Monday Morning Halfback: Everyone involved in the Sydney Sweeney ad outrage got what they wanted

Jamie Ross is the The Globe’s Sports editor; Cathal Kelly is the national sports columnist.

Jamie Ross: Cathal, People were upset at Sydney Sweeney last week for her appearance in a sports gambling ad. What do you make of the backlash?

Cathal Kelly: Were they upset? Actually upset? I have my doubts.

The reasonable reaction to Sweeney’s nude-but-for-sports-equipment ad is a shrug. Has everyone who’s angry been on the internet? This is what sends you into a moral swoon?

If there’s a qualm to be had about it, it’s the fact that someone who already has a ton of money feels the need to shill for an industry that’s the financial equivalent of heroin. Sure, Jon Hamm makes ‘Rakin’ Bacon’ sound like fun, but only the stupidest people you know are doing this.

However, were you to find the gambling part of it repellent, that would make Sweeney no worse than Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews. Nobody’s accusing them of being modern Jezebels.

I presume the actual reason that a bunch of athletes most people have never heard of took umbrage with Sweeney was that they knew it would briefly boost their own profiles. And they were right.

So everybody involved in this – Sweeney, the company she was repping, her detractors and the online mob – got what they were looking for. Kudos to their agents. (If you don’t have an agent, you’re going about this wrong.)

The bigger issue here – the boom in legal sports gambling – hardly got a mention. Surprised?

J.R.: Sex sells, men gamble. Not hard to see the calculation, cynical as it is. But I think you’re right that everyone once again danced around another, broader issue. The legal sports betting industry is a behemoth and it has infiltrated the culture completely. The ramifications of its unfettered expansion haven’t been fully realized, but you can see it coming. It won’t be pretty. Our colleague Erica Alini wrote about trying to watch the Blue Jays with her 10-year-old son and how the experience has become so inundated with gambling ads, he can recite one of them verbatim. It’s dystopian.

Not to get all Aristotelian on you on a Sunday, but governments should send it the way of tobacco ads. It’s not like there is any debate it’s a societal net negative. Having caught the Times’ investigation into DraftKings over for the weekend, you have to wonder, what are we doing here? Is the tax money really worth it?

C.K.: It’s the same argument used to support drug legalization – if we don’t do it, someone worse will. So if you catch me driving your stolen car, don’t be upset. Better it be a friend.

As someone who does not gamble, my main issue with this is the hard sell. It makes billions of dollars for government, which has itself become addicted. Nobody in charge is seriously suggesting limiting it any serious way. I accept that.

But if I am subjected to that McDavid ‘Mullet over’ ad one more time, I may rip the flatscreen off the wall. Gambling may not be criminal, but that ad is. It’s an aesthetic crime.

Why can’t sports gambling be more like designer drugs? Adderall may be bad for you when snorted, but it doesn’t feel the need to sponsor the second intermission on Saturday Night Hockey. I can say that much for it.

Speaking of which, the sport of northern kings is almost upon us again. A small thing that struck me was the Florida Panthers announcing that Brad Marchand will be ‘rehabbing’ for the first month of the season. The 38-year-old irritant has had some sort of summertime surgery, though no one’s yet said what it was.

Is it possible that ‘rehab’ is the new ‘load management’? It’s a great way to rest aging stars without dealing with annoying questions from journalists and degenerate gamblers.

J.R.: If your team is good enough to make the playoffs, why waste a minute of playing time during the worthless regular season? (Which just got longer this year by the way.) Good luck stopping those annoying questions, though.

By Day 3 of Maple Leafs training camp, a headline read “Maple Leafs surprise by leaving McKenna off top power-play unit.” I’m starting to buy the narrative that the Toronto media run all the good Leafs players out of town. We know McKenna is not above clocking a civilian though, so maybe those questions will be a little softer.

Have you ever almost come to blows with a player or coach over a question, or witnessed it happen?

C.K.: Blows? No. A few vague threats. You’ll remember Blue Jays starter A.J. Burnett. He once snuck up behind me and hugged me in a way I found oddly menacing. Like a full body hug, and he’s a large man. Very Godfather.

The only fights you really hear about in the business are reporters slugging other reporters. There’s one legendary donnybrook on a team flight between two guys working at the same paper. After beating the bejesus out of each other on board, they were both taken into custody upon landing.

As the story goes, there was a third colleague on the plane, who got roped into the subsequent workplace investigation. When asked which one he thought should be fired, said colleague replied, “Fired? I wouldn’t have hired either one of them in the first place.”

The good old days, before the internet destroyed our ability to feel.

Every time I see McKenna speak, you can see a little more of the light in his eyes go out. Probably not the greatest idea to let him summer with Mitch Marner.

What I was struck by was the tape out of the Leafs pre-season golf tournament. Most of the new guys spoke. Not a single one of them looked happy to be there. No smiles. Blank stares. Monotone answers.

There is definitely something off about the culture in Toronto, and it’s not the media. Or not just them. The media contingent covering the Yankees, say, is bigger and more vicious, and that clubhouse is one of the happiest places in sport.

There is a resentfulness about the Leafs, top to bottom, that 60 years of grinding failure have created. Doesn’t matter who’s in charge. It’s in the walls. The Leafs know they will lose, and they resent you – you being everyone else – for knowing it.

Give me your quick take on the Leafs – turnaround season or, having hit bottom last year, do they start tunnelling?

J.R.: They did well in the off-season, all things considered. Through divine (or some other) intervention they got their man in McKenna, and then plugged holes in the roster with some decent replacements through trades and free agency. Sergei Bobrovsky is a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

I have them as a bubble team. I can see them making the playoffs but they’ll be an afterthought everywhere but Toronto.

Given how poorly the Oilers look right now – with critics questioning the character of their new coach and latest free agent signing – the Montreal Canadiens are Canada’s team this year. Save some bullets for your preseason column, but how are you feeling about the Canadian NHL landscape this season?

Cathal Kelly: Every Canadian hockey fan should feel the chill of Connor Hellebuyck’s trade request out of Winnipeg

C.K.: I think you’ve nailed it there. My 10,000-foot view is that it’s going to be a year of great upheaval for the Canadian teams. Which it always seems to be, but more than usual. The Connor Hellebuyck trade demand is the canary in Canada’s NHL coal mine.

Are we heading to a world where players with options avoid Canada altogether? First, taxes, and some nitwits on Instagram are mean to them. The horror.

That’s the most interesting storyline of the season, right up until the Leafs start leaking oil and Toronto turns feral. Should be great fun.