Chivas USA

It's really been bugging me that CD Chivas USA has said they will only be obtaining and playing Mexicans.  
I think the fact that the club has gone back to "Mexicans only" is ignorant and and frankly, won't work. It sure didn't work the first time. It's not that Mexico doesn't have a deep enough talent pool. I get it, the owner is a Mexican, owns a huge club in Mexico (Chivas de Guadalajara) and wants to develop talent to go to Mexico and win there. Here's the problem, MLS is not a development league. It's a teir 1 professional soccer league.
On top of that; EVEN if the league is seen as a way for American and Canadians to get more playing time to develop their national teams then why do we have a club developing for the Mexican national team? 
Sorry if that sounds like I hate people from Mexico, that's not the case at all. I just think this club, in it's current state, has no business in MLS. 

MS Walk

So, I'm participating in the 2013 MS Walk (Cambridge region) this year.
In the past I have done the bike event, which has been a blast, but this year our team is going to try the walk.
It's a 10k walk and it should be a lot of fun. I've already started my training by utilizing the treadmill in the gym in my building.
If you wouldn't mind having a look at my pledge page, and maybe thinking about giving a couple dollars to the cause, or letting more people know about this with a tweet ?
Anything you can do to help spread the word.
I appreciate it very much.

WWE '13

I'm sitting here enjoying WWE '13's attitude era mode. The mode is this year's "career mode" as opposed to the Road To Wrestlemania mode that has appeared in the past few games.
I gotta tell you, this game is ruling my life right now.
All the memories of the Austin/McMahon feud, the sudden but meteoric rise in popularity of the rock, the Monday night wars, the 3 stages of Foley, the brothers of destruction, ect, ect, ect.
It was, without a shadow of a doubt, a very entertaining time in wrestling. A time when it was cool to watch the WWF and WCW. A time when Tuesday morning in Canada meant you stayed up as late as you could watching both Nitro and Raw just so you could be in the conversation on Tuesday.
Reliving this era in professional wrestling at a time when I'm having a hard time enjoying the product both TNA and WWE put out really fires the passion back up and makes you feel like you want to be a wrestler again. These years, the attitude era, is where it all started for me. It's why I have a singlet, knee pads and, boots collecting dust in my closet. It's why I was driven to spend hundreds, no thousands of dollars chasing a dream.
Pop culture was just littered with wrestling between 1995 and 2000. WCW and WWE went for it and in the end, WWE won. Boundaries were pushed, hardcore wrestling was born, story-lines took the center stage and, if only for a while wrestling was loved by almost everyone.

I'm really enjoying reliving these moments from such an important part of my life. If you loved wrestling when WCW and WWF were battling it out then you really should pick this game up.

Back to the game.

The Bills in Toronto Series

I'm sure by now you've heard it a few times. Eric Wood, the center for the Buffalo Bills, expressed how much he dislikes the Bills in Toronto series. If you haven't heard it yet: check this out.

So, before I spill my opinion let me make this very clear: I'm a big Bills fans living in Toronto and I love this city.

I agree 100% Eric. I strongly dislike the Bills in Toronto series. I was very excited as the announcement of this series. I even attended the first 3 games.

Here's why I don't like the Bills in Toronto series:

1. The Price. Simply put, the price is insane. Tickets start at $48 (now that prices are reduced) for nose bleeds but quickly go up to $95 in the upper bowl! The most expensive ticket is $225.00. I spent about $200 going to a Bills game this year in Buffalo and that included my hotel, gas, ticket, beer and, sausages for tailgating. 
2. Toronto is not a Bills city. I wish that it was, don't get me wrong. When these games come around you see Steelers, Dolphins and, Patriots jerseys all over the place. I really have never felt that Toronto is a Buffalo Bills city. 
3. As a result of #2, the in-stadium atmosphere sucks. When the Bills score there is no "Buffalo Bills shout" with the crowd. There's very little noise at all. As a result of that, the poor Bills have absolutely no home field advantage. It's just a neutral site game. 
4. Game day experience. Out-of-stadium experience if you will. When you head to Orchard Park it's like entering a whole new world. The town is shut down, there are footballs everywhere. BBQs are cooking everywhere you turn with people washing them down with beer.Everyone is there for a good time and they are there to be your friend. It's a community. Nothing like that exists in Toronto.

Now don't get me wrong. I strongly believe that the NFL could thrive in Toronto, that is if we had our own team and an NFL stadium! As it stands today Rogers is doing nothing but hurting Toronto's chances of landing an NFL team by doing this. They pad the attendance with free tickets and they still can't fill the place. It's a joke. It's a NFL game in a baseball stadium, nothing else at this point. 

I'd love to hear some feedback though. Agree? Disagree? Let me know.

Danny Califf

TFC picked up defender Danny Califf in the re-entry draft today.
Yup, the same Danny Califf who TFC had all but acquired last season in a trade, which ended up being cancelled because Danny said he would not report to TFC. The reason he gave was that he was not interested in playing for a team outside of the USA.

The tattooed defender was brought back to MLS in 2010 as the captain of the upstart Philidelphia Union. He ended up at Chivas USA last season after the TFC trade fell through but he was no longer in the plans in LA.

Should be interesting to see if he'll report to Toronto this time around.

TFC Thoughts

I'm currently watching TFC play DC United. You can tell it's the end of another TFC season, the stands are empty, you can't hear the fans, you can hear the coaches yelling. It's a little grey outside too. Overcast, possibly some rain to come in off of the lake.
It honestly is kind of cliche to be honest.

As I watch the game I'm enjoying the commentary from Jason DeVos and Luke Wileman, as I always do (Jason DeVos is just an amazing soccer mind), and they bring up a really great point.

In 2010 DC United was a horrible team, they were last place overall and over the course of the season they brought in 17 new players and had 18 players leave the team. In a nutshell, it was a mess!

But as of today, they are sitting at 4th in the East and are most likely playoff bound. How did they do this? Simple. They accepted that they needed to stop just bringing players in from around the league and other out of contract pros. They took their draft picks, signed players out of their academy, acquired a star MLS player in Canadian Dwayne DeRosario and, signed Ben Olsen (a retired American star player who understands the game in North America very well) as the head coach all the while keeping Chris Pontius in fold for the experience.

When I compare the evolution of DC United to the.....whatever you call what TFC has done with their roster it makes me very sad. There seems to be no direction, just sign who you can and then drive them out of town when the signing doesn't work out. Yes, 2012 did have injuries to the key players for TFC, Danny Kovermans, Eric Hassli and, Torsten Frings are all injured and the likelyhood is none of them will come back next season. Both Adrian Cann and Stephan Frei were injured for all of last season and both got injured again with season ending injuries this season. It's just a mess!

We do know 1 thing, Paul Mariner will be the coach next year. That's it. So here's is the chance for TFC to just finish last, draft the best player available no matter what position he plays and just build from within the academy. I don't even want to see TFC try to sign a designated player, wait till the club is ready to compete and then look to add a player that would bring the team over the top as a contender for the MLS cup. Oh, and it's time to use the Canadian Championship and CONCAF Champion's League as a way to get playing time for young players and that's it. TFC isn't deep enough to compete seriously in both competitions. Let's start doing this right. It's enough already.

EDIT: Now that DC United has won the game they sit in 2nd in the east.

Sometimes I get way too excited about things.
I'll admit it. I roll that way.

Last night, it kind of happened again. The summer hockey league wrapped up last night.
It was our team, the Angry Dragons vs the Halton Hosiers...for last place!
We won and for our efforts we scored some sweet towels.

Ok.

They weren't all that sweet.

They are too big to be hand towels and too small to be a bath towel, but you know I'm gonna use the shit out of it.

Go Angry Dragons!