Gary Bettman’s World Cup of Cash is coming down to the ending it richly deserved. Canada against… um, a team representing about six different European nations. Team Bouillabaisse. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck..

The problem— as we’ve been saying since this smoking mess was revealed—  is that the NHL really needs a World Cup. Just not this novelty version with Team Bouillabaisse and the NHL version of the Jonas Brothers masquerading as nations. As the international marker for the sport known around the world. Debated and savoured by its fans. This 2016 version accomplishes none of these. 

With the arrival of the first weekend of NFL action, a tradition is renewed for another year. No, not the tradition of Carrie Underwood flashing what her Momma gave her on the NBC opener. We’re talking about video replay cranking up for another year of complaint and rage in the NFL. 

Sure, there’s been plenty of video review all summer in MLB and the CFL. It seems like we can’t have a catcher scratch his nose in baseball without umpires slapping on the audio cans for a chat with MLB suits in New York. Meanwhile, the CFL allows coaches to review the menu in the press box if they so desire.

The end of the hockey world as we know it: Jiri Hudler is taking a pass on the World Cup of Hockey.

Okay, maybe that’s not so earth-shattering. There are other players taking a pass on Gary’s World Cup of Cash, and they won’t derail the supercalifragilistic display of hockey supremacy either. But there are factors at play that could sabotage what should be the future of NHL involvement in international play.

Colin Kaepernick has had a fit of conscience. The struggling San Francisco 49ers quarterback has decided he will stand up by sitting down during the national anthem in protest of a grab bag of Black Lives Matter grievances. Specifically, Kaepernick (who is a man of colour) thinks police are wantonly murdering blacks in America.

Quoth Kaepernick: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

With more than one option, Canadian officials were in a quandary over who should carry the flag into the closing ceremonies of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Would it be the 16-year old wunderkind Penny Oleksiak, who’d won a record four swimming medals— including a gold in the 100- metre freestyle?

Or should it be sprinter Andre DeGrasse, the 21-year-old sensation who’d gone shoulder-to-shoulder on the track with the immortal Usain Bolt and emerged with three medals of his own, including silver in the 200 metres?

Or what about high-jump gold medalist Derek Drouin? Or how about race walker Evan Dunfee, a race waker who told the world he didn’t want any medal if it came on an appeal?

The Canadian story of the 2016 Rio Olympics so far is the utter domination of Canadian men by women in the medal standings. As of Monday, Canada had 13 medals. All but one won by a women. Let me repeat that: All. But. One. Won. By. A. Women. The transcendent Penny Oleksiak was herself responsible for four of them. The country has been flooded with stories about, in the words of Justin Bieber… er, prime minister Justin Trudeau, Girl Power.

But, there’s no moment that some people won’t try to turn to they own purposes. So guess what? According to some, we don’t respect our women athletes. The evidence? A Toronto Sun headline about Oleksiak that blared “Pretty Penny” when she claimed a gold medal. That was sexist.

To paraphrase an old line, “I tuned into the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, and a climate conference broke out.”

The stars of the 2016 Olympic opening ceremonies are purported to be the athletes themselves. Their hopes, their dreams and their accomplishments in pursuit of gold. And there was some of that on the floor of the Maracana Stadium in Rio as the heroes of the Games marched in to start the Summer Games. An athlete’s smile can light up the world.

It is the best of times for golf. It is the worst of times for golf. 

As the best players in the world sloshed through torrential rains this weekend at the PGA Championship, the case could be made that “the good walk spoiled” is the most compelling of the major sports at this moment. Coming off a once-in-a-lifetime final-round duel between Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson at the Open Championship at Troon, golf has a stable of charismatic, telegenic players in contention each week.  

 Philip Henslowe: Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery. 

— Shakespeare In Love

The lines from the 1989 Oscar winner pretty much sum up the typical approach to an Olympic Games. In the years before the event, disaster is widely predicted. Pollution, terrorism, rampant drug use, political upheaval, climate eruptions— all have been predicted for the Games over the decades. 

Then, somehow, it all turns out well. How? It’s a mystery. 

But with the Rio Summer Games just days away, there is a strange unease, a sense that the mystery element may not save this first foray by the International Olympic Committee into South America. 

As John McEnroe pointed out on Sunday, there are a couple of ways to look at Milos Raonic’s first Grand Slam final in the moments after Andy Murray had swept him 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 at the All England Club. The irascible lefty with the trenchant tongue observed the ways to look at Raonic’s deflating finish to a spectacular Wimbledon.

The way they spent money the past week in the NBA and NHL you’d have thought Kathleen Wynne found another way to made power more expensive for Ontarians. After a time of relative salary sobriety, NHL and NBA general managers embarked on a spending spree that sank the case for economic restraint. 

News reports say that George Stromboulopoulos is out as host of Hockey Night In Canada after two seasons on Canada’s most prestigious TV property. And-- O, the irony-- his predecessor Ron MacLean is back in the chair he occupied for decades before Rogers Communication won the TV/ social media rights to NHL hockey in Canada and shunted MacLean off to the hinterland.

Next thing you'll tell me Stephen Harper will come back as prime minister.

Tales from another land, long ago: In the 1960s, my father bought our family a table-top hockey game representing the six teams then in the NHL. My father was a social Darwinist, so he told me and my four brothers that we couldn’t all have the same team. We had to choose different teams. My two older brothers selected the two Canadian teams, the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs.