View from the Cheap Seats is an extension of the newsroom, which is frequently a site of heated debate on topics ranging from the extremely serious to the utterly ridiculous. This web edition features the views of print edition columnists Thom Barker (Wednesday) and Calvin Daniels (Friday), as well as web exclusive content by Devin Wilger (Thursday).
This week: Did you enjoy this year’s Grey Cup Classic?
Classic indeed
When the Roughriders are in the Grey Cup game, I honestly do not mind a crappy game providing the outcome is correct. Give me a blowout in which Saskatchewan wins and I’m happy. If they win and it also happens to be a nail-biter, that’s a bonus.
Without the Riders in it, pretty much all I could ask for in recent years was an exciting and tight matchup. Otherwise, there’s really nothing to hold my interest.
That changed a little bit last year when the Redblacks made it to the final for the first time. Before that, once the green-and-white was eliminated I no longer had a horse in the race. I chose the team to support by the lesser-of-two-evils elimination process.
I grew up for the most part in Ottawa but I was born and spent my impressionable years in Regina, so by the time we moved east my blood was already flowing green. My second choice was always the other Rough Riders until their unfortunate demise, though, and I am still a Senators fan.
The return of CFL football to the nation’s capital in 2014 gave me back my backup.
So, Sunday’s championship game could not have been better, really. Ottawa got off to a great start and led by 20 at the half. Calgary came out flying in the third quarter and cut the lead in half.
Ottawa did not fold, though, and managed to hold on for the tie in regulation and prevail in overtime.
There was great play on both sides of the ball with lots of offence punctuated by some great defensive stands. Then an overtime thriller and the right final result. Plus, awesome homemade chili and fresh corn bread, even if I do say so myself.
As far as sporting events that don’t include the Riders go, who could ask for anything more?
Oh yeah. Calgary fans. Boo hoo. Too bad, so sad. In yo’ face Bo Levi (I’m so great) Mitchell.
Shout out to smilin’ Hank, btw.
-Thom Barker
Too sad to care
Football is one of the few sports I enjoy, but I tend to be a fair weather fan. In short, when a team I like has a season that is a depressing train wreck, I tend to drift away from the sport.
As someone from Saskatchewan, I am familiar with depressing train wreck seasons from teams I appreciate. So, as a result, I haven’t watched a full game in quite a while, and certainly didn’t tune in to the Grey Cup, because it would be a depressing reminder of how awful the Roughriders were in 2016 and also in 2015.
If I chose to watch I’d have a team to back – eventual victor the Redblacks, both because I have a brother in Ottawa and I have an intense dislike of Calgary’s irritating cowboy affectations. If it was a season where the team I actually like had narrowly missed the game, or had played well all season, I probably would have been right there, watching with everyone else. But because football is too depressing this year, I haven’t tuned in at all.
-Devin Wilger
Sweet final
It was a classic that was never supposed to be one.
The 2016 Grey Cup had its story line, the front-running Calgary Stampeders led by league MVP Bo Levi Mitchell at the helm as the best pivot in CFL, versus the old-timer Henry Burris shepherding an upstart Ottawa team. But that storyline had the sub-title, ‘Stampeders’ run roughshod over Red Blacks.’
I had expected a lop-sided snore fest, unless, as I stated to buds watching the game at our place, Burris is the Cup MVP and tosses for 500 yards.
And that was nearly the exact script on the day, with more subtext than expected.
Ottawa jumped out early and held a frankly shocking lead at half time.
But the Stamps were not a mirage as the best team through the regular season, fashioning what was one of the biggest comebacks in Grey Cup history, Mitchell throwing for just shy of 400 yards in the process.
It would take a dramatic short kick-off recovery to put the Stamps in a position to win, an outstanding goal line stand to force Calgary to a field goal for a tie, and send the game to overtime.
A circus juggler’s catch by Ernest Jackson would give Ottawa a 39-33 win, a first for the city in more than four decades, intriguingly Burris being the only player on the field born when that occurred.
Anytime a football game ends with 72 points scored, but only six points separating the two sides, it’s a good game. Add in that the teams combined for 994 yards of offence, and went to OT in a league final, and you have a classic.
As an added tidbit, the Red Blacks are the seventh different team to win the Cup in the last seven years, which speaks to the general year-to-year competitiveness of the CFL.
- Calvin Daniels
