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• If there is ever a time for the CFL Players’ Association to demonstrate strength and solidarity, it will be during next year’s collective-bargaining negotiations. For starters, a massive increase in the salary cap is warranted. Teams have the money — as evidenced by the sweet salaries lavished on head coaches and GMs — but choose to spend it on people who don’t play the game. Nobody pays to watch a coach.

Photo by Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press

• The players, not the coaches, should be the highest-paid employees in the CFL. The top salaries go to the athletes in virtually every other professional sports league. Not so in the top-heavy CFL, where the players absorb the hits on the field and at the bargaining table.

• Recently in this cherished space, it was written that the Regina Speed Skating Club would soon be represented at a fourth consecutive Winter Olympic Games. Wrong! The correct total is a remarkable seven. The RSSC’s long-track honour roll includes Mike Hall (1994), Mark Knoll (1998, 2002), Kim Weger (2002), Justin Warsylewicz (2006), Lucas Makowsky (2010, 2014), Kali Christ (2014, 2018) and Marsha Hudey (2014, 2018). Warsylewicz helped Canada win a silver medal in men’s team pursuit. Makowsky struck gold in that event four years later.

• Seeing Sam Steel and Cameron Hebig as linemates with the Regina Pats is reminiscent of the magic Adam Brooks and Austin Wagner worked with the 2016-17 edition.

Photo by Keith Hershmiller / Hershmiller Photography

• Free, unsolicited advice to the people who are assembling the teams for the All-Star Celebrity Classic, to be played Feb. 17 at the Brandt Centre: Add Frank Kovacs to the roster! The Pats’ former No. 24 is the team’s all-time leader in games played (352) and would be a perfect fit alongside the other two members of the legendary Pup Line — Mike Sillinger and Jamie Heward.