that it has put a camera on anything quite as strange as the Montreal Alouettes’ double-jeopardy 28-27 triumph over the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

  What a bizarre game this was. It was fraught with errors, most of them by the Als. But the worst, the one monstrous mistake, belonged to the Roughriders.

   “It’s hard to absorb what we just saw,” said an astonished Chris Cuthbert after the Riders appeared to have the game won when Montreal’s Damon Duval missed a 43-yard field goal attempt in the final seconds, only to lose it because the Riders had too many men on the field and thus gave Duval a second chance.

   As Cuthbert cleverly noted, everyone was talking before the game about the advantage of the Riders’ 13^th man – the team’s overwhelming support in the stands at McMahon Stadium. As it turned out, it was a 13^th man on the field that cost the Riders the Cup.

   But TSN’s post-game reporting on the Riders’ mistake was thin. Sara Orlesky and Farhan Lalji interviewed only Alouettes players immediately after the game. We didn’t hear from the Rider coaching staff soon enough. Game analyst Glen Suitor gave us no real insight into this monumental screw-up, which no doubt will have the population of Saskatchewan grinding its teeth over the winter months and for years to come.

    The game was close, of course, and the ending weirdly dramatic, but it was often sloppy and not particularly well played.  That said, TSN delivered a strong telecast. The cameras caught everything. The CableCam was used judiciously but effectively, as was the shot from the helicopter. The crowd pans conveyed the energy of the crowd and the player close-ups did what they’re supposed to do, which is enhance the drama of the moment. And the multiple replays solved the mysteries of at least two reviewable calls, although the ruled Als non-catch late in the game was inconclusive even when TSN replayed the arc of the ball frame by frame.

   As for Cuthbert and Suitor, they’re veteran play callers and they can be counted on to do a reasonably good job. Cuthbert missed a few things. He didn’t tell us how long Duval’s game ending field goal attempt, the first one, would be. As for Suitor, he’s a non-stop information machine. Some of his analysis and commentary hit the mark, but there was often just too much of it. After a while I suspect many viewers just stopped listening.

   Cuthbert was even more verbose. He went on and on, reciting stats that nobody, most of us anyway, cared about. He wouldn’t give the telecast a second of silence or a chance to breathe.

   For example, on Montreal’s second quarter field goal, as Duval was getting ready to kick the ball, Cuthbert felt the need to talk instead of letting the moment speak for itself. He had to tell us that Duval was the league’s leading scorer in the regular season, had 242 points, was 18-18 in the regular season, but missed a field goal in the East final.

     Dave Randorf’s work as Grey Cup host was good. I knocked him a few days ago for seeming to yell rather than actually talk to his audience. But there was none of that on Sunday. His delivery was direct and controlled, but not over the top.

   Brian Williams and his producers delivered two good pre-game features, one on the 1989 Grey Cup, a thriller between Saskatchewan and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and another a look back at the start of the western hoopla of the Grey Cup, in 1948, when Calgary fans made the trip east. In his interview with CFL commissioner Mark Cohon, Williams aggressively quizzed him on reports that clubs wish to reduce the starting roster spots for Canadians to four from seven. Cohon waffled, refusing to give a straight answer, probably because he can’t. The owners will do what they want.

 Milbury’s temper

  For a moment during Hockey Night In Canada, Mike Milbury seemed ready to pull off his shoe and use it on Ian Pulver. The big guy was sputtering over Pulver’s rules-are-rules attitude to a suggested solution for an NHL problem.

 Pulver, a Bob Goodenow acolyte and now a player agent, defended during the Hotstove segment the regime of Goodenow, the former NHL Players’ Association executive, to which Milbury, face red, said, “That was the most untrusting guy in the goddamned world.”

  The expletive wasn’t needed, but Milbury had it right about Goodenow. What’s more, the idea (which Pulver opposed) of retaining salaries in trades is a good one. True, it would mean a revision to the collective bargaining agreement, but it would loosen up the trade market.

 Pulver argued against a CBA change, because he says the agreement needs time to “breathe.” Well, the agreement has been breathing or trying to since 2005, and for the most part it’s left the game gasping for air. U.S. teams are still struggling. And, thanks to the CBA, the season is less interesting, because trades don’t happen anymore.

 What is half a Tiger worth?

 Perhaps it was all Tiger’s fault, as he says, and his wife Elin acted “courageously,” but speculation about what motivated Woods to drive his Cadillac SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree in the middle of the night outside his Florida home has moved well past the assumed ire of his wife (over an alleged infidelity). Now. it’s all about the estimates of Tiger’s net worth in a divorce settlement.

  This line comes from a TV executive, “Is that the first time Tiger has hit a water hazard and a tree on one drive? The only questions now being are what iron did Elin use (to smash in back window of Tiger’s car) and what is half a Tiger worth? Greg Norman may soon think he got off easy.” Norman paid his wife $300-million (U.S.) in his divorce settlement.

Hodge out at CFRB

 Sources report – as does Toronto blogger Fred Patterson — that Rick Hodge, the long time sportscaster, has been dropped by CFRB. He’s been off the air for several days and his name no longer appears on the CFRB website. The affable Hodge was sports director at CHUM FM for the best part of 30 years before joining CFRB in 2008.