GRASS IS GREENER IN CANADA

How deperate does the Canadian Football League look these days -- more
specifically, the Toronto Argonauts?

Judging by the weak defence the league and team have offered for the
signing of suspended National Football League star Ricky Williams,
they're experiencing hard times.

Certainly the CFL and its teams, over the years, have taken a flyer on
many talented but troubled NFL rejects. Some of those moves actually
turned out to benefit the league.

But at a time when the drug issue is so huge in North American sport,
the CFL looks foolish by luring a four-time NFL drug-policy violator
into the fold with a one-year contract.

There's no doubt Williams is a bona fide NFL star in terms of his
running abilities and will attract plenty of interest and ticket sales
in CFL cities if he stays and plays this entire season. If he's
healthy and in the right frame of mind, he should dominate in the CFL
this season.

But this is a bad public relations move, even for a league that
routinely finds creative new ways to shot itself in the foot.

For starters, why is the CFL signing a player under NFL suspension?
The fact that there wasn't a clear rule here, one pertaining to the
CFL respecting the NFL penalties on drug offences, is bush. Yet even
with the absence of such a rule, the CFL brass should show enough
common sense not to be painted as a dumping ground for the failures of
the NFL drug education program.

Setting the rules aside for a second, there's another aspect of this
signing that doesn't wash. We're in the midst of a period where
professional sports are supposedly trying to clean up their act in the
area of drugs. Whether the concerns are players on
performance-enhancing drugs or recreational marijuana use, all leagues
should be trying to present a better image to sponsors and fans,
especially young fans.

Yet those concerns obviously went up in smoke with such a valued prize
on the line.

This wasn't a case of giving Williams a second chance, the excuse so
often used when teams sign players with troubled pasts. Williams had
already had his second chance, and more, in the NFL. He was suspended
for a reason, no doubt in the hope that the time spent on the
sidelines would make him change his ways when he came back to the league.

But thanks to the Argos and the CFL, he won't spend this season on the
sidelines, even if it's some tropical island where he tries to forget
the game. He'll still be playing football, drawing a salary and
displaying the talents that may eventually get him back to the
big-money NFL.

Those who have objected most strenuously to Williams getting to play
in the CFL, such as former Argonaut great Joe Theismann, haven't been
received well in Toronto. Theismann said he was ashamed of the Argos
for signing Williams. For that he was ridiculed at Toronto's game.
Montreal Alouettes coach Don Matthews was reportedly fined $5,000 by
the CFL on Monday for comments he made about the Williams signing.
Among other shots, according to The Canadian Press, was that Matthews
accused the CFL of looking "cheap and second-rate."

Yet Matthews is right. Signing Williams exposes the CFL's flaws. It
reminds us of the embarrassing absence of a CFL-wide drug policy, how
desperate the league is for attention and the lengths it will go to
sell tickets.

The result is that Ricky Williams may have found his ideal football
home.