Canada Sports Power Rankings

Hello and welcome to the Canadian Sports Power Rankings!

The goal here will be to (semi-seriously) rank Canadian athletes - both those born in Canada and occasionally those playing for teams located in Canada - in order of percieved "power" in the Canadian sports landscape. Since we are in the midst of Peak Sports Season (NFL, NHL, NCAAFB and MLB (and CFL, I guess) are all still playing games, NBA and NCAABB are just days away from tip-off) there's no better time to start then now!

Like most sports power rankings columns, this will consist of a completely arbitrary rating not based on any actual standings or statistics. Since we'll be spanning the entire sporting world and not just focusing on one particular league, these rankings will be even MORE arbitrary than any other power ranking you'll have seen before. In fact, the main factors in these rankings will be a combination of popularity, media hype, and on-field/court/ice performance.

So without any more up-front BS, lets start the rankings:

Canada Basketball got screwed by FIBA, Finland, and... Angry Birds?

A re-enactment of  the Rovio-FIBA "sponsorship".

It's a boring Saturday afternoon. I'm sitting here watching Team USA destroy Team Finland on the opening day of the FIBA World Cup, and I'm wondering "how the heck did this Finland team even qualify for this tournament?" Because they are getting absolutely pummeled. 

My next thought was "I wonder what group Canada is in?" 

Well, I must not have been paying much attention in the spring, when the qualifiers were announced, because Canada did not qualify for the tournament. That's right; Canada, Land of the First Overall Picks, did not qualify. Shameful, I thought. We should be watching Wiggins & Co. get pummeled by Team USA, not those blond-haired, blue-shirted Finns! How could this happen?

Baseball is Awesome: A Fan's Review of the Blue Jays 19-Inning Game

7 hours in 4 pictures.

19 innings. 7 hours. 39 hits, 19 walks, 43 men left on base. Two sunburned arms. And one severely damaged set of vocal chords.

Yes, I was one of the 46,126 fans at the Rogers Centre yesterday. Yes, I stayed for the whole game. And yes, I'm going to describe it here for anyone who did not have the pleasure of attending.

It started out like any other Sunday afternoon game, except there was a little more excitement in the air than usual. This was likely from a combination of a) Saturday night's comeback win b) the traitorous Tigers fans from across Ontario being in the house, and c) the number of young families at the Dome (primarily just to get a free hat).

The game started off how every Jays Talk-calling, Mike Wilner-annoying fan expected: Buehrle looked awful, offering tasty meatballs for the murderous top half of the Tigers lineup. Reyes seemed to bobble away any chance of stopping them. David Price probably felt very comfortable pitching against his old whipping boys, despite his new uniform. Errors and strikeouts were plentiful from the Jays. It looked like the sunshine and the free hat would be the highlights of the day for every Jays fan at the park.

But then, something changed. It seemed to start when David Price was hit by a comebacker in his knee-groin area. Now,I would never accuse anyone of being happy when a player gets injured - that's just mean. But it felt like we were the Rebels, and had finally found a vulnerability in the Death Star. There was no sympathy from the crowd.

The Loser of the Wiggins-Love Trade? Canada Basketball

Did Kevin Love and LeBron James hurt our chances of seeing more of this?

The trade that's kept the NBA world buzzing for the past couple weeks seems to have finally been finalized.

Cleveland will trade Canadian youngsters SF Andrew Wiggins and PF Anthony Bennett (who were drafted 1st overall in the previous two drafts) along with a draft pick to Minnesota for All star PF Kevin Love, who will team up with All Star PG Kyrie Irving and some LeBron guy to seemingly create a new "Big Three"for the Cavaliers.

The move has been rumoured for weeks, since James shocked the world and went home to Ohio, and Love started making it pretty clear he wanted out of Minnesota sooner than later. Then in his written-word version of "The Announcement," James' failed to mention new teammates Wiggins and Bennett, and as of last week still hadn't reached out to them. This week the trade was confirmed by the god of NBA reporting, Adrian Wojnarowski, despite the fact League rules say it can't be completed for a few days.

The consensus on the trade is that it's good deal for both sides. Love gets what he wants (out of Minnesota, onto a contender), LeBron gets what he wants (Love), Cleveland gets what it wants (whatever LeBron wants) and Minnesota gets what they want (the highest-upside rookie since Anthony Davis.)

Canadian Sports Week in Preview

Can you feel it? The end of summer is around the corner. But just as summer begins to wind down, the sports calendar ramps up, like a guardian angel shielding you from post-summer depression.

So let's take a look at whats on tap for the next week in the Canadian Sporting universe.

YA, TENNIS!

The Rogers Cup (Men's) - Toronto - through Aug. 10:

Tennis is an extremely underrated sport in Canada, or at least it's underrated by the average Canadian. Part of that is probably due to fact we haven't ever had a "local boy" to cheer for (sorry, Daniel Nestor. Nobody respects Doubles for some reason.) And another part is the yearly tradition of Tennis' biggest stars "sitting out" the Rogers Cup.

Both trends seem to be ending, though. Milos Raonic and Vaclav Pospisil have had unprecedented success of Canadians on the Men's side of things. And of the "Big 3" (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic) only Nadal managed to weasel his way out of playing in the Great White North this year - which could be caused in part by the aforementioned success of Ranoic and co., making Toronto more of a "destination".

Anyway, with the increased competition, don't expect a miraculous Canadian championship run at the Coupe De Rogers. Raonic, the brightest of the bunch by far, has a powerful serve that could carry him deep in the tournament, but just as we saw at Wimbledon, it likely won't be enough to take out a Djokovic or Federer.

The Wonderful Mysterious World of OVO Bounce

HOO the heck knew about this 2nd Annual OVO Bounce Tournament?

This weekend saw a lot of crazy stuff going down in the Greater Toronto Area - Caribana, bridges being taken out by drunken truck drivers, and boy band concerts. But the only one I'm disappointed I'm missing out on has got to be OVO Bounce - a week-long basketball tournament/festival leading up to OVO Fest. For those not in-the-know, OVO stands for October's Very Own - the name of rapper/crooner Drake's label, and OVO Fest has become an annual Toronto concert event featuring most of the hottest names in rap and R&B.

But the newest addition to the festival is what has me intrigued. From what I can tell as a far, far-outside observer, OVO Bounce is a 4-day, 8-team Pro-Am tournament held in the Ryerson University gyms, that features many of the biggest names in Canadian basketball. The tournament is a partnership between noted basketball fan Drake, and CIA Bounce, a Canadian Youth Basketball Development program that has been dominating tournaments stateside and pumping out NBA draftees for the last handful of years. Wiggins, Bennett, Ennis, Thompson and Bhullar all played for CIA Bounce, and were all involved in the Pro-Am that also included current Toronto Raptor Amir Johnson, Detroit Piston Brandon Jennings, and many more.

5 Reasons the Blue Jays Made the Right Move by not Making Any Moves at the Trade Deadline

Why is everybody so mad at me, John?

After a long, tiring day of listening to FAN590 callers whine and moan about the Jays lack of action on today's MLB Trade Deadline day, it's finally over. And now begins the backlash - rumours of unhappiness in the clubhouse, namely from El Capitano Jose Bautista himself. People are calling for GM Alex Anthopolous' head, albeit in a poorly-articulated manner.

But I believe in Alex Anthopolous. I believe that he made the right decision in not making any deals. I believe the Jays are still in prime position to make the playoffs and win in the playoffs. And here are five reasons why I believe all that and why you should, too.

1. The Jays already have the best bats in the league.
   
   3rd in the league (MLB) in Batting Average. 2nd in OBP. 3rd in SLG. 1st in home runs. Even after the team's brutal June, the Jays dominate with the bat. They possess a deeeeep bench, filled with starting-caliber bats (although in some cases needing some platoonage.) When healthy,there's a major-league worthy bat at every position, which I don't think any other team can say. Maybe Oakland could've come close to the Jays at the plate, but after trading away Yoenis Cespedes they aren't the powerhouse they were yesterday.
   
   This is our advantage. Have some faith in the guys hitting the cover off the ball.
   

About CanSportsBlog

Hi everybody, welcome to the CanSportsBlog.

Through some magical luck on my part, you've somehow made it here. My guess is, you're a Canadian sports fan with some web-saavy, just like myself. Maybe you found me through Blogger, or maybe you came across the official @CanSportsBlog Twitter account. No matter how you came to this post, on this blog, I thank you for checking it out, and I hope you'll check back as I plan on updating often.

My motivation for starting this blog is the culmination of a few factors:

I spend a lot of my time following, reading, listening to and discussing Canadian sports.

Seriously. I'm pretty obsessed with sports. It's the best drama there is: it never ends, it has a near-unlimited number of characters, story-lines, and you never have to look far to find someone who's willing to discuss and debate with you. Why spend your time watching anything else?

It's not just the actual games that are interesting, either. To me, everything about the sports world is genuinely enthralling. The business decisions that go on behind the scenes, where money and politics have just as much importance as what happens on the field. The media that covers Canadian sports, despite being somewhat homogenous compared to our American brethren, creates engaging discussion points, and many media members often become entertaining characters in their own right. Everything from Collective Bargaining Agreements to Amateur Drafts to new stadium developments is just downright exciting.

So, why Canadian sports? I'm really not one of those "Rah rah, Canada is the best, USA sux!" patriots. In fact, I think being overly proud of the accomplishments of your country (a.k.a. "nationalism") is kind of silly. But being a sports fan is also silly. It's fun to cheer for someone, even if they were born on the other side of the continent and have very little in common with yourself. And as I'll explain below, I believe that for a relatively small country with relatively little emphasis on sports, we're on the precipice of a "Golden Age" of Canadian athletes and professional sports.