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Duron Carter isn’t just one of the most dynamic players in the Canadian Football League.

He’s also become its loudest voice, most recognizable face and a phenomenon on social media.

Carter teases rival players and takes on serious social issues with fans from time to time. There was also that time last November when he invited Roughrider fans to meet him at a Toronto movie theatre, where he paid for them all to get in.

The pinned Tweet on his Twitter page reads: “Football is just a TV show to distract you from your everyday life … I’m just the funny character with all the one-liners!!”

If Duron Carter is making football look fun, well, it’s no accident.

“I think sometimes guys get too caught up in the wins and losses,” Carter said this week. “I’m out there doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing – playing pro football, running around, laughing. Not much can affect me.

“I want to win, that’s my whole goal, but you’ve got to keep it fun. That’s what I want to be remembered for.”

As if the CFL’s most interesting man wasn’t interesting enough, Saskatchewan head coach Chris Jones announced that Carter would be switching from receiver to cornerback for this week’s game at Ottawa, a transition he first made late last season in a game against Calgary where he produced a pick-six against Bo Levi Mitchell.

Carter practiced regularly on defence during training camp this spring, preparing him for the transition from superstar receiver to defensive back. Thursday night he’ll be covering two of the league’s most dangerous threats in Ottawa’s Greg Ellingson and Diontae Spencer.

“This time I’ll know all the calls and what’s expected of me,” he said. “It’s just having fun.”

The son of Hall of Famer Chris Carter never found a true home in college football and was ushered out of Montreal two years ago before coming to Saskatchewan as a free agent.

Even his head coach acknowledges Duron is not for everybody, and that over the course of the season he and Carter are going to have their moments.

“We’re friends,” Carter said of Jones. “He expects me to speak my mind and I expect him to do whatever he needs to do as a coach. I think he appreciates the realness out of me and I never hold my tongue.”

With such a large personality, it’s easy to be distracted from how good Carter has become as a receiver and occasional kick returner, as demonstrated by his spectacular, twisting, one-handed grab for a touchdown last season against Toronto. It was a play that became the signature of the 2017 season and vaulted Carter towards CFL stardom.

Now one of its brightest stars is also one of its most passionate ambassadors.

“Before I came to the CFL I had never even seen a CFL down,” Carter said. “I’m just trying to get it out to the younger generation so guys know the NFL isn’t the only option. The CFL has given me everything I have gotten in my life.”

Carter has not been without controversy in his CFL career.

Two seasons ago in Montreal he was suspended one game for bumping Ottawa head coach Rick Campbell.

Then this past off-season, word leaked that he had twice been charged with marijuana possession in airports – once in Saskatoon and once in Winnipeg.  Although the matters have yet to be resolved in court, in era of Bill C-45 his offences didn’t even draw a slap on the wrist from the league or the Roughriders.

Not surprisingly, Carter was paying attention to the historic vote that took place this week in Canada’s Senate.

“My whole thing is keeping people out of jail,” Carter said. “It’s 2018 and things have changed and people have grown and are more accepting.  I’m obviously happy. I just think people have to experience more and accept other people with their pros and cons.

“I’m pro on this … and I think the decision might help me out.”

A curious call by the Eskimos

The Edmonton Eskimos added retired NFL receiver Terrell Owens to their negotiation list on Tuesday, a day after he posted a video of himself apparently running the 40-yard dash in 4.43 seconds. That time would be good for a rookie, never mind a player seven years removed from his last game.

Owens was always fanatical about his fitness level during his playing days, a fact often overshadowed by his gigantic personality and tendency for antics.

But playing receiver in professional football at age 44 is unprecedented. Jerry Rice is the only receiver in NFL history who played past age 40, retiring at age 42 in 2004 as a member of the Seattle Seahawks.

Which raises the question of what the Eskimos were thinking, since presumably you don’t put any player on your negotiation list without ever entertaining the idea that you might sign him. That’s really the only explanation for this move, or that the Eskimos believed that if they didn’t add Owens another team was going to.

Edmonton general manager Brock Sunderland isn’t a publicity seeker, nor is he known for making a splash with big-name former NFLers.

But he obviously saw something in Owens that made him think he could help them this season.

Manziel/Masoli Week 1

The first week of “When Will Johnny Play?” went just as Hamilton head coach June Jones said it would, with Jeremiah Masoli starting and finishing Saturday’s game in Calgary against the Stampeders.

Sticking with Masoli made sense given that how the game played out as a tight, low-scoring affair. There was no need to disturb Masoli’s rhythm, given how well he played before throwing an interception late in the fourth quarter with Hamilton down by six.

Was there a scenario where Jones might have inserted Manziel? We’ll never know. But it’s hard to think that had Masoli struggled or the game gotten away from Hamilton that it wouldn’t have crossed Jones’s mind.

The speculation around Hamilton’s quarterback situation isn’t going away because everyone knows the Tiger-Cats didn’t bring Manziel to Canada to ride the bench for two years. Manziel came here, no doubt, with the understanding he’d be given a chance to compete for the no. 1 job at some stage.

This is entirely unfair to Masoli, who played the best football of his professional career under the shadow of Manziel’s potential arrival over his shoulder last fall. Now he’s begun his first season as a starter with a debate raging around him about how long he can maintain the job.

Halifax update

Representatives of Maritime Football Ltd., the prospective group of would-be owners of the CFL’s 10th team, were in Nova Scotia this week, meeting first with Premier Stephen McNeil and then behind closed doors with Halifax mayor Mike Savage and his city council.

Both meetings were to inform those levels of government that significant progress has been made between the group and the league over the winter and spring, including the outline of a three-step process for securing a franchise. With that in place, the group, which has already identified a preferred location for a stadium, is ready to engage with the city on some heavy lifting.

Savage, who has publicly supported the idea of a CFL team and new stadium for Halifax, said it’s time for the city to decide if it’s prepared to start seriously down the road with the prospective owners.

“We need to get this into the public realm,” Savage said this week. “There’s been a lot of interest for and against it… The big question is: Where would this team play and can we get a stadium built?”

The answer to those questions are expected to emerge this summer, beginning with a July 17 council meeting where there will be an open debate about the merits of becoming involved with building a stadium that would house a CFL team and serve as an outdoor concert venue.

If the city decides to proceed, the next stage would involve having city staff work with the Maritime Football Ltd. group to determine the exact costs and benefits to the city.

“If we want to explore a stadium we need to direct [city] staff to go away with them and identify what the numbers are and what it means to the city,” Savage said.

Weather interruption regulations under review

CFL staff will sit down to review protocol from the season-opener last Thursday night in Winnipeg where the Blue Bombers and Edmonton Eskimos lived through two lightning delays totally nearly three hours, completing the game at 1:18 a.m. local time before a third storm rolled in.

What would the league have done if that third storm came into play before the game ended in a 33-30 victory for the Eskimos?

“If we got stopped again, that would have been it for sure,” said Ryan Janzen, the CFL’s senior director of football operations. “I don’t know when the last time a CFL game was cancelled… It was definitely uncharted territory for all of us involved. We will talk about everything internally and figure out what we would do in that situation. The good thing was it was early in the year so we have options. If this was late in the year, then we’d have one option – and that’s the next day.”

It’s believed that a third delay would have resulted in finishing the game in Winnipeg the next day, as laid out in the CFL’s bylaws. But Janzen said the league is aware of the many issues that would accompany such a decision and that the league needs to be ready to have a good handle on those for the next time a game is delayed.

“It’s going to be a bigger discussion,” Janzen said. “Our regulations say we play the next day so that’s where we start. But there’s whole lot of logistical issues that come with that, from travel to the safety players. The game wouldn’t have been on TV

“…I don’t know if [playing Friday] would have been the final result but that would have been part of the discussions … With player safety being the biggest thing, it’s not an easy decision.”