Toronto Sun columnist Steve Buffery has some beef with Winnipeg and he’s letting everyone know about it. Apparently he doesn’t like the fact that we hosted the Pan Am games in 1999. According to him, it’s a second-tier event when a city can’t manage to get the Olympics.

Well, I have news for every-one, including the deep thinkers at the Sun. If we get the Pan Am Games, we’ll be a laughingstock as a so-called international city.

Three Canadian cities have been host of, or will host, Olympic Games — Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. If we settle for the Pan Am Games, we’ll forever have to live down the fact that we couldn’t get the big one, while three smaller Canadian cities did. To me, that would be embarrassing. We’re supposed to be a world-class city (or so the theory goes), not some provincial backwater.

A few years ago, the Pan Am Games meant something big. But, believe me, they don’t any more — and that’s not a shot at any athlete who has competed at a Pan Ams.

And I don’t care what any poll says. Torontonians will not come out in droves to support the Games. We don’t support junior hockey, we don’t support the CFL very well. Anything that’s not considered “major league” basically gets ignored in this town.

Of course, my opinion means squat at our place. So I’m sure the Sun will continue to support a bid for the 2015 Pan Ams — even though, in my humble opinion, we should continue to shoot for the stars and try to land a future Olympics.

But if we’re going to bid for a Pan Am Games, why don’t we bid for some other second-rate events? We attempted to get the 2015 World’s Fair and failed. Instead of trying to get another one, let’s bid for a county fair!

And while we’re at it, let’s drop the idea of landing an NFL team and try to return to the Arena Football League instead!

Listen, places such as Guadalajara, Indianapolis and Winnipeg have been hosts of Pan Am Games.

Yeah. Let’s try to be like Winnipeg!

But really, can you expect anything more of a columnist who writes for any Sun franchise? Tabloid alert!

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