Coupe Grey 2007

I can’t let the 2007 CFL season pass on without commenting on the upcoming Grey Cup game – next Sunday in Toronto at the Don’t-Call-Me-Skydome-Anymore Rogers Centre.

Obviously, as a Ticats season ticket holder, I would prefer that the Hamiltonians would be present and oski-ing our collective wee wee.  It was fairly obvious, however, following about Game 4 of this illustrious season that there was naught but a chance in hell about that.  My thoughts have subsequently turned to the following monumentally important question:  “For whom shall I root during The Game?” 

I decided pretty early on this summer that I would like to see  the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers play for the Grey Cup, an eventuality that has come to pass as a result of yesterday’s Western Final in Vancouver and the Eastern Final in Toronto.  

Now my choice from the West is undoubtedly completely unsurprising to anyone who knows me, because I confess to an odd fascination over time with our Nation’s wheat basket;  I don’t know if my fondness for the province was preceded by, or in the alternative caused by, my predisposition towards Kelvington’s Wendel Clark.   The exact sequence of events in this regard is perhaps doomed to remain shrouded in mystery by the mists of time.  Even if I weren’t a little loco about our most geometric province, though, Saskatchewan is such an easy team for pretty much anybody to pull for in the West.  How can you not like the Green Riders with:

• this year’s probable Most Outstanding Player, Kerry Joseph; 
• their chronic lack of success in the Big Dance (2-13 in the game all-time);
• a giant gopher named “Gainer” as their mascot;
• the level of fan support they enjoy despite playing ONE (1) home playoff game since 1988; and
• a fan like “The Flame” (pictured above) who used to travel around with the team and from whose homemade incendiary headgear fireworks and flames would emanate on the occasion of every ‘Riders score (how’s THAT for fan devotion, fat guys wearing pig noses in Washington D.C., fat guys wearing dog ears in Cleveland and fat guys in Viking helmets in Minnesota?)

My Wheaties didn’t let me down.  The ‘Riders managed to defeat the B.C. Lions convincingly yesterday.  On any other day, the papers – well, at least the ones that bother to cover the CFL in any kind of depth – would be replete with stories about the underdog Green Riders taking advantage of the Lions’ hubris and walking out of Beautiful British Columbia with the upset of the year, and with good reason.  The Lions basically sleepwalked to a 14-3 and 1 record – not exactly the New England Patriots of the North, but pretty damn close.  The Lions have been so sure they were going to the Grey Cup that they started, as a team mind you, growing moustaches as an exercise in team-building months ago.  The Saskatchewanians showed a lot of mettle, playing through the deafening noise in B.C. Place and making play after play on defence to confuse and disorganize the Lions’ attack.   On any other day, this bare-ass David whups Goliath-in-a-shiny-West-Coast-suit-drinkin’-a-Starbucks-grande story would be compelling indeed.  Not today, though, Saskatchewan!

The genesis of my eastern choice was a little more prosaic.  It came down to that thought process that every fan of professional sports knows at one time or another – dammit, I’m rooting for anybody that ends up playing against Those Guys.  The trope is familiar:  Your Team has a Hated Rival;  Your Team fails, Hated Rival succeeds and books a date for the Big Game.  Hated Rival is matched up against a Cipher whose identity does not matter in the Big Game – and you root like crazy for the Hated Rival to receive its just comeuppance from the football/hockey/baseball/cricket/ringette/women’s field hockey gods.   If you’re having difficulty following along, put down the beer and think about choking back a couple of Tim Horton’s coffees. Now, just think about how Red Sox fans have ever felt about any Yankee World Series opponent (at least up until 2004) and I think you’ll follow my train of thought.  Thus did I choose to root for the ‘Bombers.  Since then, I’ve learned there are a bunch of other good reasons to root for the ‘Peg, namely:

• a very popular beer was named after them;
• following this championship, they will have faced nearly every other team in the league at least once for the Championship (exception:  Montreal) – an oddity resulting from the seemingly perennial reclassification of Winnipeg as either a “western” or “eastern” team, largely depending upon the solvency of any franchises that may or may not happen to be located in Our Nation’s Capital;
• Milt Stegall, one of the most outstanding receivers in CFL history, has never won a Grey Cup.

All that stuff is great, but for every Ticat fan, of course Those Guys are, and forever will be, the Toronto Argonauts.  It was easy to want them to lose this year, and I have to confess that it could easily have been the Kitchener Kitten Eaters vs. the Argos in the Eastern Final and I would have been rooting for Hogtown to fail miserably.   I will confess that sometimes, I personally find it a little difficult to root against them because Argo Coach Pinball Clemons seems like such a nice guy; it’s like trying to hate puppies.  This year, however, the Argos were astonishingly stupid and arrogant, making it easy to hate them.  First, Argo QB Michael Bishop opined aloud (and for the benefit of the press) prior to the East semifinal that he would “prefer” to play the Blue Bombers.  Are you kidding me?  Who does that?  Hasn’t Bishop ever read the Sports pages?  NO ONE ever specifies that they would prefer to play one opponent over another in a playoff game or series – even if the astonishingly obvious truth is that they would prefer to play one opponent over another.  The Boatmen followed up that brain cramp in this way:  Argonaut linebacker Kevin Eiben told everyone who would listen that the ‘Bombers would be lucky to score ten points against the vaunted Argo defence.

Well, game on.

It was a gripping and dramatic final.  Winnipeg jumped out to an early 12-1 lead, stunning the Argo faithful* in the first half.  I swear you could hear crickets chirping even though the game was being played inside a dome.   Toronto even played up to their [melo?]dramatic archetype, as far as I was concerned – arrogantly sticking to a (poorly conceived) offensive gameplan that seemed to involve chucking the ball as far downfield as possible in the hope that Arland Bruce would score a touchdown every time Argo QB Michael Bishop dropped back to pass.   The Winnipeggers showed early that they had designed an effective strategy (delegating Kyries Hebert to play centrefield and help the overmatched halfback covering the Argo speedster) to defuse the Argo bombs, but the Argos either didn’t notice or didn’t care – they kept doing the same damn thing, over and over again.  Haughty chutzpah like this hadn’t been seen in sport since oh, around the time the Tortoise kicked some arrogant Hare ass a very long time ago.  

The game clock kept ticking, and the Blue Bombers didn’t really put up an awful lot of points with offensive prowess – their sole touchdown came on a broken play that Rube Goldberg would have thought twice about diagramming.  The Boatmen had every chance to change their wicked ways and simply pretend that the laws of physics, probability and common sense applied to them too, and start throwing some short and medium passes, maybe get the ball to one of their running backs occasionally and try to get a little offensive momentum going.  Instead, as time wound down on the 3rd quarter, they stuck to their guns and punted after another two-and-out offensive series, and Keith Stokes (a player that had been cut by the Argos a year previously for not presenting a sufficient offensive threat) ran the kick back for 81 yards and a touchdown.  It was kind of late in the game, even in the CFL, to be down 18 points and only just starting to rely on a basic “take what the defence is giving you” kind of offence.  The pressure began to mount on the Argos – whose entire season had been directed at getting them to the Grey Cup game because it’s being played in Hogtown next weekend.  

And then it happened.  Up by a score of 19-1, Winnipeg had the ball deep in Argo territory on the first play of the fourth quarter.  ‘Bomber QB Kevin Glenn handed off to Charles Roberts on a run up the gut in an effort to score what would essentially be a coup de grace type touchdown for the uppity underdogs from Manitoba.  The exchange was botched and Glenn dropped to the turf in an effort to reclaim the ball.  Kevin Eiben – yes, THAT Kevin Eiben – pounced on the loose ball as well, but ended up landing on Glenn’s left arm.  It was obvious to everyone watching Glenn come out of the game that his arm was broken.

Suddenly, the ‘Bombers were coming away from the drive without any points and warming up a guy who had thrown fewer than 30 passes for Winnipeg in the last year and a half.  The Argos were charged up, Glenn was heading to hospital via the locker room, and it looked for all the world to me as though evil might prevail.   The Argos started running John Avery and consistently gaining yardage, moving the ball downfield.   They scored a touchdown on a five play, 102 yard drive that included a long completion to Arland Bruce.  The ten point lead definitely looked vulnerable, especially when the ‘Bombers understandably shaken offence fumbled again deep in Argo territory.  The combination of some heroic and timely defence and some especially sloppy Argo play resulted, however, in a stunning 19-9 Blue Bomber victory.  

NOW who do you root for?  The Green Riders, Gainer and The Flame, or a plucky bunch of Friendly Manitobans who have suffered the misfortune of getting to the dance only to find that their best player this season will be watching (no doubt rather glumly) from the sidelines?  I am inclined to continue to pull for the Gopher Guys, based solely on the heapin’ helpin’ of historical disappointment Rider Nation has had to endure when it comes to the Big Game – see the “2-13” record quoted above.  I mean, how dispiriting would it be to ride the wave of destiny that the Riders have all year, get to the Championship Game for only the third time in thirty years (a bit of a drought in an 8 team league) and then lose to a team that was starting its backup quarterback?  On the other hand, it’s tough to root against what will essentially be a team filled with 45 guys that might as well be Rudy himself plus all-around good guy and tremendous athlete Milt Stegall (who doesn’t have a championship ring).  

Either way, I’ll be happy – just so long as nobody pulls a Kevin Eiben before Sunday.
 

*BOTH of them