Let’s hope Buck lands on his feet

Leos let go of injury-prone QB

   

Buck Pierce

 

By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor

rofessional football is a rough
Pe both on and off the

gridiron. That’s true of both the
NFL and the CFL, and in the heavily
salary-capped world of the Canadian
game, teams have to be exceedingly
careful about how they spend their
money. To put it simply, all of the
players they invest in have to provide
maximum return if a club hopes to be
successful. That is especially true of
the quarterback position, which in the
CFL can win or lose you games all
alone.

Having to make these decisions
strictly on performance and money
leaves little room for the heart, and that
was the unfortunate case recently when
the BC Lions unconditionally released
QB Buck Pierce, ending the oft-injured
semi-starter’s five-year tenure with the
team.

Pierce had long been plagued
by increasingly prevalent concussion
issues, and with the re-emergence
of Casey Printers as the Leos’ new
undisputed go-to gunslinger, there was
little room for Pierce, who’s relatively
large salary made his return to the
team for another season financially
unfeasible. It’s a shame when look
back on Pierce’s stay with the Lions.
His was such a heart-warming story,
what with him driving all the way up
to B.C.’s free agent training camp with
nothing guaranteed or promised to
him, and then making the club behind
Printers and former starter Dave
Dickenson. When Printers left for his
tumultuous adventures in the NFL and
Hamilton, and Dickenson was stricken

with a never-ending string of his own
concussion problems, Pierce surpassed
Jarious Jackson on the depth chart and
effectively seized the team’s starting
reigns by himself. To say the least, it
was quite a story.

But as the injuries continued to
mount and when Printers came back to
B.C. and outplayed Pierce, the writing
was on the wall. Lions’ GM and head
coach Wally Buono was forced to sever
ties with Pierce.

On the bright side though, it looks
like the ever-defiant Pierce, who has
bucked the odds his entire career and
who so passionately proclaimed to the
media at the end of last season that
his career was far from over, won’t
be out of work for long. A number of
teams on both sides of the border have
expressed significant interest in the
28-year-old New Mexico State grad,
including the Winnipeg Blue Bombers,
(who at this point appear to be the front
runners and are perennially in search
of a new quarterback), Hamilton and
in the NFL, Jacksonville, Detroit and
Carolina.

It’s easy to see why Pierce is a
sought after commodity. He has the
third best passer efficiency rating in
Lions history (somewhat ironically,
behind Printers and Dickenson), and
sports a commendable 21-12-1 starting
record. In a job market where someone
is always the hunt for a QB, those are _
impressive numbers that will most
definitely grant him a job somewhere.

No matter where Pierce goes,
expect him to land on his feet. He’s
been a fighter his entire football life, so
don’t expect this set back to hold him
back for long.

 

Ss. YoMTs,

 

Can you even pull for Tiger anymore?

By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor

ith The Masters kicking
off this upcoming
weekend, all the talk

surrounding the fabled tournament
has been centered solely on Tiger
Woods and his return to golf
following all of his...ahem...off
course business lately.

Members of the media have
been hailing this year’s contest
at Augusta as quite possibly the
biggest and most anticipated event
in the history of golf. After all,
Woods hasn’t been seen on the
course for months now, but details
of his extramarital affairs that
have dribbled out continually have
dominated the headlines since his
car accident that kicked this whole
firestorm off back on American
Thanksgiving.

There’s no doubt that just about
every major media outlet on the
planet will be sending envoys to The
Masters in order to cover Woods’
sure-to-be dramatic return, and so
far the generally accepted line on
Woods coming back is the question
of whether he will be able to regain
his otherworldly form and in turn
recapture the hero status that he
involuntarily vacated.

The real question around The
Masters this year though, at least to
me, is do I even want Tiger Woods
to dominate again?

It isn’t even a question that golf
is more interesting when Woods is
in title contention. In the past, there
were few other sporting events I
enjoyed more than watching Woods
make his classic back nine charges
on Sunday and pull out yet another
dramatic win.

Before all of the recent events
with Woods surfaced, my favourite
moment in sports history was the
2008 U.S. Open. Watching Woods,
back when I still called him Tiger,
who could barely walk on one leg
due to a catastrophic knee injury that
had required arthroscopic surgery
just three months beforehand and
would soon keep him out for over
nine months, sink a 12-foot putt on
the 18" hole on Sunday with the
whole world watching in order to
send him into a playoff the next day

   

Rocco Mediate, and watching
him then come back on Monday in
a two-man playoff, which ended in
a draw after 18 gruelling holes, and
then to have him pull out the victory
a 19" sudden death hole, the only
word I can use to describe it was
magical. When a wounded Woods,
who could barely stand, closed out
the win by a single stroke, I won’t
deny that the tears fell. That was one
of those all too rare and exceedingly
special moments in sports where

I realized just how powerful the
human spirit is, and that anything is
possible.

That tournament, that one
moment, is what made is so hard
for me to believe and then accept
what Woods had done. It was even
harder to watch a hero fall and
have his legacy turned into a joke.
Maybe we shouldn’t place our faith
in athletes, or look to them as role
models. Unfortunately though, right
or wrong, that will never change.
Kids are always going to look up to
the heroes they see on television and
regardless of what you think of that,
those athletes have a responsibility
to those people that admire them so
much. That’s where Woods let us,
and where he let me, down.

So watching him return to the
golf course, where he will most
likely rediscover the level of play
that launched him beyond superstar
status in the first place is a sight
that has already inspired mixed
feelings. On the one hand I just want
to put all of this in the past, and for
people to think of Woods and golf
in the same sentence again. But on
the other hand, it’s still impossible
to forget what he did, and every
time I see him tee up, swing a club
or lift a trophy, I know that those
feelings from years gone by won’t
ever come back again. It’s a feeling
of innocence lost, and more then
anything; it’s a feeling of sadness.

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