Articles posted in May 2008

Damon Allen Retires from Football as One of the Greatest

Published on May 28, 2008

As expected, Damon Allen announced today his retirement from football after a 23 year playing career in the Canadian Football League holding six regular season records, including career passing yards (pro football’s passing yards mark as well), career rushing yards for a QB, career pass attempts and career pass completions, and 4 Grey Cup rings. After a distinguished career in which Allen accomplished many personal and team goals, is called a CFL legend and predicted for both the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he still fails to get the respect he seems to deserve.

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CFLdb Refreshed - New Features Launched

Published on May 27, 2008

Today I refreshed the CFLdb site with a new paint job and a few new features. This will be the base for the CFLdb theme until I am ready to implement a custom back end. There may be a few corrections to issues I find on the live site, but other than that I won’t be focusing on the site’s look.

I do plan on adding new features and improving existing ones as I am able. This release launches a number of features to the previous blog-only format. First, I have added a Google News Bar below the header which provides a ticker to recent CFL and CFL team news stories. I have also added a RSS feed of the latest articles on CFL.ca to the sidebar. Below that feed is a custom CFL feed mashup I created using Yahoo! Pipes from the football article feeds of globesports.com, CBC.ca and Slam! Sports as well as the TSN.ca feed. I have filtered these combined feeds on stories on the CFL and member clubs. I haven’t had a lot of time to test, improve and streamline this Yahoo! Pipe, so feel free to clone and build your own off of it or provide your suggestions. The feed mashup is available for subscription using the link on the RSS icon.

I’ve also added a CFLdb feature called Hash Marks in the sidebar where I will post links and short commentary on CFL news and stories. This will leave larger posts for the bigger events and commentary.

Finally, I’ve added the 2008 CFL schedule in iCal format to the sidebar. The CFL is publishing their schedule in iCal format now as well, but I have provided the full CFL 2008 schedule as well as 2008 home schedules for each of the teams. Instead of just subscribing to the full 2008 CFL schedule, you can subscribe to each of the team’s home schedules and colour code each team’s schedule in iCal. The iCal format is used by Mac OS X’s iCal application, Google Calendar and many other calendar programs able to read the iCal format. The schedules will be updated through the season with any changes and results, so if your subscription is set to follow changes, you can keep your calendar up to date with the latest information. The schedules include the game info as well as location, TV coverage (TSN or TSN HD), week and bye information.

There are a few items still to do with these features, such as improving the Hash Marks commentary, adding a combined feed, improving the Yahoo! Pipe feed and completing the Links and Places sections. I will work on these improvements as I can, but my first priority will be to post here regularly, both longer posts and short Hash Mark commentary.

I hope that CFL fans and site visitors will find these improvements useful. I would appreciate any comments on the usefulness of these changes, any suggestions on improvements to the site or features, and pointing out others who may have valuable CFL resources of their own.

2007 Grey Cup Review

Published on May 26, 2008

The initiation of this site was supposed to occur many times, and on Grey Cup Sunday, 2007, in a fit of Getting Things Done, I registered the domain. My plans were to begin the site with a Grey Cup review, leading to some time in the off-season of light posting to prepare the site for the 2008 schedule. My schedule decided not to cooperate, and as December turned to January and then February, I kept saying I could still start with a recap of the Grey Cup. When I finally started to post in April the Grey Cup post was still a priority, but I did not find time for it between all the other posts I was writing and my other workload. So, as the 2008 season is just around the corner, I find myself down to my last chance to put this article out there and have any relevance. So without further ado, my post-2007 Grey Cup review.

The 2007 Grey Cup received increased attention from the media and country, an interesting turn of events that reflects the league’s rejuvenation considering two western teams were involved in the game and Toronto was the host. After Toronto proved through the week that they were deserving hosts once again, hope turned from a good festival to a good game. Unfortunately, it was found that having the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the game can guarantee a great fan atmosphere, but not a well played game.

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Training Camps Approach

Published on May 23, 2008

Canadian Football League training camps get under way soon, with rookies reporting to teams next week and veterans next weekend. There are a lot of changes in many cities this year, with Calgary, Saskatchewan, Toronto and Montreal under new leadership along with some major player moves. The other four teams have also had changes in player personnel of interest. Quick analysis would have the B.C. Lions and Winnipeg Blue Bombers favourites in their divisions, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Edmonton Eskimos improved enough to present more of a challenge for playoff positions but solid predictions will have to wait until we get to see some of the re-tooled teams in exhibition games.

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Site Progress Delayed; CFL News Abounds

Published on May 13, 2008

After a good start, I haven’t posted here in a while due to other commitments. I have plans to implement some features at CFLdb to provide some other methods to publish CFL information which will alleviate the need for me to post about every CFL story. Those features require a theme update and with the season approaching, I have a couple weeks to get that done. Look for those changes by June 1st.

As for the CFL, there have been news on a number of fronts.

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