Congrats to Jesse on being recognized as the outstanding offensive player of the week. However, Jesse having also taken home the outstanding Canadian made me think:
Its great to acknowledge outstanding performance but doesn't anyone here find it a little belittling that all our individual performance awards come with the "Oh by the way... and the best Canadian was..." as if to suggest that our Canadians need 'special' recognition. If a player excels on the field, he should be recognized regardless of nationality.
I find it belittling because in all of the weekly awards, regular season awards and Grey Cup awards, the league or the CFL covering media feels the need to acknowledge the best Canadian as if to say that Canadians just don't contribute enough to actually earn "the real" MVP honours. So here's a consolation award. You were the best out of all Canadians.
I think they should scrap this. I know it promotes domestic talent as not to get lost amongst the import skilled players, but its just plain belittling.
I didn’t even realize there was a Canadian Player of the Week award. That must be new this year.
It looks like they replaced the old Lineman of the Week award.
If he was the outstanding player for the whole league, should he recieve the outstanding Canadian as well. Not to take anything away from the accomplishment, but isnt it redundant to give a Canadian player that is name Outstanding for the league...the Canadian award to?
I agree with joedavtav,the award is somewhat belittling.They gave Morreale the "outstanding Canadian" award in the '99 grey cup and I thought at the time that it was like an alsoran trophy.
And what if the best Canadian during the game or the week did hardly anything to earn any title of recognition at all? That would be doubly insulting.
But maybe we're reading too much into this?
I disagree that it is belittling and I like the idea of recognition for Canadian players. I like the fact that Jesse won both--it demonstrates that, when given the chance, Canadians can excel.
It is the CANADIAN Football league and acknowledging the performances of Canadians is important. Mike Weir, Steve Nash, Owen Hargraves, Justin Morneau....etc...all receive special recognition and attention in Canada. So should the Canadians of our only truly Canadian professional sports league.
Joedavtv is in good company with his opinion about Canadian-only awards. And at least one Canadian player is miffed about the replacement of the Lineman of the Week award with a Canadian one, according to this article in the Vancouver Sun this morning.
Wally Buono too is especially choked about this whole 'Canadian' thing ....sparked apparently by some CBC football announcer for the Toronto-Calgary game who referred to two receivers doing a good job "for Canadians".
I agree that they shouldn't have dropped Lineman of the Week ... how is an offensive lineman ever going to get an award now? A D-lineman might conceivably win the defensive award of the week for a bunch of sacks, but not an O-lineman even though they're such an important part of the offense.
It's a really good article (top one on the index list - I didn't post the entire link because it was a mile long).