When the transgender rights issue inserted itself in public debate, liberals reflexively shrugged their shoulders and said, “live and let live”. If they want to wear a dress or chemically/ surgically change their physical appearance, that’s their business. That included letting trans people participate in competitive sports in their new identity. The flaw in this genial acceptance became obvious in about 30 seconds.

Walter Gretzky, who passed away this past week at the age of 82, was a visionary in the training of Canadian hockey players, both men and women. He was also an avatar for the future of training the next Wane Gretzky. (Or someone of a slightly lower pedigree.) One of these accomplishments was highly beneficial to the sport The other, inadvertently, has made it more difficult for kids of modest means to achieve a career in hockey.

Play by play on radio is an art form. So is good penmanship. But it doesn’t mean it has a great future. Neither does waiting another year till the prime minister lets people travel and work and go to school. So Jays fans will likely have to grin and bear it as their TV crew tries to satisfy the unsatisfiable.

Dryden’s solution is a reluctant one. “The clever cat-and-mouse game between goalies and shooters has run its constructive course. The goalies, by winning, have changed the game.” So the net must be made bigger. “Maybe only six inches or a foot wider, maybe only six inches higher. And only for those in junior and college leagues and above.”

While it threw considerable resources at chasing down the unicorn cases of 20-year-olds dying of Covid (“It shows we must all lock down and be vigilant”), the titans of journalism never questioned the accuracy of PCR regime— which was a real story. If thewy had they’d find they were peddling a lie.

You know you’ve just blown a wad of dough on a Super Bowl commercial when @washingtonpost is talking about how Bruce Springsteen hawking your Jeeps is killing the planet. In the middle of a blowout win by Tom Brady. It was two-for-one for viewers at #SuperBowlLV . You got a football game and a lecture on Wokeness from Springsteen, BLM and the NFL. How lucky to get a little sports and a lot of coercion.

The Toronto Blue Jays are serial bingers. Every few years their fan base gets fed up with the team owners at Rogers who habitually flip nickels like manhole covers. The management then spends furiously on some big-name free agents or on eye-candy trades to soothe the savage beasts.. There is some improvement. The team makes the playoffs. Then the team slowly morphs back to what it always has done. Trying to pay a quarter for a dollar’s worth of production.

All told, the success rate of the 1979 NHL draft was a staggering one. A whopping 81.7 percent of the selections made that year ended up playing at least one NHL game. The highest rate in a year before that was only 58 percent. In spite of the drama of Wayne Gretzky’s skipping the whole draft process, 1979 still will go down as the most ridiculously stacked draft in NHL history to date.

It was an unsatisfying season at times, but it looks as though the NFL is going to be able to crown a champion at the Super Bowl in early February. Who knows, Tom Brady might win his seventh Super Bowl title, his first with Tampa Bay. Or Southern Ontario’s surrogate team, the Buffalo Bills could win their first title in five SB tries. The CFL wishes. The league that has been awarding the Grey Cup to its champion for 101 years never got out of the blocks last summer. Covid-19 security and financial woes derailed the playing of the 18-game schedule.

Bryson DeChambeau, winner of the U.S. Open, says he worked out so hard that he nearly blacked out on occasion: "There was times where I was seeing a tunnel and I had to stop… A lot of it has to do with pushing the limits of your body and going for long hours of swinging your golf club with a golf ball and trying to help up the ball speed.”

The current uproar over politicians travelling during the holidays— after urging voters not to do so— is yet another example of the “do as I say, not as I do” arrogance of Canada’s nomenklatura in the Lockdown panic. That noblesse oblige extends to forcing hockey players to remain in Canada during the regular season while they head to Hawaii and other warm climes.

Tumultuous doesn’t begin to describe 2020 here at I Don’t Like Mondays. The year began with what we thought was a big scandal— the Houston Astros cheating controversy— and ended with arguments over when athletes should get the “miracle” Covid-19 vaccine. In between the politics of fear ruled the day.

Why is this happening? Because the Covid-19 experience isn’t about Science anymore. It’s about politics, specifically identity politics. Using the pandemic to discredit enemies and buttress authority in the progressive culture. It’s about making sure all colours are accepted as long as they’re red.

He’s always been the product. He read the room and saw the need for celebrity. So he made himself one in the fashion of the big American flannel mouths like Mike Francesa, Chris Russo, Larry King etc. His tantrums and moods and sullen periods were all part of the act. Along the way he invented sports radio in Canada, taking it away from earnest hockey pucks talking trades to Marvin Miller discussing labour law during another MLB strike/ lockout.

Until Covid-19 struck early in 2020, the World Health Organization and just about every other research body looking at masks as a viable method to fight virus the past 40 years had come to one conclusion: they were of no tangible benefit., Then Covid-19 got out of control, and panicky politicians like the prime minister cast about for ways to calm the nation. And, in doing so, to cover their butts for getting everything wrong when the virus exploded.

No dates have been announced, but plans are said to be well underway for Rogers Centre to be replaced. If so, it will mark the end of one of the most celebrated episodes in sport and misspent money in the long history of Muddy York.

Remember how airport screening began with mildly intrusive searches and then escalated as shoe bombers made taking water aboard a plane into a federal crime? Remember being able to take a bottle of wine in your hand luggage? Good times. Project that rollout to the removal of civil liberties on speech and public behaviour brought on by Covid-19.

As the Tour stars now pause till January, how many who saw DeChambeau’s bombing run since June are not going to hit the supplements and the gym to stay in the game? If they demur, they could be like the players who saw an athletic, driven Tiger Woods arrive in the 1990s and missed the message to get fit, hit the range and lose the beer bellies.

What is clear is it’s highly unlikely we’ll see any resolution of the Covid-19 protocols before the Super Bowl in February. The league has married itself to the current PCR tests and hopes to simply have all 32 teams finish the 16-game schedule with no serious illness or deaths clouding play. Anything more— like full stands for the SB game— will be a bonus. Don’t hold your breath. That’s what masks are for.

How many people will support Trump/ dump Biden because of the rappers’ endorsements or the GOAT support? We will soon learn. But nothing about the vote is likely to repair the schism in North America between those who think for themselves and those who want— no, need— to do your thinking for you.