But Where's The Water?

Well, Survivor is back on, so that means that in addition to football predictions, I'll also be talking about reality television again.

It always takes a couple of weeks to sort of figure who everyone is, but this season looks like it'll be ok. I do think that this emphasis on "let's see if we can come up with a challenge that will kill them" doesn't necessarily add all that much. If I were just watching for the challenges, I'd watch Fear Factor instead. That being said, it does have the added bonus of disadvantaging teams that keep around their lazier types, who always used to worm their way much further in the game than they had any business being (not that this sort of thing doesn't still happen, but maybe it might be a bit different this year). Anywys, Jim looked like he may have been an interesting character, but that's often the case with the first one off. I'm also looking to see how the experiment with previous players plays out.

For football, this should be an interesting week.

Winnipeg and Ottawa
This is a tough one. Winnipeg seems to be going down in flames, though they were quite close last week. Ottawa, on the other hand, is coming off getting blown out and is engaged in all manner of Negotiation List and Trade Rumour silliness. I highly doubt that The Bachelor is the solution to their problems, even if they are able to pry him off of Montreal's neg list. Regardless of all that, I'm going with Ottawa to right the ship, though I seem to have been overly generous with them so far this year.

Calgary and Hamilton
You know, I was sort of dreading reluctantly endorsing the Stamps in this one. However, Henry Burris sort of took care of that for me. While the other guy did well in relief in Edmonton (he scored on his only drive, which is one more touchdown than Hank was able to engineer), he should still be a step down. Calgary has a strong defence, so I'm expecting a bunch of Danny Mac picks, nevertheless, I'm going with a Hamilton win. Maybe Jesse Lumsden will make some nice tackles on special teams.

B.C. and Montreal
The Lions are going to have to lose sooner or later (I know I've been saying this most of the year, but it's true). The Als are clearly not the power that they used to be. All of that being said, I would personally find it amusing if they knocked off the Lions, given all the times when the Lions would end similar Montreal winning streaks. That reason is good enough for me, Montreal it is.

Edmonton and Saskatchewan
This is a game that the Esks almost always lose, and they usually look badly doing it. I would say that it would be good for them to be up for one of their former QBs, but there's basically nobody left from when Crandell was here (and that never seemed to work against Nealon anyways). For the Eskimos, the offence has been the proverbial whipping boy for the past week. I think that it would be foolish in the extreme to pull Ray. Hopefully the running game will continue to improve (and there will be greater committment to it as well). Anyways, I'm going with Edmonton to turn things around.