NFL News:

• Terry Pegula said the Bills are going forward with looking at ideas about a new stadium. The lease on The Ralph goes through 2022, and there’s hints they may move downtown.
• It’s hard to tell if DeMarco Murray is happy to be in Tennessee or happy to be away from Chip Kelly. You decide; it might be both.
• Ben Affleck was on Simmons’ first HBO show last night, and Florio thinks he was drunk. You be the judge:

• If you didn’t read it, Sill has a pretty good analysis of the first show, and how living up your own ass prevents you from seeing the world pass you by.

Finally, Merton Hanks has left the NFL offices to be Conference USA’s new senior associate commissioner, and will be in charge of football & baseball operations. I would hope he’d lighten the rules on penalizing touchdown celebrations.

So, CFL season opens tonight, with your Hamilton Tiger-Cats heading up to BMO Field to take on your Toronto Argonauts, before a probable semi-capacity crowd of aboot 28,000. [They say it holds 30,991, but that might be for the soccer team.] Anyway, it should look better than when they played in a 2/3 empty Rogers Centre / Skydome.

In case you’ve forgotten from The Maestro’s previews – two East Division opponents tonight, so here – the CFL season is 18-games in length, so the quality of play tonight will be about NFL preseason game #3, but without all the swapping out of starters after the first half.

So you don’t think you’ve gone crazy, remember:

• the field is 110-yards long, with 20-yard endzones
• teams can elect to start from the 35 after a field goal
• there’s a 5-yard “no yards” zone around kick returners before they catch the ball
• all the receivers can be in motion

It’s the football you need, maybe just not the football you want.

Brief Observances:

• Led Zeppelin won their copyright case over “Stairway to Heaven”. The key phrase from the jury’s verdict is that “original elements of Spirit’s song are not extrinsically similar” to “Stairway to Heaven.”
• Brexit results are expected at 0600 GMT, so 0100 EDT/2200 PDT. Current polling prior to the vote (the UK does not allow for exit polling) had “Remain” up by only 1%, but who knows what’ll happen when people are actually confronted with the choice.
• In a city known for bad drivers, here’s a look at what happens when you take Mom’s Porsche out for a drive when you don’t have a licence:

https://youtu.be/TwZwSIrMLmk

Speaking of teenagers, I have to invigilate an English 12 Provincial Exam tomorrow. It’s a fairly straight-forward exercise, but there is some peril. Since it’s worth 40% of the overall mark, you have to keep your eye out for two things:

1. cheating
2. freak outs

The cheating is fairly easy to spot. The one thing different aspect this year is making sure kids take off their Apple watches. It’s easy to spot a kid looking at a phone, because their chin disappears into their chest as they try to look-down-but-not-look-like-they’re-looking-down. It’s the freakouts that are hard. It always starts with the pen stab on the desk, and then can go in a bunch of different directions:

• the cryer
• the runner
• the swearer
• the stabber (in the hand/arm/leg with same pen)
• the fainter

The key is to locate the initial site of the noise; then you can observe to see where it might go next. It’s a two-hour exam, with an extra hour provided on the end, for all students due to individual “learning differences”.

Tonight’s sports:

• NBA: The Draft – 7:00 – ESPN
  • Only two rounds? NOT A REAL DRAFT!
• CFL: Hamilton @ Toronto – 7:30 – TSN; ESPNEWS
  • Here’s a link to the ESPN broadcast schedule for the CFL. All games are available on ESPN3, and 20 will be shown on ESPN2 or NEWS.

You’ll notice a drop-off on the broadcast network once NFL preseason rolls into gear. Hmmm – NO COINCIDENCE THERE!