Murray Wood: Who's scary... and who's scary good?
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week, in a specia...
The call for change is coming again in Canadian curling.
The topic again is the format of the national championships — the Brier and the Scotties.
With uncertainty over whether or not every province will be able to send a team to this year’s tournaments, the cry to rid the national championship of the provincial format is heating up.
The top teams on the curling tour are about done with having to qualify through their provinces and think it’s time to reward the top 15 or so teams with automatic berths. That would mean maybe three teams from Manitoba or three from Ontario and maybe no teams from Nova Scotia or P.E.I.
The problem becomes the trickle-down and if smaller associations aren’t sending representatives to the national championship, would that kill them all together? How could that impact grassroots curling?
I think there should be a happy medium. Is it an expanded format? Instead of wild-card teams, should they just have multiple teams representing the same province like bobsleigh with Canada 1 and Canada 2?
But ridding the Brier and Scotties of provincial reps from across Canada would be a mistake.
