Curlers behaving badly show the sport hasn't gone totally dry

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Some pro curlers had too much to drink

The team of Jamie Koe, Ryan Fry, Chris Schille and D.J. Kidby was kicked out of a tournament on Sunday after organizers received complaints from other curlers and fans about their behaviour on the ice. "They were extremely drunk and breaking brooms and swearing," Red Deer Curling Classic spokesman Wade Thurber told CBC Sports' Devin Heroux. "There was some damage in the locker room and other teams complaining about their stuff being kicked around in the locker room."

Fry won an Olympic gold medal in 2014 with skip Brad Jacobs. He still curls for Jacobs's team but was filling in as a spare for Koe at the World Curling Tour event, which had a $35,000 purse. In a statement he sent to Heroux, Fry apologized for his behaviour: "My actions were truly disrespectful and embarrassing — the committee was right to disqualify us from play."

For many, curling and drinking still go together. At your local curling club, a round of post-game beers can almost seem like part of the game itself. The Brier — Canada's men's championship tournament — was sponsored by Labatt for years. Before that, it was a tobacco company, and curlers back in the day could even smoke during games (check out this early-'70s clip from the CBC Archives).

But the old stereotype of the beer-drinking, dart-hacking curler is going the way of the corn broom. As the game becomes more professionalized (and more lucrative) at the elite level, most of today's top pros are handling themselves like other world-class athletes. They're training year-round and watching what they eat — and drink. But Sunday's incident is a reminder that curling hasn't gone completely dry.

Here are your weekend winners and losers

Winners: The Calgary Stampeders and Ottawa Redblacks

These two teams will meet in the 106th Grey Cup game next Sunday in Edmonton after their victories in the CFL's divisional finals. Ottawa overwhelmed Hamilton 46-27 in the East final on the strength of six touchdown passes by Trevor Harris — a CFL playoff record. Calgary is off to its third straight Grey Cup game after beating Winnipeg 22-14 in the West final.

Oddsmakers installed the Stampeders as four-point favourites and the pressure will be on them — they were also favoured to win in 2016 and '17 before losing to, respectively, Ottawa and Toronto.

Loser: People with weak stomachs

This is crazy. Thirty-three years to the day that Joe Theismann suffered the most famous injury in football history, an eerily similar (and gross) thing happened to the man playing the same position for the same team.

Washington quarterback Alex Smith broke two bones in his right leg after multiple players sacked him, leaving his ankle bent at an impossible angle. As if it wasn't strange enough already, Theismann was in attendance. "It was surreal," said the man whose career ended at the hands of Lawrence Taylor. "You see him go down in a pile and then there's a shot that showed his leg bent and I turned away right after that. I feel so bad for him."

Winners: Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints

The hottest team in football won its ninth game in a row, routing defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia 48-7. Brees threw four touchdown passes and now has 25 this year — against only one interception. If he keeps this up, pro football's all-time passing yards leader could finally snag his first NFL MVP award.

Winner: Brooke Henderson

OK, she didn't quite win. But with her 10th-place showing in the final LPGA tournament of the year, the 21-year-old Canadian finished second in the tour's season-long points competition. Henderson posted 11 top-10s and a pair of wins in 2018, including the crowning achievement of her career so far — her victory in the CP Women's Open. She's the first Canadian woman in 45 years to win her national golf championship.

Winners: LeBron James… and everyone laying eyes on those Heat uniforms

LeBron scored 51 last night in the Lakers' 113-97 victory over the Heat. It was his first win in Miami since he left there in 2014 to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers (who he then ditched — again — this summer to head to L.A.). It was the 13th 50-burger of James's career. We're all winners, though, for getting to feast our eyes on the Heat's Miami Vice-inspired uniforms:

Quickly...

Calgary's Olympic bid is officially dead. City council voted unanimously today to stop efforts to land the 2026 Winter Games. The move was basically a formality — the bid all but died last week when a clear majority of Calgarians who voted in a special plebiscite said no to the Games. Two bids are left in the running: Stockholm and a joint Italian bid from Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Members of a high school football team were charged in connection with an alleged gang sexual assault. Toronto police charged six students in connection with the alleged assault, which occurred at St. Michael's College School and was captured on camera and shared on social media. The Canadian Press reported that the charges filed today involved a group of students on the football team at the private, all-boys Catholic school allegedly pinning down another student in a locker room and sexually assaulting him with a broom handle.

Roy Halladay is on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. The late Toronto Blue Jays pitcher was one of 20 new candidates put up for consideration today. Mariano Rivera, the best closer of all time, was also added to the ballot. Halladay died just over a year ago at the age of 40 when the small airplane he was flying crashed. He won two Cy Young awards, including one with Toronto in 2003.

Remember When...

Today we're starting a new regular feature where we look back at a memorable moment in sports history.

So... remember when an American team won the Canadian Football League championship? It happened on Nov. 19, 1995, when the Baltimore Stallions beat the Calgary Stampeders to capture the Grey Cup. This affront to Canadian pride never occurred again and probably never will — by the time the '96 season kicked off, the CFL had ditched its ill-advised three-year experiment with U.S. expansion.

The Stallions drew well (none of the other four American teams really did) but their fate was sealed just weeks after the Grey Cup when the NFL agreed to let Art Modell move the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, where they became the Ravens. The Stallions packed up for Montreal and became the Alouettes.

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