Darren Paterson, Sports Editor Well, here we are again, and yet again my life is in the crapper. A little side note for you all: if you ever want to alienate one of your friends, all it takes is for you to break into their house, steal their grandmoth- er’s jewelry, and then pawn said jewelry for enough money to ensure that you can be drunk by lunchtime...Or so I’ve heard. Anyway, just to blow off a little steam I thought I’d muse on the down side of sports. On the agenda for this week’s edition is player cele- brations. I read a newspaper article on how a soccer player in Europe got booked for removing his jer- sey to celebrate a goal he scored. My first thought was why? Why book the guy for taking off his jer- sey? He was wearing a shirt underneath. And this isn’t just a soccer. specific complaint either. It hap- pens in all sorts of sports. In hockey it’s called hot-dogging and is strictly frowned upon. A fine example being the time that Sidney Crosby was vil- ified by Don Cherry for doing the one-knee fist pump after scoring perhaps the best goal ever scored in the QMJHL. It happens in football too. In the CFL it was team celebrations after a touchdown. Players would get together in the end zone and do the little pose-for- a-picture gag until the CFL instituted a rule to make such celebrations illegal. And in the NFL players have taken crap for their antics too. Terrell Owens’ infamous Sharpie gag, where he pulled a pen out of his sock and signed his touchdown football, and Joe Horn’s cell phone bit, where he pulled a cell phone out of the padding on the field goal bar and made a fake call after a touchdown, led to hefty fines and the creation of a new rule banning such celebra- tions. However, my response, once again, is why? I don’t see why people in the entertainment industry have rules that take away their ability to entertain. The best part of any team sport is when one team scores so you would think that, with this being the case, leagues would try to highlight this part of the game. Now, I don’t mean let the players go completely off the map. If the crowd starts checking their watches during a celebration then it’s probably gone too far. But players should definitely be allowed, if not encouraged, to celebrate their goal in an entertain- ing fashion. I remember a soccer game once, an 86ers game in fact, where one of our guys (whose name I forgot and could not dig up) scored a goal and immediate- ly ran and jumped into the fans in the cheap beer section. The crowd cheered like mad until the refer- ee came over and told the player not to do that again. However, this player was having a particular- ly good game and he happened to score a second goal. So what did he do? He bombed over to the cheap beer section as fast as he could and dove right in. The point of this is, is that despite the fact that he got carded for his celebration the crowd freaking loved it! Even just watching it on TV, I was sudden- ly a big time 86ers fan as long as this guy was on the field, and I stayed a fan even after he got traded. What I’m saying is that his exuberance is what made me like local soccer. Another example would be Jaromir Jagr in the NHL. Does anybody else remember that salute he used to give after scoring a goal? God I hated that salute! And so did every one who wasn’t a Penguins fan. Don Cherry, the outspoken man he is, went out of his way to bother Jagr until he stopped. But you know what? Jagr’s salute brought fans to the game. The Penguins fans showed up because they couldn’t wait until Jagr scored another one and stuck it to the opposing fans. Everyone else showed up thinking, “Man! If that Jagr does that stupid fucking salute I’m gonna throw my beer right on his head!” Which brings me cyclically back to my main point that, love him or hate him, everyone showed up to see him. It just seems to make good sense to allow entertain- ers to entertain. And, realistically, when they showboat with their celebration, that’s what they’re doing. When Mia Hamm scored the winning goal in the Women’s World Cup of soccer and flung her jersey off to show her sports bra, people were shocked. But I'll tell you what, I bet women’s soccer picked up at least a trillion or two new male fans that day. And someone told me that sales for that particular sports bra went through the roof as well. I also seem to remember remarking in an earlier edi- tion of this paper that despite my hatred of baseball, ’m a big Randy Johnson fan. Why? Because every time he’d get his third strikeout of an inning he’d walk off the field screaming profanities at himself like a madman. And when I saw that intensity and emotion I thought, “Hell yeah! This guy’s worth watching!” Which brings me to my conclusion. When I see a soccer player score a goal and then do a back flip, I jump out of my seat. When I see the player I hate on the team that I hate celebrate a goal, I get really pissed off. And when I have a choice between a sport where nobody celebrates and one where play- ers show some intensity, I choose the latter. Sadly however, I chose robbing my friends before either of those choices and therefore must cease my writ- ing and get back to my cell for lockdown. Well, at least I managed to let off a little steam and reflect on the down side of sports. Lockout Gorner Darren Paterson, Sports Editor Okay, ’m a kidding. Its 0 not really that excit- ing, But hey, here’s what’s going on for those of you hockey fans who, like me, can’t wait to see the players back on the ice. The NHL gave teams the go-ahead to book their arenas for other shows through October. What does this mean? It means that there will definitely be no hockey during that month. And it’s looking like we should all expect the same for November too. Bob Goodenow has even said that he has told players to be prepared not to play for another three years if that’s what it takes to avoid a salary cap. fe | OUNEPPPESS To avoid a what? Okay, [ll take this time to explain, for those of you who don’t understand what the sticking point is between the NHL and the NHLPA. The NHL wants a salary cap of which there are two kinds. The hard cap, where there is a set limit to the total revenue that a team pays it’s players, and the soft cap, where there is a limit but teams may go over that limit and pay money back to the poor teams as compensation. The NFL has a hard cap and their cap also includes a lower limit, so that teams must pay a certain amount of money in salary. The NHL players however want nothing to do with a cap. They have suggested instead that the league implement revenue sharing. This means that the rich teams would pay money to the poor teams to compensate for their ridicu- lous player salaries. The NHL obviously doesn’t want this because it’s very similar to commu- nism in that it works in theory, but that’s it. In the end though, the bottom line is this: NHL players, on average, get paid nearly two million dollars a year. NHL rookies often make nearly a million dollars before they even play a single game. And when this is the case some- thing is wrong. The players know they have a good thing going and they’re not going to give it up easily (realistically 1 wouldn’t want to give up that much money either. Would you?). That being said, I expect this lockout to continue now for a long time and I also won't be sur- ptised to see the owners give in on this one either. Ochover = G/200u