Unleash green hell Sunday, combine commandos

In my previous eight years in the CFL, I've been to the Grey Cup exactly four times. Two times as an unsuccessful player -- 2001 and 2007; two times as an unsuccessful major award nominee, 2006 and 2008 -- and now, in my ninth year and my fifth trip, as a finalist in Reebok's Best Move Competition.

Now before we speculate as to whether this trip will be anymore fruitful than the others, it's important to explain to the readers that saw me on the dance floor last Saturday night at the Winnipeg Humane Society's Bow Wow Ball, that Reebok's Best Move Competition has nothing to do with rhythm and everything to do with football.

For those of you that were not aware of the online competition, what it entailed was a collection of 16 players from across the CFL determining and promoting their best football move from 2008.

We then went head-to-head against each other, selling and marketing our moves on reebokfootball.ca, and the fans determined who the winner would be.

It was a double elimination tournament, so you could lose once and just be moved over to the other bracket, but thanks to the fans in Winnipeg, yours truly did not lose a match and is now being flown to Calgary to find out whether Roughrider Weston Dressler (a player I already beat once in the competition) will be the first to defeat the "Chubby Checker," which is the name of my interior defensive line twist that former teammate Jerome Haywood and I performed once upon a time.

I'm not sure Weston cares anymore -- since his team is actually playing in the Grey Cup -- but no victory is too small when it comes to defeating the Rider Nation, a team we haven't defeated on the field in more than two years.

Though I am extremely grateful and appreciative to all the voters that won me this trip, let's make sure from now on my Grey Cup visits have more to do with playing and less to do with profiling. Agreed?

But, ah, yes, the game that will signify the end of a week of revelry in Cowtown and closes the 2009 CFL season pits the Montreal Alouettes against the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

I'm not sure about you but this comes as no surprise to me. One; the Alouettes are a veritable war machine of football excellence that have bulldozed everyone that dared set foot in their path this year. Two; as far as I'm concerned, Henry Burris assured the world the Calgary Stampeders would not be defending their championship at home after their loss to Montreal in the regular season when he said, "We'll see them again November 29th." Oh no you won't. The football gods never love a braggart. And besides, I heard Wes Lysack accidentally touched the Grey Cup this season, which is also taboo when it comes to jinxing your franchise.

So the green nation will be squaring off with Calvillo and friends. If I was running the Roughriders organization, the first thing I would do is buy 46 hard-copy editions of David versus Goliath for the players to read, and order up the manual that the New York Giants used to defeat the previously undefeated New England Patriots back in 2007. It really is that monumental a task.

Which is exactly why the Green Riders actually have a shot in this one. Because it will start when Vegas makes them 14-point underdogs and the scribes around this nation start filing stories suggesting Saskatchewan has a better shot of becoming the Wall Street capital of Canada. It will infuriate the players to no end when they are interviewed for the 27th time as to whether they really, truly, believe they have a chance at dethroning a 15-3 team, and we will all see through the comments from Montreal about how they give their opponent the utmost respect and blah blah blah.

Feed off of it Rider Nation, and let the fury slowly smoulder in your coveralls as the week progresses. And when the Alouettes run out onto the field and find themselves looking into the transplanted mouth of Mosaic Stadium, unleash hell upon them like a nest of green combines gone mad.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 24, 2009 C3