Clovers In The Atmosphere

the dude and papa dude attended the Grey Cup in Winnipeg this sunday. The Grey Cup is the CFL championship. It moves around between the 8 (yes, only 8) CFL cities on a rotating basis. there is no layoff between the conference championships and the cup, so the stadium is mostly filled with people from the host city or people who go to grey cup every year. This makes it more like a new year's party than a football game. Molson was gracious enough to sponsor buses from all over the city to the game which is great because all the public parking in the area is in the lots of the big box stores nearby and winnipeg likes to close streets surrounding big events. Now that the bloom is off the arctic biological rose, I figured my matching suit of carhartt arctic insulated overalls and jacket would see little continued use, but this was a clear exception. Despite being unseasonably warm (it cracked 0 degrees C at noon) it was a solid -12C by halftime. hey, it could have been -35C. I have never attended a sporting event with more people wearing snowmobiling clothing in my life. The game began with a pair of flyovers from the canadian precision flying team and then two jets (F-18?) Does Canada even have F-18s? Do they buy them from us? I don't know.

in the middle of the 1st quarter, a man in the upper deck with us wearing saskatchewan roughriders clothing stands up, points to his blood-stained boot, and shouts to his buddy, "I shot a moose this morning and drove straight to the game." I am not sure if he is kidding.

The game was between the B.C. (British Columbia) Lions and the Montreal Alouettes. montreal has been to the grey cup 6 of the past 8 years (including this year) but only won once making them the buffalo bills of the CFL (superbowl bound!). An Alouette is the french common name for a small, non-descript brown bird. nice choice of mascot, montreal. but I am rooting for them nontheless because BC is heavily favored.

The goal posts are at the front of the endzone, so field goals are much easier, and there were lots of them. BC won, but not after a fair amount of referee cheating that helped them out.

Nelly Furtado was the half-time show. it is hard to sexy-dance in a hat and scarf combo and down jacket, but she tried her best. At least she is canadian. The Hamilton Ti-Cats cheerleaders made a big splash by removing their down coats mid-routine. yes, this passes for titillation here.

CFL football is comprised largely of american college players who didn't make The League. This gives rise to an incredibly fun game of "spot the college star whose skills didn't translate." Jarius Jackson, mid 90s option QB of fabulous Notre Dame is the backup for BC. Robert Edwards former RB of the New England Patriots and sand football is the starter for Montreal.

Canadian football has a lot of structural differences from american football. the field is 110yds long with 20 yd deep endzones. the field is also wider. there are 12 players per side and the formation rules are significantly looser (receivers can be moving forward at the snap, no set rule about the number of people at the line of scrimmage). instead of the american 4 downs to acheive 10 yds, teams only get 3. all this makes for a lot of passing. despite the surfeit of throwing and the necessity of man coverage that comes with having 5 wide recievers and a running back, the receivers remarkable not-open. I can understand not being open on a short route, because given the distance from the outermost receiver to the quarterback laterally, the reciever would need a lot of separation to allow for such a long lateral pass, but what about up the field. Can someone explain this to me. is it as simple as inferior arm strength and receiver speed in the CFL?

Anyway, it was good, cold fun. maybe a little overpriced for the quality of play, but when am I ever going to see a grey cup again?