The Spin returns ...

Damien Cox will return with The Spin on Sept. 3.

Oh Sure, This Is Going To Work

Nobody, absolutely nobody, outside of the group that has very tentatively purchased the Nashville Predators believes the NHL can work long-term in that city.

This is a mess that's going to get worse before the team is shifted to Kansas City, a shame, really, when the best hockey market in the world in southern Ontario is ready, willing and able to welcome another franchise.

It seemed a little fishy when a Nashville-based collection of businessmen said they'd concluded a deal with Craig Leipold to buy the Preds early this month for far less money than Jim Balsillie had offered. Now comes the news reported in The Tennessean today that this new group is already demanding changes in lease agreements and other tax considerations that could cost Nashville taxpayers upwards of $5 million a year.

So Balsillie was a maverick and a kook that the NHL didn't want. But guys whose first move is to go hat in hand to the tax trough - those are the guys this league wants!

What's incredible, of course, is that the Predators already received the greatest sweetheart deal in the history of sports sweetheart deals when they landed in Nashville in the first place as an expansion franchise. The building was built for them and the city gave them millions of dollars just for bringing the team there.

Now - more please.

If Nashville wants to pay for this, well, good for them. It's not that different from Pittsburgh, really, where local politicians and taxpayers believe getting into bed with gambling interests is an appropriate way to fund a new hockey arena.

But it can't possibly work long-term. Short-term, meanwhile, the team won't be as good as last season and the new owners conveniently still hold the right to opt out of the current lease if attendance falls below 14,000 this season.

And why wouldn't it?

The NHL has botched this entire issue from the start, mostly because Gary Bettman got his back up over Balsillie and his legal representatives. But instead of fixing the problems, Bettman has simply engineered a situation that could turn uglier yet.

Then again, maybe Nashville citizens and their political representatives will just tell the new Preds owners to take a hike, and maybe this latest deal falls apart as well.

Wouldn't it be fun if the Bettman administration was forced to go back to Balsillie?

Bell and Busted

The NHL is full of stories of players who mess up in various places,then, miraculously, grow up and find their game somewhere else.

There's not much to indicate that Mark Bell will find that place in Toronto. But its certainly possible.

The Leafs took a flyer on the kid, or had to take him as part of the deal to get goalie Vesa Toskala. They, like many teams, have had some success with these kinds of projects in the past. Richard Jackman once came to the Leafs as an unfulfilled former first round pick with a history of alcohol problems. The Leafs were at least part of his turnaround, and there he was last year, still playing in the league, and this time with the Stanley Cup champs.

Bates Battaglia, on the other hand, just didn't understand the committment needed to play in the league. The Leafs gave him a chance to find his way in the minors, and he became a useful depth player last season.

If you want to be a good NHL team, you have to have the ability to find such undervalued assets and turn them into regulars. Really, it's always been that way.

What was interesting was how the Leafs chose to address the news yesterday that Bell will be going to jail at the end of this season on drunk driving charges. Few realized that someone was hurt significantly in this incident - the driver of the truck Bell hit - and that Bell is still up to his eyeballs in legal problems over this incident.

The Leafs seemed slow to react, with GM John Ferguson finally issuing a bland, predictable statement crafted by some public relations guy, and then Bell doing to the same.

Contrast that with another athlete, albeit one in very different, non-legal bind. Stephen Ames failed miserably in his final PGA championship round pairing with Tiger Woods, but by the day after was on the media circut, very available to print, radio and TV reporters interested in discussing that and his exclusion from Presidents Cup team.

Suddenly, instead of being difficult to reach, Ames was everywhere, and suddenly he became a sympathetic character rather than a punchline.

For the Leafs, this Bell story isn't going to go away. But he's surely not the only 20-something to get in trouble with drinking and driving, and they would do well to find a way before training camp to get his story out there in a human way.

People will be much quicker to forget other stuff if he can play.

But right now, most people don't even know what he looks like. They just know he sounds like trouble, not a solution of any kind.

Scandals with Legs

Sports fans are known to have incredibly short memories.

Yesterday's scumbag can easily be today's hero. Sean Hill will just be another NHLer after serving the final 19 games of his drug suspension next season with the Minnesota Wild. Folks remember Wade Boggs as a great player, not the fellow with the "sex addiction." These days, you have to wonder if even Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich would manage to hold the headlines for more than a week. To see the way U.S. television networks glorify Ray Lewis is to wonder if they've been banned from discussing how he ever slipped out of that nasty murder investigation. And on and on it goes.

That, however, is what may be different this summer.

All of the Big Four summer controversies  - Michael Vick, the Tour de France, Barry Bonds and Tim Donaghy - have the potential to have lasting impact on the athletes involved and their sports.

So which is likely to be the stickiest?

1. Donaghy and the allegations about NBA game fixing: Given that fans are screaming every game anyway about calls and non-calls, this entire story presents a terrible problem for the NBA which will have a heckuva time convincing the basketball public that this was an isolated problem. Already, last season is tainted, and referees, you can bet, will be scrutinized even more closely this coming season.

2. Bonds and the steroid cloud: If this story ended today, with Bonds crowned as the all-time home run champ, that would be one thing. But baseball has its ongoing Mitchell investigation, Greg Anderson might yet crack and there are all kinds of potential legal land mines for Bonds still out there.

3. Tour de France and doping: Right now, some are predicting this year's mess will mark the end of the Tour. Don't believe it. Indeed, once the Tour gets past the denial phase, it has a great opportunity to find aggressive ways to ensure the race is clean in the future. Maybe you lock all the cyclists up in a compound for the final two months before the race and tuck them into bed every night until it's all over. This year was rock bottom and now, if these people have any brains at all, the rebuilding can begin to make sure this famous competition doesn't turn into the Indy 500.

4. Vick and dog-fighting charges: As a dog lover, I wish this was No. 1 on this list, but indications are that Vick will be forced into some kind of plea bargain. That means no trial, and likely limited exposure as to exactly how involved the Atlanta quarterback was with this disgusting operation. Even if Vick ends up in jail for a period of time, you can easily imagine Monday Night Football heralding his return with the Falcons or whatever team he joins and fans putting aside this ugly story if their team improves its red zone production with Vick at the helm.

Playing for History

Interesting that MLSE has produced yet another team that successfully draws fans but can't win. What a remarkably inept sports organization, yet the footie faithful haven't hestitated even momentarily to jump aboard.

(Wow - 21-3 in shots. Those are like Leaf-Devil totals).

But now that the soccer screamers should be quieted, you have to believe, for at least a day, time to move on to other more meaningful topics.

Such as, isn't this Tiger Woods vs. Roger Federer as the greatest individual athlete in sports getting interesting?

Woods, with Canada's Stephen Ames doing an oh-so-predictable fade, cruised to his 13th major championship on Sunday with a victory at the PGA in sweltering Tulsa. That leaves him five short of Jack Nicklaus for the all-time wins total in the four biggees and 13-13 in majors won after going into Sunday leading.

Federer, meanwhile, took a bit of a step backwards after being upset in Montreal by surging Novak Djokovic of Serbia. Anyone who watches tennis, and in particular, watched Wimbledon, could see this one coming. Djokovic is a major talent, a more well-rounded player than either Rafael Nadal or Andy Roddick, and he has a coolness under pressure that served him well in Sunday's final in Montreal.

Still, it wasn't a Grand Slam event for Federer. His next substantial test comes at the U.S. Open in two weeks, which is already shaping up as a fabulous competition between the Swiss master and a pack of challengers including Djokovic, Nadal and Roddick. Federer has 11 Grand Slam titles and is closing in on Pete Sampras' record of 14 in the same way Woods is chasing Nicklaus.

The added factor in the Woods vs. Federer comparison is that it would appear Federer has more meaningful challengers than Woods. Compare Woods' 13-for-13 record, for example, with the fact that Federer has lost French Open final to Nadal and fell to Djokovic in yesterday's Masters event in Montreal. The rest of the golfers, meanwhile, seem terrified of Woods, who continues to set a conditioning level that the rest of the sport can't match.

The Montreal event, meanwhile, was a spectacular success, particularly from an aesthetic viewpoint, with three of the top four seeds making it through to the semifinals. This week's tourney at the Rexall Centre has obviously been hurt by the withdrawal of several top female players, something the WTA continues to promise to fix but hasn't yet fixed.

If there's a silver lining, at least both cities can count on having the more consistent quality and depth of the men's event every second year. Right now, if either Toronto or Montreal was scheduled to host the women's tournament for, say, 10 straight years, it would be an extremely difficult task to promote successfully given the seemingly cavalier nature with which so many of the top female players withdraw in the final days before the tournament begins.

Friday Incompletions

While we were away, Dustin Penner became a $4 million hockey player. I keep looking for the time portal to recapture the five years I apparently missed. . .Doug MacLean as an NHL owner; I say bravo to the pride of P.E.I., who quite rightly figured out long ago it's tougher to get fired the closer you get to the top. . .Still waiting for the Maple Leafs to do the right thing and sign Mike Peca. Without him, it's just not as possible to take them very seriously. . .By the way, why is it that people seem to assume the Leafs have solved their goaltending problems with the addition of Vesa Toskala? The Finn still has an awful lot to prove. . .Every time Derek Jeter strolls to the plate, he seems to engage in the most pleasant conversations with the catcher and home plate umpire. . .With all the focus on Jeter and A-Rod and Jason Giambi and Roger Clemens, it's easy not to see how remarkably young these Yankees have suddenly become. . .The Bonds home run mark is eye-catching, but not as eye-catching as his astronomical walks totals. We can question his integrity, but you cannot question that however he did it, he was for a decade or more the most feared hitter in the history of the sport. . .Interesting Henry Aaron fact: He got his first shot with the Braves in spring training in 1954 when Bobby Thomson, of all people, broke his ankle. . .Even with all those home runs and MVP awards, Bonds is still 314 RBIs short of Aaron's all-time record. Don't think Son of Bobby will be reaching that one. . .Love Notre Dame. But I'm not really cheering for Brady Quinn to succeed anymore. . .If you're not going out of your way to watch Hamilton middle linebacker Zeke Moreno, you're missing something very special these days. . .The Argos can blame injuries if they want. But this problem at quarterback was very, very apparent in the winter and nothing substantive was done. . .

AND ANOTHER THING, OR TWO...
If the men's tennis tour was smart, they'd hold an exhibition during which Marat Safin could bust as many racquets as his heart desired. It's painful to watch the sport's most tortured man have to hold it in all the time. If he was a football player, Safin would be A.J. Gass. . .I'm not sure Frank Dancevic realizes the enormous impact he could have on tennis in this country if he could ever climb into the top 30. Then again, that shouldn't be his priority these days anyways. . .As a sports media personality, Joe Torre may be even more outstanding than he is as a baseball manager. . .The closer the NBA gets to the season without any real information being revealed to the public on the scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy, the more convinced I am that hundreds of the league's games this season will be accompanied by questions surrounding officials' calls. These zebras won't have a chance. . .Its utterly laughable how the Boston Celtics are being acclaimed as potential NBA champs now that they've acquired Kevin Garnett. They'll be life and death to make the playoffs. . .Best overall job of NHL team-building this summer? Yep, Lou Lamoriello again. He got the best free agent available in head coach Brent Sutter, improved his blueline with Vitali Vishnevski and Karel Rachunek and got Zach Parise's name on a contract at a reasonable price. As well, three Devils prospects have been named to Russia's team for the upcoming Canada/Russia junior series.

Insecurity Alert

My, my, my - some people are clearly not getting enough relaxation time in this summer.

The in-box was thoroughly flooded over the past two days after - horrors! - this space failed to highlight the contributions of Toronto FC to the summer sports spectacular we are all supposedly experiencing here in mighty Hogtown.

I suggested it was rather quiet out there these days. The soccer crowd (mob?) tends to disagree. MLSE puts another losing team out to the public, these folks buy in like lemmings and those who dare to find it all rather uninteresting are taken to task.

Well, that's typical for the footie crowd. It's always been that way. Never content to simply enjoy their fave sport, they get their knickers in an insecurity knot when the rest of the sports world doesn't fall to its knees in praise of the beautiful game.

To make things clear, two of my four kids play soccer. My wife plays, and even scored her first goal in roughly a quarter-century Wednesday night (our union will be in serious jeopardy the moment she reads that).

So I don't hate the sport. At the grassroots level, it gets quite of few of my dollars on an annual basis. I just don't particularly love it, and having spent most of the summer in the city, my sense is that TFC and the Under-20 tourney were both successful at the gate, but Mo Johnston can still feel safe walking down Yonge St. without being noticed. I'm glad folks are having a ton-o-fun at little BMO Field, but I'm just not feeling the mania.

When  it comes to soccer, this is very much the minors, and probably always will be. Last week I took in minor league baseball games in Auburn, N.Y. and Syracuse, and undoubtedly there are fans in those cities who believe fervently in their teams and that they are being ignored by the larger sporting community.

But the soccer folks always take it to a new level. If you don't buy what they're selling, you're a moron. A jackass. An idiot.

That's the part that bugs me. See, I love tennis, but I understand that it's a sport that isn't nearly as popular as it once was, and that for many, it's simply not their cup of tea.

And I'm ok with that. When people ignore the game, I don't fire off indignant emails.

I don't scream to the hills in defence of the game I prefer. I don't get all bug-eyed and command others to follow the ATP and WTA tours. I simply accept that what I like, others don't.

So soccer people - relax. Sorry (not really) I didn't mention TFC in my previous "Dead Zone" blog, but quite frankly, last-place MLS teams playing out of a home stadium on a surface the world's best consider a joke don't really register in my brain in August.

The Dead Zone

The sporting calendar has become so incredibly crowded, with virtually every sport accused of playing too many games and having a schedule that's too long, that its rare to find a time when there's not that much going on.

Well, this is that time.

Calling mid-August the dead zone on the sports calendar might be stretching it a bit, but it's not unreasonable to say that for a Torontonian, or even a Canadian, this is a time of year when one's mind could drift away to contemplate larger questions of life and not miss a whole lot.

Okay, you might miss Barry Bonds hitting No. 756. But that's happening on West Coast time, the TV numbers are down, Bonds is a character few adore and this is a mark, quite frankly, that has been set to topple for weeks now.

There's no suprise factor here at all.

We've got the Canadian tennis tourneys, this week in Montreal for the men, next week in Toronto for the women. No matter how much these events try to pump themselves up, however, they're seen as second- or third-tier events on their respective tours. Moreover, it'll be interesting to see just how many highly-ranked women actually show up next week at the Rexall Centre. In Montreal, unless Frank Dancevic goes on a run, it seems unlikely the tournament will create shock waves from coast to coast to coast, particularly if a Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal final doesn't come to pass.

The Blue Jays sort of seem to want to get involved in the wild card race, but not really. The CFL season is just getting rolling and the Argos don't have a quarterback (or do they?). Maybe as we get into September this Jesse Lumsden story really starts to get legs, but we'll see.

NFL pre-season - yuk - has started, NHL teams have pretty much set their rosters and the Raptors are getting set to take their roundball circus on a European tour. The PGA Championship, the least interesting major on the golf tour, is about to start.

Before we know it, of course, NHL training camps will be opening, baseball's pennant races will be heating up, tennis will have the U.S. Open on centre stage, the CFL will be hitting the Labour Day turn and the NFL schedule will be underway.

So take a breath while you can.