Bruce Dowbiggin
Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Running Backs

Las Vegas Raiders RB Josh Jacobs looked at the reality of being a running back in today’s NFL and caught the 6 AM flight out of Vegas.
New York Giants RB Saquon Barkley looked at the reality of being a running back in today’s NFL and signed a one-year deal for $10.1 million. The incentives in the deal will be very challenging for Barkley. He said he had an “epiphany”. Or maybe a chat with his banker.
Same situation. Different response. As players coming off their rookie-capped contracts both Jacobs and Barkley found a market that valued running backs just above place kickers on the economic totem pole. Prone to injury and undercut by a steady stream of star running backs emerging from the Draft, veteran running backs across the league now found themselves squeezed on short-term deals for what constitutes pocket change for quarterbacks.
Or find themselves out of the league. As this transpired in RB World, Chargers QB Justin Herbert— coming out of his rookie deal— inked a $262.5 million/ five-year contract extension. While Aaron Rodgers kicked back $30 million to his new team (the New York Jets) so they could gain flexibility under the rigid NFL salary cap. Barkley took a fraction of that to spend his fall/ winter getting pounded and punished carrying the ball.
Indianapolis Colts star RB Jonathan Taylor is another who’s fallen from star to vapour trail. Taylor said at minicamp in June that contract negotiations on an extension are up to the Colts but that not having an extension before the season “wouldn’t be a distraction to me”. While the Stanford product wants a generous contract as he comes off his restricted rookie deal, Colts owner Jim Irsay says the team had yet to exchange contract numbers with their star.
Taylor has now changed his agent and demanded a trade. He and the Colts are currently at war. This has caused much debate within the football community about the former glamour position of Walter Payton, Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith losing status. One sure sign of the decline is the franchise tag for runners going from $14.5 M down to the $10.1 M accepted by Barkley.
As the NFL becomes more pass-happy, are running backs about to become worker drones, table setters for fabulously rich QBs? It is, of course, a matter of sports caponomics . (For more on the evolution of salary caps read our book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps are Killing Pro Sports and Why the Free Market Could Save Them.)
Scarcity drives value, and the most scarce commodity is not excellent running backs. It’s excellent quarterbacks. Scarcity is why left offensive tackles make more than guards and centres. It’s why cornerbacks make more than middle linebackers. It’s why these positions are drafted in the first round while running backs and others slide to the later rounds.
As we remarked in Cap In Hand, the NFL knew it was a two-tier league back in 1987 when it busted a strike by the NFL Players Association for free agency. “There had been no new CBA since the 1982 agreement expired in 1987. To drain the NFLPA’s bank account, the NFL had previously created a “Quarterback Club” marketing arm separate from other players. While the league’s top QBs and select others were handsomely compensated with bonuses and percentages of sales, the move denied significant marketing revenues to the rest of the players and the union.”
End of strike. You’d think that with agents advising RBs and the market establishing value running backs would put pride aside. Nah. Running back Le’Veon Bell describes the process when he turned down guaranteed wealth in Pittsburgh. “My franchise tag was $14.5M, and I walked away from it,” Bell said on the AP Pro Football Podcast. “It’s a respect thing. You told me you were going to do this for me but you didn’t… I could’ve just ignored it, went inside the locker room and had been playing.
“But that wouldn’t have made me happy, and I’m sure inside the locker room, everybody would’ve felt it, and, as a team, we wouldn’t have been good. I feel that’s the same with Saquon. He’s trying to be the best he can, but obviously deep down, he’s not happy, because he wanted to be compensated. He still wants his teammates to be good, so he showed up.”
Bell’s own gamble didn’t work out as he’s drifted from the Jets to the Ravens to the Buccaneers. From leading man to bit player.
Former Bears standout Matt Forte, third-leading rusher in team history, says Barkley and Jacobs should take the franchise tag, “… you go into the building, you can lift weights and you practice with the team and stuff,” he told The Athletic . “And on game day, I just wouldn’t play. And, you know, they can say what they want, the media, they (might) want to bash the player, but you have to use that as a business tactic. Because the team treats it as a business. You have got to treat your body and your career as a business as well. And so that’s the only leverage you have.”
Were we not talking about multi-millions this might be a true tragedy. After all, it is “F***-You Money” with millionaires trying to wrestle fortunes from billionaires. Still, get set for when the NFL negotiates its next collective agreement. We could go without football for a while.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the fifth-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His prize-listed 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Mistrial Declared in Junior Hockey Assault Trial. What Now?

With all the Elbows Up election idiocy you can be forgiven for missing the news this past week that the trial of five former members of the 2018 men’s gold-medal winning Team Canada hockey team was declared a mistrial just a day into the proceedings. The five have all plead not guilty.
On Friday the judge ordered a new jury be empanelled after a half day of evidence in the trial of the players who are accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room in 2018 in London, Ont. Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia has not released the reasons she halted the trial. It comes after outrage over a civil settlement between the victim and Hockey Canada in 2020 forced authorities to pursue the criminal charges.
The graphic nature of the evidence so far promises dramatic testimony should the trial go its full length. Thoughts that one of the quintet might accept a plea deal to roll over on his former teammates— a goal of the police and prosecution— have so far been unrealized. It is expected that the victim will testify.

The low-profile start to the trial in the case is a contrast with the front-page treatment it received after excellent reporting from Katie Strang of The Athletic and Rick Westhead of TSN. At the time the charges were announced in 2024, Michael McLeod and Cal Foote were with the New Jersey Devils, Dillon Dubé was with the Calgary Flames and Carter Hart was with the Philadelphia Flyers. Alex Formenton had been signed by the Ottawa Senators but was playing in Switzerland.
The sensation was amplified by the role of Hockey Canada in the civil case, using funds to pay off the victim. Parliamentary hearings and front-page headlines added to the impact.
As we wrote in January of 2024, the hysteria encouraged the usual radicals to denigrate the national sport. “For the same reason that some think guns kill people, the toffs believe that hockey itself causes outbreaks of macho sexual behaviour. These people cheer for Sweden when it plays Canada because… Canadian hockey is just too down-market for them. Sweaty guys. Cold rinks. Meritocracy. Ick!

“We should clarify here that we mean men’s hockey. Womens’ hockey is not included in the loathing. In fact, metrosexuals from PM Justin Trudeau on down worship the wholesome new PWHL. Skippy recently gave a pep talk to the Ottawa players in their dressing room. Surprise. They lost.
“Players are married to rivals on other teams. Can you get more hip than that? Women’s hockey is nominally about winning; the real prize is equal pay for work of equal value. And the love of the Trudeau cabinet.
“But men’s hockey, with its crude meritocracy, must be shunned at all costs. Pediatric “experts” blame its emphasis on winning for causing kids to drop out.. So when the sordid tale of a 2018 multiple-sex allegation at a golf tournament arrived it warranted a hearing in the Commons, tut-tutting editorials by the score about the over-sexed nature of teenaged young hockey stars and multiple attempts to convict someone, anyone, for the act.
“That’s why the principals eventually pursued a civil case, where rules of evidence are less stringent. A civil case that Hockey Canada quickly paid off from a suspicious slush fund to end the ordeal for everyone. How’d that work out?
”Feminists and the non-binary set howled about this, but after the storm of outrage the media cycle disappeared from the public view. The 20 or so players on the 2018 Team Canada gold medal winners graduated into the NHL, and the league, which had no power to compel testimony nor a criminal charges to rely on, let them play.
“But pressure on police over the following months finally forced criminal charges. Butter cloak of secrecy prevailed. This was highly unsatisfactory. Who was under suspicion? Who was innocent? Player agents and lawyers kept their charges from self-incrimination at all costs.
“How will it end? Will there be convictions or will deals be done? In this time where social-media truths are fungible and Woke causes are paramount no one should hazard a guess. But one thing that will get an airing is the charge that hockey created this climate of sexual permissiveness. The sport must be condemned when its participants break the law.
You think that hockey caused this? That it doesn’t happen in the world of millionaire basketball or football or baseball players? Guess again. Cleveland Browns QB DeShaun Watson faced 24 sexual assault accusations. One former NBA player had seven children by six different women. Former MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer faced sexual assault charges from an alleged assault at his home.
How about the stories of young women who, like the young women pursuing athletes, went backstage at concerts and shows for a rendezvous with a famous rock star like Steven Tyler or Axl Rose and got more than they bargained for.
Or those who tried to climb the political or corporate ladder by submitting to power figures? Hello, Kamala Harris. This case is about power, stardom, privilege and exploitation. Ugly, yes. Life-wrecking for some. But trying to pigeon-hole hockey as the unique engineer of the tragedy is ignorant and irresponsible. “
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
2025 Federal Election
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.
Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.
Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.
The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.
Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.
It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.
The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status. As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.
This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.
Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.
What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.
A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.
Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.
For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.
It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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