The CFL beats minor hockey and the Devil’s radio

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/10/2024 (370 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For many years, I eschewed CFL football. Give me a single ticket to the opera over an afternoon squandered as one half of a gridiron sofa couple.

Football was the game that took my sportswriter father, John Robertson, away from his family on road trips during the 1960s. When he was home, Dad was frequently hunched over a typewriter late into the evening to make the morning edition.

Football was a competitor, a rival for Dad’s attention. And if that wasn’t bad enough, my mother, Betty, enthusiastically tuned into every CFL match-up — monopolizing our only television.

What changed? As an adult, I moved to a small town where our entertainment options consist of watching minor league hockey games sitting in a cold arena and gossip. I hate hockey and gossip is the Devil’s radio. So that leaves CFL football.

It started off simply enough. I watched the Riders games with my spouse and I discovered that the weekly gridiron match-ups held as much drama as Puccini.

Then I decided to take a contrarian stance and cheer for my hometown team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Last fall, I declared to my spouse: “If the Blue Bombers win the Grey Cup, we’re moving to Winnipeg.” But the Montréal Alouettes had other ideas. So here I sit, still a resident of Wakaw, Saskatchewan, in the heart of rural Riderville, cheering for a Winnipeg team…. again.

Last week was a bye week so we all got to catch our breath until our Bombers are in Montréal on October 26. It’s a grudge match game. In the intervening time, I’ve been doing a little CFL history reading.

Lucky for me, I only have to head out to my garden shed and the treasure trove of John Robertson’s yellowed clippings for background.

There has been a lot of talk comparing Mike O’Shea to Bud Grant — which O’Shea justifiably loathes. This is what Bud Grant told John Robertson in 1967 in an interview for the Toronto Star Weekly Magazine about the role of a coach: “Coaches don’t win football games. Players do. And that’s why no coaching change should be looked upon as a disaster.”

For some context, Grant had just departed from his coaching job at the Blue Bombers for a position as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. The Bombers were reluctant to see Grant go. In ten years, he won four Grey Cup championships and seven Western championships.

It’s all so unpredictable and that’s the attraction. For the next few weeks, Bomber fans like me can forget the war-torn news cycle, put a bark collar on Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre and stop grinding our teeth over climate change.

The only “foreign interference” Bomber fans need to worry about is a former NFL running back-now-Rider. Ryquell Armstead, clad in yellow boots to better highlight his dexterity and speed, is a wonder to behold. My first thought: Oh, my God. He’s faster than Brady Oliveira. I’m never getting out of Saskatchewan.

This year’s run for the Grey Cup is just the ticket. Loyal fans can always look to football for four dramatic and distracting quarters. To join the community, you just slip on some team merch, maybe add a Hollywood Halloween theme like Beetlejuice as a topper, and you’re part of the excitement.

There are no Sideshow Trumps spewing insults at the Other Harris who isn’t Riders QB Trevor Harris. You can avert your eyes momentarily from the world of politics and take a rest from the mudslinging. Unless it’s a bye week and Yellowstone’s new season hasn’t dropped yet. Then it’s over to politics for a temporary distraction until game day.

On October 16, Saskatchewanians were subjected to a one-hour provincial election debate between SaskParty Premier Scott Moe and NDP Opposition leader Carla Beck that rivaled Nyquil for its sedative effect. “This is not entertaining,” I said to my spouse. “Will this bye week never end?”

Bud Grant and Mike O’Shea have both said that Winnipeg quickly became home for them. They loved the scrappy community and its fierce football culture. That’s the appeal of the CFL. You can slip seamlessly into a new community and fit in immediately.

Or you can do as I do and wear a Blue Bomber baseball cap to my town office and wait for Dwane, our typically good-natured recreation director, to notice.

“What’s that smell? Must be a Bomber fan!”

“We’re going all the way this year, Dwane.”

“You’ll have to get past the Riders first,” he growls.

This impassioned exchange is exactly why I love the CFL.

Go Bombers!

Patricia Dawn Robertson is an independent journalist based in Saskatchewan.