The Hamilton Tiger-Cats' stadium situation has had more twists than a bad daytime soap opera so far, so we're going to describe it in that style. Previously on The Days of The Week, city council originally voted in favour of a West Harbour location opposed by the Tiger-Cats, owner Bob Young pulled out of discussions and threatened to leave town, negotiations over East Mountain and Innovation Park compromise sites collapsed, a promising railyard plan was shot down by costs, a local election may have been influenced by the stadium debate and council decided last week to kill the last Hamilton site both sides were looking at in Confederation Park. Now, it looks like the focus has shifted elsewhere. After being spurned by Hamilton council, the Tiger-Cats are on the rebound and are now trying to land a stadium in nearby Burlington near the GO Train line (pictured above).

Burlington is a smaller city (population of 164,415 in 2006) than Hamilton (504,559), so the municipal government

One of the off-the-radar teams in free agency discussions thus far has been the Toronto Argonauts. They don't have as many potential free agents as the likes of the Alouettes and Stampeders, with only nine guys on the official list, but there are some key players there. Soon after officially taking on general manager duties as well as his head coaching responsibilities after the season, Jim Barker told The Toronto Sun's Terry Koshan that the team was hoping to bring back all of their potential free agents (he listed 10, including the nine on the CFL's list and defensive lineman Eric Taylor). So far, he's making good progress on that front; the team agreed to a new contract with special teams ace Bryan Crawford last week, and Sportsnet's Arash Madani reported today they've signed receiver Jermaine Copeland (pictured above leaping into the end zone Oct. 9 against Saskatchewan) to a new deal as well.

According to Madani and Sportsnet's Perry Lefko, Copeland's deal is worth over $100,000

One of the most crucial issues facing football at all levels is how to address concussions. There's a continuously growing body of evidence that they can have horrible physical and mental effects, both during players' careers and for the rest of their lives. Part of the challenge with concussions is on the league front, where suitable protocols need to be in place and independent medical staff need to be involved. Another aspect of the problem revolves around equipment, and there is some progress being made on that front with many of the new helmet models.

A third part has to do with media coverage, though, and a particularly interesting angle of that is how broadcasters address concussions and other severe on-field injuries. Given the inherent violence of football, there are plenty of bad injuries that take place on any given Sunday in the NFL (including ones to Mike Tolbert and Phillip Adams today). The CFL doesn't see quite as many serious injuries each week thanks largely to only

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! In honour of the season, here's what's on each CFL franchise's Christmas list. We'll find out soon enough if they received what they wanted or not...

Montreal: The return of Anthony Calvillo and Marc Trestman. The Alouettes are in pretty good shape this holiday season, coming off their second consecutive Grey Cup victory and their third-straight trip to the big game. There are questions about how their team's going to look at the start of the year, though, as they have a league-high 13 potential free agents and could lose valuable players like S.J. Green, Chip Cox and Avon Cobourne.

Still, by far the biggest name on that list is Calvillo. It's tough to see him signing with another franchise, as he's been with the Alouettes since 1998. It's unclear if he's going to come back for another season, though; while this year's playoff run shows that Calvillo can certainly still play at an incredibly high level, he did recently have surgery to remove

Amidst the stadium debacle in Hamilton, it would be easy to forget that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers finally found some resolution to their own stadium saga last week. It's probably not a perfect deal for the club, but unlike in Hamilton, a deal has been struck. The key question with that deal was how exactly the Bombers were going to be able to pay off their $85 million contribution, though. This week, we got some partial answers with the club's release of their funding plan, and that plan tells us some interesting things about the state of the CFL's economics.

The Bombers say their contributions to paying off the debt will be in the neighbourhood of $4 million annually over 44 years. They're expecting to do that through four revenue streams, each projected to raise over $1 million. Those streams break down as follows:

—Attendance/corporate/amenities: This category is what most people think of in terms of football revenue. It includes both average ticketholders and corporate suites, as

You would think that a former CFL commissioner and team president would be used to having to speak carefully. In the case of Larry Smith (pictured above speaking at a press conference Tuesday), former CFL commissioner and Montreal Alouettes president turned current Conservative senator, you would apparently be wrong. Just two days after being announced as a new senator, Smith made a comment on CBC's Power and Politics with Evan Solomon that he is taking a "dramatic, catastrophic pay cut" to serve the public. That's spawned some hilarious reactions, including this video from the newly-launched savelarrysmith.tumblr.com:

Look, the comments may well be based in fact. Smith's exact salary with the Alouettes isn't known, but it's believed head coach Marc Trestman makes around $400,000. It would seem reasonable that a team president would be making at least close to that much. By contrast, a senator's base salary is $132,300. If we peg Smith's salary around the $400,000 mark, that's a 66

If your regular job was full of tough practices, jarring hits and debilitating injuries, you might want to just lie around in a hot tub on your days off. That's not what eight CFL players are doing this offseason, though. Kelly Bates, Graeme Bell and Aaron Fiacconi of the Eskimos, Ray Fontaine of the Alouettes, Obed Cetoute of the Roughriders, Jason Jimenez (pictured at right raising the 2006 Grey Cup with B.C.) of the Tiger-Cats and Yvenson Bernard and Chris Cvetkovic of the Blue Bombers will be spending 10 days in Haiti this January around the one-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake that struck the country last year.

The project, called Huddle for Haiti, will see players working with several organizations involved in cleanup and reconstruction efforts, including Oxfam Canada. They'll be joined by NewsTalk 650's Tammy Robert, Regina Leader-Post sports editor Rob Vanstone and WestJet PR director Robert Palmer. WestJet is flying the team over as part of their ongoing efforts

Yesterday, things still looked reasonably promising for a new facility in Hamilton to replace the aging Ivor Wynne Stadium (pictured above before this year’s East semi-final). The railyards site was revealed to be out of the price range everyone was considering, but there was hope that the venue could switch to Confederation Park, a site owned by the city. That dream died today, with Hamilton council voting 9-6 not to investigate the Confederation Park site. With time running out before the Pan Am Games deadline and the last prominent option withdrawn, the future of the Tiger-Cats in Hamilton is up for debate.

It is interesting that Hamilton council shot the Confederation Park plan down without even fully exploring it. The site had been proposed during the term of the last council when stadium sites were initially being considered, but was removed from the list of options to explore. City general manager of finance Rob Rossini told The Hamilton Spectator that it wasn't clear if