As has become the tradition, Canada is holding a nation-spanning Olympic torch relay so that the entire host country can get in on that good old Olympic spirit. On a related note, did you know that Canada is really fucking big? And like ... really far north? I guess that even the person who lives on Resolute Bay should get to see the flame too, but man is that a hike. Sorry, but if your place can only be reached by sled dog, you might occasionally miss out on things.

You know, there's still plenty of room in Manitoba. Come on down. They won't bite.

[AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward]

* * * * *

It's Thursday. I don't need instructions to know how to rock.

Hockey Canada announced yesterday that the team will wear the green jerseys at next year's world championships as a tribute to the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders, which would be akin to the USA's squad wearing purple in honor of the AFL's Milwaukee Mustangs.

Specious justifications aside, you might have noticed that green isn't one of the colors on Canada's flag. This has a few people upset.

"Pretty much the stupidest idea ever. So the crowd will be in red and white but the team will be green?"

"Great idea: use Canada's junior hockey team to honour a football team with 23 Americans on its active roster.
That'll be sure to capture the spirit of Canadian hockey."

"Why didn't anybody tell me the Toronto St. Patricks were making a comeback?"

"Well the other colour is yellow and they couldn't go with that as it conotates cowardice."

"If we make the gold medal game whoever we play will respect us about as much as dirt. In our red and white thats a simbole of power and superiority we might win because our opponents will be rolling around on the ice laughing"

It's breaking down to the point where commenters are trashing the newspaper's site for flagging "colour" as a misspelling. There's some serious Canadian pride on display this weekend, so avoid your local Tim Horton's and TD Banks should riots break out.

Canada Unveils Green Jersey [Globe and Mail]

Evidently, several of the players on Toronto's Chaminade College football team didn't have someone like my Gramps to teach them valuable life lessons, as they find themselves in a bit of trouble because of a poopy prank where they put feces in a bag and placed it in a microwave.

Doug Yack, superintendent of education for the Toronto Catholic District School Board, confirmed to the Star on Friday "kids make mistakes, but this was bizarre behaviour."

Last Saturday, as the team was set to return home following a loss, the players put a bag with feces into a hotel microwave and turned it on.

Principal Mike Wallace confirmed those involved would pay the cost of the damages, but at the time he chose not to suspend the players or remove them from the team.

Well, it's a good thing the players weren't suspended, at least at this point. Can you imagine how much crap they would get from their teammates?

Further, this report is woefully short on information. What kind of poop was it? Human? Animal? Alien? (The truth is out there) If human, did the pooper have enough foresight to defecate right into the bag or did he make the crucial error of not doing so then had to place the turd in the bag manually? Did it explode? Did anyone call the shit "poop"? These are questions that need to be answered.

Nuked feces will cost high school footballers [Toronto Star]

The dirty Canucks have decided that since their country is 98% uninhabitable ice, that somehow entitles them to all the gold medals at the Winter Olympics. Their maple-soaked organizing committee wants HockeyWorld to not only claim the most medals in its history, they want to win more medals than any other nation next year. (A laughable notion, of course.) Their only hope for that to happen is to deny innocent, non-moose riding athletes much-needed training runs on the unique and dangerous courses for sports like bobsled and downhill skiing. Yes, even Americans have not been allowed unfettered access to the luge track, which is crazy, because don't they have to do what we say?

Who you gettin' crazy with, Pucky? Do you really want to bring a luge war down on your heads?

Also, unlike every Olympic city ever, Vancouver actually finished its venues on schedule, so those Molson-swilling seal jockeys have already enjoyed hundreds of hours of unrestricted practice time on the slopes of Whistler and whatever it is you take bobsleds down. "Oh, Canada! We stand on guard against Norwegian biathletes ... who we will probably shoot in the back of the head after we trick them into taking a wrong turn on some hellish Yukon death trail!"

Don't think we haven't forgotten about that loonie in Salt Lake, you French-talking syrup suckers. A hard snow is a-gonna fall.

As Host of the Winter Olympics, Canada Acts More Like a Guard [New York Times]
Luge federations spar over Whistler training time [CTV]

Here's how the Toronto Star described this incident:

Reaching the warning track, he lunged, but missed the ball, unintentionally groping the female police officer sitting against the stands – not once but twice. For the first time in years, Alex Rodriguez was cheered good-naturedly at the Rogers Centre.

Geez, man. Get a room. (There's a bunch of them right in the stadium even!) Of course, as fans of Alex's many dalliances remember well, Toronto has always been one of his preferred pick up spots. Hey, the man knows what he likes. (Hint: It involves maple syrup.)

A-Rod Cops A Feel [The Score]
Romero not only one handled by Yankees [Toronto Star]

(*Yes, I know she's not a RCMP, but facts should not be obstacles to a headline.)

Well, that's an oopsie Ohio State wishes it had back, kind of like the way everyone feels about the Maurice Clarett Era and Miami fans remember the 2002 Fiesta Bowl. Then again, there's always a chance to infuse some reason into this photo with a caption. What do we have here?

Ohio State players gather on the shore of Lake Erie before practice.

Must have been a wee bit nippy out there.

*****

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. The esteemed Tom Scraggs is back tomorrow with some of Blazer Girl Liebling's dispatches from the war-zone cafes of Bristol. Now, it is Saturday night. You know what to do.

A police spokesman confirms that "it's a fact" that UFC bouts attract gangs and organized crime. Sure, a few non-criminal thugs might be interested too, but are you willing to gamble your daughter's virtue on that?

The difference, said Irwin Cohen, a criminologist at the University of the Fraser Valley, is the demographics for mixed martial arts fans overlaps considerably with young men involved in organized crime.

"You could make the argument ... in terms of a broader audience it may appeal to that classic 14- to 22-year-old male, aggressive, and some of that does fit into the organized crime or gang profile as well.

Great. We're all doomed. Thankfully, the city will not sanction bouts until the sport becomes "regulated" and Eliot Ness puts an end to its bootlegging ways. And can we do something about the rock-and-roll and mini-skirts, too, while we're at it?

Gangsters' love of UFC worries B.C. officials [Edmonton Sun]
MMA will bring undesirable gangsters to your city [Watch Kalib Run]

What basically happened is that the player (who was unnamed since he was a minor at the time), got in a fight away from the game action with another kid named Manny Castillo. Some witnesses said Castillo was choking the kid, others say it wasn't serious and he had easily broken away from the chokehold. The accused then picked up Castillo and dropped him—or pile-drived him—head-first into the ground and Castillo died.

The accused argued self-defense and that rugby is a violent, adrenaline-fueled sport, so these things happen. The judge didn't buy that argument, saying that a playing field is not a "criminal law-free zone."

Justice Bruce Duncan ruled the convicted athlete had no exemption to use deadly force simply because he was participating in a sport known for its testosterone-fuelled aggression....

"The defendant intentionally applied force that was outside the rules of the game or any standard by which the game is played ... Nothing suggests that the sort of conduct found here would be within accepted standards of play. Accordingly, there could be no implied consent (by Castillo)."

The consent means "consent to get hit hard by other players," which is basically the point of rugby, but death was not exactly what Castillo signed up for. The kid, who is now 18, faces up to three years in prison. So lay off the pile drivers, kids.

Sports Fields Not Law-Free Zones, Judge Says In Convicting Rugby Player In Death [City News]

We just got this hot tip off the wire.

"The reigning Canadian and world champions will carry a perfect 9-0 record into today's round-robin curtain droppers, assured that they will be among the final four teams with a chance of hoisting the Tankard come Sunday night, and on the verge of overtaking longtime rival Randy Ferbey for the longest win streak in Brier history."

I don't know about you, but no part of that sentence makes any sense to me. I seriously had to read the entire article twice and do a Wikipedia search, before I knew for certain that it was about curling. Then I remembered how much I love those slippery little brooms. Seriously, this might be my favorite Winter Olympic sport (next to biathlon.) It makes very little sense to me, I can't tell the difference between good curling and bad curling, I've never played it and don't care to learn how. But when it's on TV—I'm mesmerized by it.

But I digress ... my brief research tell me that the Brier is like the World Series of curling, in that it really isn't a world championship but it is very, very important to Canadians. It's going on right now and apparently the team from Alberta is very, very good as they have won 22 matches (is that what they're called?) in a row—but that has nothing to do with this video from early in the tournament of what is allegedly the greatest curling shot in the history of the sport. That's right.... we got two separate curling tips today. It's some kind of Canadian miracle.

If you're looking to brush up (get it!?) on the sport before 2010, I suppose now is as good a time as any. Get your rocks off, baby. (I bet you they say that a lot up there.)

Perfectly sizzlin' Albertans take aim at Ferbey record [Calgary Herald]
Thought Curling Was Boring? Glenn Howard Makes An Amazing Shot For The Win [Total Pro Sports]
2009 Tim Hortons Brier [Season of Champions]
The Curling News [Curling News!]

Apparently, this has become a bit of a tradition for the final home game at South Delta Secondary School in Delta, British Columbia. The girls somehow think that running into the opponent's huddle with cans of silly string and without their decency will distract and confuse the players, leading their own team to victory. (It worked, btw.) But some folks are mighty P.O.ed...

[Principal Ted] Johnson said he warned students last month not to streak at this year's final game of the season but was, obviously, ignored. Many parents and children left the game in disgust after the prank, he said.

"Our position is one that we don't celebrate this. We don't find it funny," he said.

You're darn tootin'! In fact, he's so upset that he told the cheerleaders in no uncertain terms that he will definitely suspend them ... next time. This one's gonna slide, but no streaking for at least a good month or so. Tough, but fair.

This Definitely Never Happened At My High School [FanIQ]

It seems that Frank has been taking some heat on the message boards lately from Canadian Interuniversity Sports fans and that's got his maple-flavored blood boiling:

"Well, it really is pathetic," McCrystal commented. "You've got some pathetic person hiding behind a keyboard in cyberspace shooting his mouth off instead of stepping up to the plate and coming to say what they have to say. I don't pay much attention to them and I haven't for, foreve really. But when you have comments that are more slanderous, I think that's something that should be addressed. We're having it addressed through the league and maybe recognized as a criminal element. We're looking into that."

Doesn't that just burn your flat round slice of bacon? Or make you want to drink a entire two-four by yourself? Or put on a wide-brimmed hat and ride a horse? OK, that's all I got, but I've said it before and I'll say it again—I never get tired of jokes about the subtle differences between Canadians and Americans (or British or Australians.) But at least we know that the one thing that's not different is that both countries have thin-skinned old people who want to throw internet trolls in jail for being mean. It's the similarities that unite us, people.

• FYI to Frank McCrystal: Try putting fear into your opponents [CIS Blog]

But that's not the fun part. It's the fine print, with its strange requirements of our neighbors to the north, that gave us pause.

"Any Canadian winner will also be required to correctly answer, unaided, a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question in order to receive a prize.

Uh, what? Wethinks someone in the Time Warner promotions department was a little bored this week. Either that, or Canadian golf fans need to finally get off the Metric system.

(UPDATE: Amazingly, there's a logical answer to this. Canadians are so weird.)