Bruce Dowbiggin
LIV & Let LIV: Phil Mickelson Gets His Revenge
Revenge, it is said, is a dish best served cold. If so, it’s appropriate that in the teeming rain, chilling winds and falling trees of Augusta National this weekend that Phil Mickelson got a measure of gotcha’ on the PGA Tour.
He could have staggered in the marathon of Sunday, as Masters organizers— who loath him— tried to catch up after weather delays, But from as low as even par on Sunday the 53-year-old ended tied for second behind Rahm at eight under. For a three-time winner of the green jacket that was probably not up to his expectations. But as a guy who could instead be playing the relaxed Champions Tour, just making the cut in the biblical storm conditions was an accomplishment.
Second? WTF? He set the record for the best finish by a golfer in his 50s or older. Where on Monday the golf world shunned him, by Sunday night they were eating from his hand again. But more than that for Mickelson— if it’s possible— he achieved the satisfaction of bringing his fellow LIV players into the heart of the PGA Tour’s belly and walking away tied for second with Brooks Koepka.
For the entire week, the debate had been how the rebel players would be greeted by the stuffy culture of Augusta National and the panjandrums of the PGA Tour. Would they be ostracized? Would they be shunned? Would they be given the cold shoulder at the Champions Dinner?
On Golfchannel the discussion was about the preparation the players had had on the LIV Tour, with its 54-hole tournaments, limited schedule, raucous presentation. Had players like Koepka, Cam Smith, former Masters winner Patrick Reed, Joaquin Niemann, Harold Varner III, Abraham Ancer, Taylor Gooch and, yes, Mickelson had enough preparation for the diabolical examination of Augusta National. Were guys who jumped ship for the dough properly motivated now that they had financial security?
By Sunday night it was irrelevant. In all there were three LIV players (including Phil himself) inside the Top 16. Nine in the Top 40. Mickelson had been the face of the new league since it popped up last year, the focus of the wrath against it. Now he delivered. And so did his compatriots on the controversial rebel league.
Mickelson is never one to shy away from wearing the black hat. While Woods is now a “good guy” Phil has embellished his bad-boy reputation the past two years with inflammatory interviews, lawsuits, lost sponsors and prickly encounters with authority. Rumours of his financial peril and questionable personal behaviour were always in the background.
(In one Phil story he was playing a high-stakes money game with an NHL owner— who thought the round was a lark with the superstar. When the match ended with Mickelson winning a bundle, the owner thought Phil might just call it a wash. Uh, no. He insisted he be paid the entire amount— in cash. American dollars. The chastened owner had to send out for the money as Phil waited in the parking lot of the club.)
That will all be dismissed by the dominant performance of Mickelson and Koepka— who led virtually the whole way through storms, delays, wind and rain. While the liberal sports media still dismissed the LIV players for taking the evil Saudi petro dollars, the unity of the LIV crew at The Masters was underlined when those players on the grounds waited around to cheer their fellow LIV players on at the 18th green.
If the PGA Tour thought that this past weekend would drive fans away from LIV, the opposite is probably true. Seeing the quality of the players at Augusta will pique the interest of many fans. Seeing the PGA Tour’s biggest spokesmen in Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas both miss the cut also didn’t enhance the Tour’s invincibility.
Mickelson’s other revenge this past weekend came over his former rival Tiger Woods. For much of the quarter-century since they rose to prominence together Tiger was the athletic, trim superstar. The man with the steel-trap mind. The machine who churned out 15 majors.
Phil? Critics ripped him for denying his talent, his wavering inattention to fitness. They said he lacked seriousness. We will never forget being on PEI with Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson as they ripped Mickelson’s mental game after he threw away the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot on the 18th hole.
But Sunday showed that Mickelson still has plenty of tread on his tires when it comes to his fitness. Having lost about 20 pounds, he had little problem walking the sodden, hilly layout. As Brandel Chamblee suggested on Golfchannel maybe Phil didn’t maximize his physical prime, but he didn’t punish himself as so many now do in the gym. Chamblee suggested Woods won’t be the only golfer with a wrecked body from over-training.
That was underlined by the pathetic sight of Woods—five years younger than Phil — dragging his battered right leg around behind him as he fought the extreme conditions. In the end he couldn’t manage the pain of plantar fascinates, withdrawing Sunday morning when the leg would not respond to the hours of treatment he needs now to compete.
He looked a spent man. Yes, the leg injury was from his terrible car crash in Los Angeles in 2020. But even before that Woods’ body was failing him after years of punishing workouts. At one point he was doing Navy Seal training, emulating his father’s career. While Woods wouldn’t confirm it, his first serious knee injury was likely produced by this military conditioning. Next came back problems exacerbated by the stresses his bum leg caused.
Now, it appears that it’s all over for Woods as a competitive player if the Tour doesn’t allow him to ride in a cart. Mickelson— who has a lifetime Masters and U.S. Open exemption— will still find a way to match up with the young bucks of the Tour for a few more years. Other LIV stars will keep popping up— and perhaps winning— the majors under their exemptions. The PGA Tour will deny that LIV made them radically overhaul their business model. Sure.
It’s not a beautiful outcome. And Mickelson is hardly an Eagle Scout. But for four wet, miserable days in April he showed what hand is in the sports business. And that was worth the price of admission.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
The Pathetic, Predictable Demise of Echo Journalism
It can be safely said that the 2024 U.S. presidential election couldn’t have gone much worse for legacy media in that country. Their biases, conceits and outright falsehoods throughout the arduous years-long slog toward Nov. 5 were exposed that night. Resulting in the simultaneous disaster (for them) of Donald Trump winning a thunderous re-election and their predictive polling being shown to be Democratic propaganda.
Only a handful of non-establishment pollsters (Rasmussen, AtlasIntel) got Trump’s electoral college and overall vote correct. Example: One poll by Ann Selzer in Iowa—a highly-rated pollster with a supposedly strong record—showed a huge swing towards Harris in the final week of the election race, putting her three points up over Trump. He ended up winning Iowa by 13.2 points (Selzer now says she’s retiring.)
Throughout, these experts seemed incapable of finding half the voter pool. By putting their thumb on the scale during debates, the representatives of the so-called Tiffany networks and newspapers signalled abdication of their professional code. Their reliance on scandal-sheet stories was particularly glaring.
Just a few lowlights: “the brouhaha over a shock comedian at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”. Unhinged outgoing POTUS Biden then called GOP voters “garbage”. So Trump made an appearance as a garbage man, to the snarky disapproval of CBS News chief anchor Nora O’Donnell.
Then there was Whoopi Goldberg on The View predicting Trump will “break up interracial marriages and redistribute the white spouses: “He’s going to deport and you, put the white guy with someone else… The man is out there!” Media ran with this one, too.
Worse, disinformation and lying reached such a proportion that Team Trump turned its campaign away from the networks and legacy papers down the stretch, creating a new information pathway of podcasts and social media sites (such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Adin Ross) that promise to be the preferred route for future candidates looking for non-traditional voters. A few prominent media owners sought to save themselves by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate, but the resulting tantrum by their Kamala-loving staff negated the effort.
In the past, poor performances by the Media Party might be dismissed or ignored. But the cataclysmic ratings drops for CNN and MSNBC paired with collapse in sales for blue-blood rags such as the New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times spoke to the public’s disgust with people they’ve always trusted to play it straight.
(Now Comcast has announced it’s spinning off MSNBC and its news bundle to save their profitable businesses. Staff members in these places are now panicking. As such the new administration promises to be indifferent to the former media powers-that-be as Trump mounts radical plans to recast the U.S. government. )
As noted here the disgraceful exercise in journalism was cheered on by their compatriots here in Canada. “In the hermetically sealed media world of Canada, natives take their cues from CNN and MSNBC talking points both of which employ Canadians in highly visible roles. (Here’s expat Ali Velshi famously describing on NBC that the 2020 George Floyd riots that burned for weeks— destroying billions in damages while resulting in multipole deaths— as “generally peaceful”.)
The narratives of Russiagate, drinking bleach, “fine people” to Hunter Biden’s laptop— long ago debunked down south— are still approved wisdom in Canada’s chattering class. Especially if America’s conflagration election can be used to demonstrate the good sense and judgment of Canada’s managerial and media class.
The clincher for star-struck Canadians was the overwhelming Kamala love from the Hollywood crowd. Virtually every high-profile actor/ singer/ writer embraced the woman who was parachuted into the nomination in a coup— even as the same glitterati raved about anti-democratic Trump. From Beyoncé to Bilie Eilish to Bruce Springsteen, their support was been a winner in Canada’s fangirl/ fanboy culture.”
Talk about backing a loser. Which leaves us asking what to expect from formerly respected media in the upcoming (it will come, won’t it?) defenestration of Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, probably in spring of 2025. One Toronto Star piece might provide a clue to the bunkered approach of Canada’s globalists. “Europe is leaving Donald Trump’s America behind. Should Canada do the same? As American democracy dives into darkness, Canada is facing difficult choices.”
CPC leader Pierre Poilievre has made it abundantly clear his thoughts on the bias of media. To save billions, he is making a major overhaul— even closure of CBC (not Radio Canada)— as a campaign pledge. He’s also said he will remove the slush fund now propping up failed establishment news organizations that employ unionized workers bent of crushing the Conservatives.
His scorn is obvious after watching media’s reverential treatment of Trudeau’s fake “murdered” Rez children stunt or the silence accompanying PMJT’s sacking of his indigenous Justice minister Jodie Wilson Raybould. Lately, a deadpan Poilievre humiliated a callow CBC reporter quoting “experts” by asking her “what experts?” Her unpreparedness leaves her floundering as Poilievre calls her question another “CBC smear job”.
Perhaps the classic Poilievre humbling of a reporter occurred in 2023 in a Kelowna apple orchard when a reporter seeking to score points with his Woke colleagues saw the bushwhack rebound on him. After numerous failed attempts at belling the cat, the local reporter played his ace card.
Question: Why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given … y’know … not, not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page out of Donald Trump’s book, but, also —
Poilievre: (incredulous) What are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you gimme a page? Gimme the page. You keep saying that … “
No page was produced and the cringeworthy interview collapsed.
Needless to say, the reporter was absolved by his water-carrying colleagues. Here was Shannon Proudfoot of the Toronto Star: “Kicking a journalist in the shins over and over then turning the exchange into a social-media flex is telling on yourself…” Venerable CBC panelist/ Star columnist Chantal Hébert echoed the pauvre p’tit take. “Agreed”.
For these press box placeholders it’s all too reminiscent of the acid-drenched style of former PM Stephen Harper, a stance that turned them to Trudeau cheerleaders in 2015. Which is to say we shouldn’t have high hopes for balance when the writ is finally dropped.
Poilievre has several more ministers (Melissa Lantsman, Garrett Genuis) skilled in exposing media imbalance, so we can expect full-blown pushback from the paid-for media from the usual suspects when Trudeau finally succumbs to reality. One drawback for the Conservatives could be the absence of national podcasters such as Rogan or Von to which they can pivot.
But make no mistake, However much Canada’s press corps denies it, the public has turned away from Mr Blackface and the politics of privilege. They’d best anticipate a rough ride ahead.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
CHL Vs NCAA: Finally Some Sanity For Hockey Families
In forty-years-plus of covering sports you develop hobby horses. Issues that re-appear continuously over time. In our case, one of those issues has been pro hockey’s development model and the NCAA’s draconian rules for its participants. Which was better, and why couldn’t the sides reach a more reasonable model?
In the case of hockey the NCAA’s ban on any player who played a single game in the Canadian Hockey League created a harsh dilemma for hockey prodigies in Canada and the U.S. Throw your lot in with the CHL, hoping to be drafted by the NHL, or play in a secondary league like the USHL till you were eligible for the NCAA. Prospects in the CHL’s three leagues — the OHL, QMJHL and WHL —were classified as professional by the NCAA because they get $600 a month for living expenses, losing Division I eligibility after 48 hours of training camp. The stipend isn’t considered income for personal tax purposes.”
Over the decades we’ve spoken with many parents and players trying to parse this equation. It was a heartbreaking scene when they gambled on a CHL career that gave them no life skills or education. Or the promised NCAA golden goose never appeared after playing in a lower league for prime development years.
There were tradeoffs. NCAA teams played fewer games, CHL teams played a pro-like schedule. The NCAA awarded scholarships (which could be withdrawn) while the CHL created scholarships for after a career in the league (rules that players getting NHL contracts lost those scholarships has been withdrawn). There were more contrasts.
As we wrote here in 2021, it might have stayed this way but for a tsunami created by the antitrust issue of Name Image Likeness for NCAA players who were not paid for the use of their NIL. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the issue in 2015 it warned the NCAA that its shamateurism scheme had to change. That created revolution in the NCAA. Athletes now receive healthy compensation for their image in video and digital products. They can also take million-dollar compensation from sponsors and boosters.
Portals allow them to skip from team to team to find millions in compensation. One of the many changes in the new NCAA was its prohibition against CHL players. To forestall future lawsuits costing millions, it recently made hockey players eligible for the same revenues as football and basketball players. Now the NCAA has voted to open up college hockey eligibility to CHL players effective Aug. 1, 2025, paving the way for major junior players to participate in the 2025-26 men’s college hockey season.
Which, we wrote in 2022, would leave hockey’s development model vulnerable. “As one insider told us, “The CHL model should be disrupted. Archaic and abusive.” NIL won’t kill the CHL but it could strip away a significant portion of its older stars who choose guaranteed money over long bus rides and billeting with other players. It’s early days, of course, but be prepared for an NHL No. 1 draft pick being a millionaire before his name is even called in the draft.”
As we wrote in May of 2022 “A Connor McDavid could sign an NIL styled contract at 16 years old, play in the NCAA and— rich already— still be drafted No. 1 overall. Yes, college hockey has a lower profile and fewer opportunities for endorsements. Some will want the CHL’s experience. But a McDavid-type player would be a prize catch for an equipment company or a video game manufacturer. Or even as an influencer. All things currently not allowed in the CHL.”
Effectively the CHL will get all or most of the top prospects at ages 16-19. After that age prospects drafted or undrafted can migrate to the NCAA model. Whether they can sign NHL contracts upon drafting and still play in the NCAA is unclear at this moment. (“On the positive side, we will get all the top young players coming to the CHL because we’re the best development option at that age,” one WHL general manager told The Athleltic’s Scott Wheeler.
One OHL GM told the Athletic “As the trend increases with American players looking for guarantees to sign, does a CHL player turn down an opportunity to sign at the end of their 19-year-old year with the hopes that a year at 20 in NCAA as a free agent gives them a better route to the NHL?”
The permutations are endless at the moment. But, at least, players and their families have a choice between hockey and education that was forbidden in the past. Plus, they can make money via NIL to allow them to stay for an extra year of development or education. The CHL will take a hit, but most young Canadian players will still see it as the logical launching pad to the NHL.
Now, for once, families can come first on the cold, nasty climb to the top hockey’s greasy pole.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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