Happy Canada Day from your good friends at With Leather! And what better way to celebrate your love of back bacon and loyalty to the queen than with some news of Canada’s national pastime? No, not moose wrestling, but proufessional foutball. The Canadian Football League has announced that it will strengthen league drug-testing policies and procedures to crack down on steroid and human growth hormone use. That is, if you’re OK with that, eh?

The league will surprise players with random screenings for a grocery list of possible drug violations – including everything from ephedrine to stanozolol – and advance notice will not exceed 24 hours, as to really catch those hosers off guard. The inclusion of hGH is a first for professional football, as the NFL has been pushing for the players union to cave in and allow it. Current NFL testing procedures include a piece of paper with “Are you taking hGH?” written on it, followed by a lot of winking.

Pass the delicious maple syrup, Pro Football Talk:

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Matt Brown is now my favorite person ever; he and three others are starting the first online fantasy football league for the CFL. The stats-based game for the Canadian Football League will feature eight-team leagues that run much like its American counterparts.

Brown has founded the fantasy league — www.fantaseh.ca — with his brothers (Aaron and Dan), Lee Garinger (who handles many of the business-oriented matters) and Aaron Cook (a computer programmer). Cook is providing his expertise for free.

“We were shocked that he would do it,’’ Matt Brown said. “We wanted a top-quality site and only a few people can do that type of programming. In his words, ‘We’re building the car. You guys can drive it.’ ’’ –Calgary Herald.

The downside? It costs $80 to start a league. I don’t care. I’m doing it. And then I’m rigging the draft so that I can take Ricky Ray first over all. Oh, Ricky, we’re finally going to be together. See, it’s not creepy at all if he’s Canadian.

Individual players will be drafted, with the exception being quarterbacks.

In the case of that position, the quarterbacks from each team will be considered an entity. Anyone who drafts the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ quarterbacks, for example, would end up with the combined fantasy totals for Darian Durant and anyone else who ends up behind centre…

Screw that. But what else should I have expected from a country that tries to give away health insurance yet charges eighty bucks for fantasy football. What an ass-backwards country. Thanks for nothing, Canada.

Many wondered if Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb would be able to play out the last year of his contract in Philadelphia. Now, it appears that the Syracuse product won’t even be playing his next season in America, as the Eagles, with the unprecedented assistance of the NFL, have sold McNabb’s contract to the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.

The Roughriders will pay 70 percent of the $12.25 million left on the last year of McNabb’s deal. In return, the Philadelphia Eagles will no longer have to play with Donovan McNabb.

“I didn’t even know that my contract could have been sold to another league,” McNabb told reporters at a press conference earlier this morning. “I didn’t even know that was in the rules.” –NFL.com

With the bigger field in the CFL, McNabb will probably underthrow receivers by 20 yards or so now. And really, we should make deporting players a regular thing. The NHL moves players back and forth across the border all the time, and look how well they’re doing. Okay, bad example. Read the rest of this entry »

As Buffalo Bills interim coach Perry Fewell gets his commandments in order, the search for the next poor bastard head man is on, and one of the names being tossed about is that of Montreal Alouettes head coach Marc Trestman. Yep, the Bills are looking at the CFL for potentially picking their next head coach.

Trestman, 53 – who has served on past NFL coaching staffs for the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders, Arizona Cardinals, Minnesota Vikings, Detroit Lions and Miami Dolphins – led Montreal to the Grey Cup final in his rookie CFL season a year ago. –Globe and Mail.

Trestman also lead the Als to a CFL-best 15-3 record this season; they’ll play in their conference final on Sunday. But even if Trestman was considering the job, there’s no guarantee that Montreal would let him go. Montreal GM Jim Popp told The Canadian Press, “[B]ottom line, he’s under contract to our team.” Oh well, there’s always af2.

Time for your feel-good story of the week from the Great White North, this one involving two serendipitous teammates for the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos…and a shovel. Wait, what does “serendipitous” mean again?

The incident occurred after a practice altercation between six-foot-four 285-pound [Xzavie] Jackson and six-foot-four, 298-pound centre Aaron Fiacconi. No one intervened in the tussle. Jackson, who got the worst of it, flung off his practice jersey and headed off the field — returning with a shovel from behind some nearby dumpsters.

Jackson’s shouts alerted head coach Richie Hall and general manager Danny Maciocia, who stopped him from entering the field at Clarke Park and talked him back down to reality before he was escorted to the dressing room by a team doctor.

“It happens. You guys saw it, that’s all,” defensive tackle Dario Romero told reporters. via.

It happens. That’s just part of the Canadian game, chasing each other around with shovels. It’s how we bond, eh. Americans took the shovel out of the game years ago. And now I’m torn on whether to go with the “universal health care” joke or the “calling a spade a spade” joke. I’ll just leave it with…hey, is that a half-eaten bag of trail mix?

Merci, Dave and Dmytrowich. I love that I’m getting CFL tips over email now.

Adam Jones is not moving out of the country. Thought to be spending at least part of his fall in the Canadian Football League, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are reporting that such a deal has fallen through.

The CFL team announced Wednesday it has ended its pursuit of the controversial ex-NFL cornerback, one day after multiple reports said Jones would play for the team.

“It is unfortunate that this situation became public; however, our position has remained consistent,” Blue Bombers coach Mike Kelly said in a statement. “We will pursue athletes that we believe will contribute to our organization on and off the field.via.

This seems like one of those ploys where a guy acts like he’s going to play someplace in hopes that someone else will swoop in with a better offer at the 11th hour and makes all his blues go away. But that didn’t happen here, and even though Pacman seemingly had a job playing football, he turned it down. Doesn’t make sense to me, because now the West Virginia product has nothing left but a whole lotta time to kill.