QB's The problem???

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Solar Max
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Blitz wrote: After all, we are talking about the CFL, where if you somehow manage to scrape into the playoffs, you're only three wins away from a championship, no matter how bad your record may have been over the course of a season.

And at that championship point, everyone jumps up and down and pats each other on the back and acts as though they've cured cancer and declare themselves winners, when in fact somebody has to come away with a trophy in a league that has just eight teams.
\

And you know Tony, you have never yet failed to remind us of that. Thank you. In your attempts to belittle the game and the League that we here care about, you never ever mention the 39 years of futility that the team YOU cover has going for it, nor the fact that the League it's in buries its head in the sand and says that playing hit each other with sharp frozen sticks is gonna go over BIG in the desert, in Kansas City, in Atlanta, and in frozen Florida, land of the midnight sun.

You always have been an egotistical bastard, and this is to be expected from one such as you. Why not read one of Ullrich's columns if you want to learn how to write one, or better yet, go see the man? He's easy to talk to, and has no entourage such as you and the overpaid whiners you cover do.

/rant off.
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David
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I just got back from reading that column in my local Starbucks and thought to be an unnecessary jab at the league. If he's trying to branch out into sports other than hockey and basketball (Steve Nash love letters mostly), it's perhaps unwise to alienate your target reader.

Hmmm, I wonder if he harbored similiar feelings about the NHL prior to the 1967-8 season when it only had 6 teams. Did we belittle the Stanley Cup Champions back then?

DH
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The_Pauser
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While I disagree with Tony's jab at the league, I do agree with his sentiments about our QB problems. It's funny how I've singled this area out as a problem on this team and only now others begin to agree. I'd like to see what Lulay or even Champion could do, while Printers works his way back into game shape. Remember, when Jason Maas went down, Ricky Ray was a green rookie who came in and people were concerned about that. The rest is history.....
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Toppy Vann
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As to Gallagher not being popular in the Lions offices...too funny. He couldn't find the Lions offices as he never leaves Vancouver. He is like David Pratt only he travels further to work.

For those of you who follow the Canucks you might recognize that same boiler plate column as this is his cry baby column that he uses to attack a hockey team/coach. Just insert some hockey name and player and you got the Tony formula.

I think Brian Burke summed up this guy pretty well.

Gallagher is like those stupid hockey call in guys who when the NHL is on strike for months are still micro-analyzing (thank you Geroy for the term) phantom hockey lines or who should play with the Sedins. He has called for Luongo, Sedins, etc to be run out of town at various times too. He is a perpetual whiner who trots out the same old crap and manages to keep his gig for some bizarre reason.

Insanity is the same offence that Hufnagel, Cortez and Dickinson know so well that Wally will have a challenge ever beating his former coaches/players. Changing the QB is not the issue.

If there was one columnist who has hardly any credibility to criticize football in BC it is Tony Gallagher. Granted he doesn't much have any credibility with hockey either and is a pariah among the Canuck players who think he is a joke (at least the ones I knew some years back did...haha so this might be dated.)
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
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cromartie
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Toppy Vann wrote: If there was one columnist who has hardly any credibility to criticize football in BC it is Tony Gallagher. Granted he doesn't much have any credibility with hockey either and is a pariah among the Canuck players who think he is a joke (at least the ones I knew some years back did...haha so this might be dated.)
So, if I understand this column correctly, the author is saying the following:

Neither QB is very good.
The coaching isn't very good.
It doesn't matter who plays QB because the coaching isn't very good.
Casey Printers has been out of football since 2005 because he asked why he didn't start the Grey Cup game.
Most CFL teams make the playoffs and, because they do, anyone can win.

Based on this premise, the recommended solution is:

Start Lulay.

Does this make any sense to anyone?

Did the Sports Editor have the day off?

I mean, this column is so stupid I'd like to ask the author to ship me some Tylenol with codeine for the painful inconvenience of having to read it.

Please tell me none of you paid for the publication that published this.
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Toppy Vann
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I too am disappointed with the Sports Editor allowing this gutless attack on Wally Buono as some sort of long time viewer, first time writer! It was a gutless column that should have been stopped as it unfairly attacks the CFL and he has zero credibility on football or hockey for that matter.
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It's deja vu all over again fans. Its 2001 and the Canucks are struggling out of the gate and the fingers are pointing at the goal tending versus other areas of the team as Tony Gallagher can count to ten and its time to start whining as the season has just 64 games left to play and that's just the regular season.

Mark Crawford... Brian Burke.... this is your life............ or say says Gallagher.... I won't repeat what Burke called him back then as it not nice to call people names. Does this sound familiar with a little editing to get the sport and team right?


Watching the Canucks' struggles this season without availing oneself of the curious wisdom of Brian Burke can often provide a clearer vision of what seems to be happening, at least in the eyes of this long-time viewer.

After yet another solid effort by most of the team, which not surprisingly fell short again Friday night, the coach was quoted as saying "a loss is a loss" and that it was the "the same old story" with respect to what happened against the Calgary Flames.

Yes, it was the same old story. They couldn't stop the Flames attack just like they haven't been able to stop it all season, and once again the goal tending was just good enough to let you think these guys might be alright, and just bad enough to lose as they did for the seventh time in 12 tries this dismal season.

But why would anyone in their right mind expect anything different? Haven't these two goalees, Dan Cloutier and Bob Essena, by now demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that they simply can't handle the position sufficiently well enough to win on a regular basis.

Note the term "win on a regular basis" is used. This is not to say they couldn't win a Stanley Cup, which is something completely different.

After all, we are talking about the NHL, where if you somehow manage to scrape into the playoffs, you're only three playoffs away from a championship, no matter how bad your record may have been over the course of a season.

And at that championship point, everyone jumps up and down and pats each other on the back and acts as though they've cured cancer and declare themselves winners, when in fact somebody has to come away with a trophy in a league that all but the crippled and lame make the playoffs.

So having goalees like these two don't preclude a Conference title, they just make it less likely.

Of course, both goalees tempt you with their individual talents – Essena with his size, strength and great blocking arm; Cloutier with his quickness, intelligence and occasional precision.

But just as obvious are their shortcomings which have been well-documented, and it's those shortcomings which these guys have consistently demonstrated over a long period of time and varied circumstances which make you scratch your head when a supposedly bright guy like Mark Crawford keeps using them.

When you keep behaving the same way over and over again while expecting a different result, well these are not good signs.

Yet that's exactly what the Canucks keep doing. They keep starting one of these two guys and expect things will turn our differently. It borders on insanity.
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
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cromartie
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Toppy Vann wrote:I too am disappointed with the Sports Editor allowing this gutless attack on Wally Buono as some sort of long time viewer, first time writer! It was a gutless column that should have been stopped as it unfairly attacks the CFL and he has zero credibility on football or hockey for that matter.
Really, I mean seriously this was like the print version of a Dan Russell show. I am marginally less intelligent for having read that. And I'm an American, so I don't have a lot of intelligence to spare to begin with. (That's a joke, should any flag wavers wander in).

Just stop. Don't waste the bandwidth. Let a household pet express the proper opinion instead and move on.

*****
Which I can't resist doing without adding this. The mark of a good columnist is a person that uses active experiences or interviews to tell a story. When a lot of writers first get a column, and it doesn't even have to just be within the sporting realm, they make that effort to go out and get the actualities and the experiences to tell a great story. Eventually, columnists get lazy, or believe their own hype. When they do, they turn into opinion deliverers. They pick a topic and voice their opinions from on high. When this begins to happen consistently, they begin to accelerate the alienation of their readership and probably need to be replaced. Mike Royko never stopped digging for a column. Jay Mariotti turned into a gasbag. Mitch Albom diversified his life to the point that a guy who was once a great sports columnist is now more or less phoning it in.

Good column.

Bad column.

See the difference?
Last edited by cromartie on Sun Sep 27, 2009 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Solar Max
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I agree with cromartie completely.

Gallagher delivered the same "Grey Cups are no big deal" speech on team10hockey just last week with Price. It's about the 4th time I've heard him use it. That's why my visceral reaction was....somewhat aggressive.

Columns are meant to stir passion, and give the moron credit, because this one certainly did.

As for you Canuck people, I am pleased that he is yours, and not out among the general population.
TheLionKing
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I'm frankly surprised that Gallagher know the names of our quarterbacks.
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Lions4ever
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David wrote:
Hmmm, I wonder if he harbored similiar feelings about the NHL prior to the 1967-8 season when it only had 6 teams. Did we belittle the Stanley Cup Champions back then?

DH
Toe Blake was a putz.
-Tony Gallagher
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