1999 Brier
SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Curling
1999 BRIER
ON THE ROCKS
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
A crazy eight?
Not really. If you look at the stats from this Brier, 10 ends may be two too many
Only one problem.
But they didn't prove it on the ice.
In fact, you could make a case that they proved just the opposite.
In arguably the most competitive Brier in history, not many games would have turned out to be different if they'd been two ends shorter.
In the 66 games of round robin play at the Brier, teams leading after eight ends won 48 and another 10 were tied after eight.
That meant that only eight games went the other way after eight.
It was the same story at the Scott Tournament of Hearts.
Teams leading after eight won 51 with five more tied. Ten games turned the other way.
Russ Howard of New Brunswick would have lost 4-3 to Paul Flemming of Nova Scotia in the tie-breaker instead of winning 5-4 over 10 ends.
The other three games would have worked out the same way.
Brier boss Warren Hansen does make a valid point.
"The thing is that if it is eight ends, they'd be playing it in a different manner. And you play the ninth and 10th ends far different than you play the first eight,'' says Hansen.
That argument, however, can be reversed.
How many games were there when the rinks spent the first few ends of blank-blank-blank-blank curling?
In the 70 games played prior to today's final, 23 of them opened with blank ends.
Eight opened with back-to-back blanks.
Manitoba and Newfoundland went through three blanks before they started scoring, Northern Ontario and Saskatchewan four and Northern Ontario and B.C. five.
GETTING AGGRESSIVE
How much sooner would they start getting aggressive in those games?
Curling, for several years, has been working hard at trying to present itself in a manner like most professional sports.
They've got referees and umpires and time clocks and timeouts and mascots and dress codes and ...
In a time when most major pro sports are trying to figure out ways to speed up their sports to get down to a three-hour TV show complete with opening and brief post-game wrap, Canadian curling is fighting the simplest way in the world to do it.
Changing rules in curling is no problem.
This isn't like baseball where they've played nine innings with 90 feet between the bases and 60 feet six inches between the pitchers rubber and the plate for over a century.
Curling has gone from corn brooms to push brooms to free guard zones.
When Ernie Richardson and Matt Baldwin were winning Briers they played 12 ends and the rinks were forced to throw every last rock on every last end even if the score was 30-3, which it was between Saskatchewan and New Brunswick in 1957.
And guess who is all for this idea?
Ernie Richardson!
"If it makes the game better to present and more popular, I'm all for it,'' said the only skip ever to win four Briers.
Hansen laughs at the suggestion shortening the game to eight ends will result in NBC going to curling live for lengthy periods during the Olympics.
He had the quote of the week on that front when he said you could make them two end games and NBC still wouldn't show them.
"We're three hours right now. The international Olympic people have visions of two hours. That makes no sense at all,'' says Hansen.
IF NBC SAID ...
"I'll tell you one thing. If NBC told us they'd give us 16 hours of television coverage during the Olympics if we made our games two hours long, we'd look at it real quick. That would be the daylight to get it in the eye of the Americans.''
The idea is on the agenda to be voted on at the upcoming World Curling Championships in St. John, New Brunswick.
If adopted the eight-end game would be on display at the proposed World Open next December at the AgriCom.
Making the giant assumption that particular event gets off the ground, it might be an interesting idea to try the eight-end game as an experiment in that event, even if the world body votes it down or tables it for another day.