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With the unerring accuracy of an Olympic marksman aiming for a gold medal, the Canadian Football League last week zeroed in on its target, took a deep breath, squeezed the trigger — and shot itself in the foot.

Even for the league’s renowned Department of Screwups, it was an epic moment. Winnipeg A&W worker Karen Kuldys became a household name from coast to coast, while the CFL’s name was Mudd.

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Then, with a chance to pull off a brilliant public-relations coup, the league instead took careful aim a second time — and blew away its other foot. The simple, obvious solution was to take up a collection from the league’s owners, give Kuldys the million dollars and walk away smelling like roses.

But the CFL never does things the simple, obvious way — not when it can garner a week’s worth of terrible publicity by wrong-footing it at every step. Needless to say, it all started with the CFL’s longtime bugaboo: inept officiating, the chief complaint of CFL fans from coast to coast.