Leaf shows how far you can fall

By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor

jor Ryan Leaf, I guess it wasn’t Texas
Hees: The disgraced former San

Diego Charger has holed up right here
in B.C. at a drug rehabilitation facility in an
attempt to combat a prescription painkiller
addiction. The trouble is, he’s a wanted
fugitive back in the United States.

Leaf, 33, is universally accepted as
one of the sports world’s ultimate busts.

He had the world at his fingertips and the
NFL drooling after taking Washington
State to the Rose Bowl and winning the
Pac-10 Championship back in 1997. He
had a terrific throwing arm and all the tools
to become an NFL superstar. When draft
day came, it was considered a toss up as to
who would be selected first, Leaf or Peyton
Manning.

Well, it turns out that the Indianapolis
Colts made the right choice when they
opted for Manning. The San Diego Chargers
however, refused to pass on Leaf and dealt
two first round draft picks, a second round
pick and Eric Metcalf in order to move up
and grab Leaf. It was a decision they’d soon
regret. Immediately after draft day, Leaf was
showered with a lucrative four-year, $31.25
million contract.

In return for the faith the Chargers
showed in Leaf, the Charles M. Russell high
school graduate from Montana redefined
the term “underperform.” He became the
prototypical prima donna athlete. There
were shouting matches with the media,
heated confrontations with fans, messy and
very public conflicts with team management
and the coaching staff, team suspensions,
season-ending injuries accompanied by
faked injuries so Leaf could go play golf
showed a clear lack of work ethic.

Leaf lasted just three years with the
Chargers, posting a horrible 4-14 record
with the team under his watch. After being
released, Leaf floated around the NFL for a
few more years and several undistinguished
stints with other clubs before retiring from
football at 26.

Leaf joined the coaching staff of
West Texas A&M in 2006 as a QB coach,
and that’s when the legal troubles began.
He seemed to be doing alright up until
November of 2008, when he was indefinitely
suspended from the team after attempting
to hustle pain pills off of his players. He
quit shortly afterwards and is now wanted
by Randall County after being indicted on
one charge of burglary and seven counts of
obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.

Apparently Leaf wasn’t content with
the “no” response from his players to his
request for pills. He allegedly broke into
a player’s apartment through the window
and lifted painkillers from the place. Texas
authorities have said that there were signs
of forced entry and that the window was
damaged in the break in. If that wasn’t bad
enough, it has also come out that during his
coaching stint with West Texas, Leaf was
distributing fake medical histories of himself
to doctors in bids to obtain painkillers from
January through to September of 2008,
matching the reasoning for why he was
suspended from the team.

The story of Ryan Leaf will
undoubtedly go down as one of the biggest
wastes of talent in sports history. Like so
many professional athletes before him,
Leaf quite literally had it all—he was even
married briefly to a San Diego Chargers
cheerleader—and he basically threw it all
away.

POR

fs,

he!

What’s the appeal of MMA?

By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor

ndoubtedly one of the fastest
growing sports out there right now,
mixed martial arts (MMA) has
seen a meteoric rise over the past several
years, largely due to the ever-increasing
popularity of the number one MMA
promotion out there, UFC.

When a new UFC Pay-Per-View rolls
around, bars are packed. The mainstream
media has been upping their coverage of
UFC events to NFL, NBA and MLB levels
and overall UFC has really done a superb
job of sweeping up the coveted 18-34 age
demographic.

But here’s the thing: for all of its
soaring popularity, I just don’t understand
the attraction. I don’t get it. Maybe it has
something to do with the fact that I’m a
boxing guy, through and through. To me,
boxing is an art form; whereas UFC and
the rest of MMA is just...I don’t really
know.

I mean, I know that MMA fighters
are tremendous athletes. I get that. I
understand and can appreciate all of the
hard work they put in and the obvious guts
and courage it takes to walk into a cage
fight. I know that the majority of them
have multiple black belts in often a number
of different martial arts and they are
extremely dedicated to what they do.

I guess that the fighting when they’re
standing is alright, but when it goes to
the mat, which 99 per cent of UFC fights
invariably do, it loses me. I know that
Brazilian Ju-Jitsu requires a ton of skill,
but to me it’s visually boring.

But still, something is holding me
back from embracing UFC, and there are
a number of plausible reasons for that.

 

Firstly, I can’t stand their hardcore fan
base, like, at all. You go to a bar to watch
a UFC fight and you are guaranteed to see
a number of mid-20 something guys with
puffed out chests wearing Tap-Out shirts
that are way too small for them in order to
make their muscles look bigger. They’ll
have haircuts with way too much gel in it
and probably a few generic barbed-wire
tattoos on their arms. If you catch eyes
with one of these morons they’re the type
of guy who will try to stare you down to
prove something to ... I don’t know, but I
guess to someone.

Dana White drives me crazy as well.
I don’t know how people can take a sport
seriously when it’s helmed by a narcissist
that regularly threatens to fight not only
fans and the media, but his own athletes.
Plain and simple, he’s a clown.

And then there’s the fact that MMA
has really taken a large portion of boxing’s
audience. Now I know that boxing hasn’t
done themselves any favours over the
years and that a number of their problems
are of their own making and that overall
they’re responsible for the mess the sport is
in today but still, it’s hard to find anybody
who’s really into boxing these days, and
that bothers me. When I compare MMA to
boxing, I find boxing to be so much better
it’s almost laughable. But a lot of people
don’t think that way. There’s nothing
wrong with that I suppose, but it still bugs
me that people get caught up in MMA and
won’t give the sweet science a chance.

There seems to be this notion that
there are no more thrilling, exciting
matches left in boxing, but that just isn’t
true. Manny Pacquiao is really a global
superstar and his fights have gone down as
all time classics, especially lately.

 

Schroeder could

 

be a steal in the 2009 Draft

By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor

hroughout their 37-year NHL history,
‘Ts Vancouver Canucks have rarely

managed to exact the cream of the
drafting crop. There are a few prominent
names in Vancouver’s draft record, such
as Pavel Bure, Trevor Linden, Mike Peca,
Mathias Ohlund and Cam Neely, but they are
easily recognizable because there are so few
of them. It’s much easier to pinpoint the draft
day busts: There was Libor Polasek, who
was taken 21" overall in 1992. He played
for 12 pro clubs in his career, but never once
suited up in the NHL. Josh Holden went 12"
back in 1996. He scored a grand total of five
NHL goals.

Plain and simple, traditionally, when
it comes to draft day, the Canucks suck.
That’s why it was so encouraging seeing
the continuation of an ongoing trend for the
organization at the 2009 NHL entry draft
when GM Mike Gillis snagged University of
Minnesota center-man Jordan Schroeder 22"
overall in Montreal.

The Canucks had a sore lack of
defensive depth in their organization but still
went with Schroeder, who was universally
regarded as the best player available.

Heading into draft day, Schroeder was

widely ranked as a top ten selection. His
tumbling down the selection order can most
likely be traced to his small stature. He’s
just 5-8 and 165 pounds, but has drawn
favourable comparisons to other small
dynamos such as Patrick Kane and Martin
St. Louis.

Schroeder has speed to burn and has
been a scoring ace for Team USA at the
2009 World Junior Championships with 11
points in six games, which led the team. As
a freshman this past season in Minnesota,
Schroeder racked up an excellent 45 points in
just 35 games. That was good enough to earn
him WCHA rookie of the year honours as
he lead every single rookie in the country in
scoring. His point totals placed him second
in team scoring with the storied University of
Minnesota, who are one of college hockey’s
all time superpowers. Schroeder was also a
+17, which proved he’s more than just a one-
dimensional player.

The Canucks have significantly
upgraded their offensive prospect cupboard
in recent seasons. Michael Grabner was
taken 14" overall back in 2006 and is
emerging nicely into goal-scoring sniper
for the Manitoba Moose. There is a strong
possibility that he could crack Vancouver’s
line-up next year. Cody Hodgson is being

looked at as the steal of the 2008 Draft when
the Canucks grabbed him tenth overall. He
led Team Canada in scoring at the WJC’s this
year and was named the MVP of the entire
CHL. From the looks of things, Vancouver
might have taken the steal of the 2009 Draft
as well with Schroeder.

While Patrick White, Vancouver’s
top pick, 25" overall, in 2007 has all the
earmarks of turning out as a major bust, it
will be interesting to watch how Schroeder
and White develop side by side, as both play
for the U of Minnesota.

In 81 NCAA games covering two
seasons, White has just 13 goals and 26
points while he has struggled mightily to
get off the team’s fourth line. The White
selection especially burns for Vancouver as
they passed on QMJHL star David Perron,
who St. Louis chose immediately after the
Canucks at 26" and who has already played
143 NHL games with the Blues and has put
up 77 points in that span. Ouch.

Still, even with White, things are
looking bright, and Schroeder plays a big
part in that. You can never have enough
offensive weapons, and if the scouts are right
Jordan Schroeder will be a high-scoring
gunner for the Canucks for years to come.

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