Leron Mitchell: "Ouch"

From the gruesome injury file...

Montreal beats Saskatchewan by a field-goal... again

When Anthony Calvillo went down in August with a sternum injury, doctors found something a little more serious--a lesion on his throat, possibly cancerous--but Calvillo pled to be allowed to finish out the season. The season would end in Edmonton with a 21-18 Grey Cup Championship victory for Calvillo, his third, his Alouette team's seventh and second in a row, becoming the first repeating team since the 1997 Toronto Argonauts.

They should be thawed out in time for the Grey Cup

In front of a chilly, bi-partisan audience, the Saskatchewan Roughriders punched their ticket to a rematch with the Montreal Alouettes in the Grey Cup, though it was almost not to be. Another critical special teams disaster was nearly in the cards for a second straight year at McMahon when Ryan Grice-Mullen muffed a punt late in the game, but Wes Lysack failed to fall on the ball for Calgary. The Riders hung on for a pretty exciting, albeit low-scoring, 20-16 win.

This is what Canadian football looks like

In the Mitchell Bowl at McMahon Stadium Saturday afternoon, we saw at least one prolific offense sputter out because football was never intended to be played in sub-absolute zero temperatures, which are being recorded throughout Western Canada.

The Sunday forecast for the Western Final in Calgary calls for meat-locker temperatures with a chance of ice age. The play clock should be extended to 25 seconds in the interest of giving teams more time to huddle-up.

This isn't a sport, this is an insane spectacle of human stupidity that we all love to watch. There's something about Henry Burris in a thick coat on the sidelines with icy sweat on his brow, hands in a fanny pack and breathing volcanic steam that screams playoffs in the local Canadian tongue.

Unless you live in Quebec, like those fruity Alouettes. It's not even freezing temperature in Montreal and they're still playing indoors inside Olympic Stadium.

The early game is Toronto and Montreal. That's the blue collar game you watch to cure your hangover. The Argos aren't explicitly talented, but they've made it this far this season thanks to dedicated trenchwork, a running attack and special teams, those underrated aspects of a game that the dedicated fans and local scribes love.

The late game is Saskatchewan and Calgary, and even though it begins at 2 p.m. local time it will end in darkness, under the lights as the league's most popular team faces off against its most prolific offense filled with starpower. This game represents the casual fan's love of the game, there's something about watching a steady stream of 30-yard-plus plays in a snowstorm that keeps people from changing the channel.

A few NHL fanbases will have the chance to watch hockey, but why would you? Your team will probably get blown out anyway. The MLS Cup is also allegedly being played in Toronto tomorrow night, but that's lined up right alongside the Eagles/Giants game, so I can forgive you for forgetting its on.

From the CIS Blog: your Mitchell Bowl recap. From Facebook: some positively frigid-looking pictures from the Uteck Bowl.

Roughriders 3-0, look dumb doing it

The Saskatchewan Roughriders came back at home to beat Edmonton 24-20 and climb to 3-0, while the Eskimos dropped to 0-3, with former Grey Cup MVP Ricky Ray a shadow of his former self. So naturally, the big story here is how silly the Riders looked while doing it.

*Cue Jerry Seinfeld voice* What's the deal with teams celebrating their centennials to overdo it with the retro and wearing outfits that would make Don Cherry blush? */seinfeld*

I can understand retro to an extent. But sometimes colours are phased out for a reason. Today was supposedly a celebration of the Roughriders' 100th year anniversary, and what are the colours that come to your mind when you think of Saskatchewan?

Black and shit-red, apparently.



Thing is, the Riders aren't the only century-old team to celebrate with merchandising opportunities. Who can forget the barber-poles or the pyjamas?

I will say this though: credit to the outfits that coach Ken Miller and his staff wore:



They remind us at the 'Eh' Factor of the second best thing about the Vancouver Olympics.

Great catch, bad math and worse tans highlight Grey Cup rematch

Montreal and Saskatchewan got the CFL season started last night with a ridiculous Grey Cup rematch. After Montreal took a 24-10 halftime lead, the game looked out of reach, and it seemed like a good time to get drunk with buddies and watch fireworks.

But out of nowhere, Saskatchewan came back, thanks to Saskatchewan's passing attack coming alive. Darian Durant finished 30-for-44 with 478 yards passing and the Riders tied the game, eventually winning 54-51 in overtime.

After the team's exchanged touchdowns at the end of the fourth, the CFL's new overtime rules came into play. Apparently all your post-touchdown conversions have to be from scrimmage for two points, which is a good rule, because it pretty well provided us with our highlight of the year.

TSN highlights

(First.... ahaha, this is hilarious. At 2:44 of that clip, the Roughriders get a stop on third down, effectively winning the game. Except they had 13 guys on the field. You'd think after all offseason they'd have learned to count.)

At 3:26, SJ Green makes what ended up being the #1 highlight of the night on ESPN (albeit in a losing cause). Happy Canada Day.

So we started off the year with a wild shootout and everybody wearing green goes home happy for a change, but isn't this 13th man thing a little crazy? The mistake cost the team a championship last year, so naturally you'd figure that they wouldn't do it again?

Prove me wrong, Weston Dressler:

"We laughed, we laughed on the sidelines."

I stand corrected. Andy Fantuz was a little more negative about the thing:

"A one in a thousand chance of that happening two games in a row is crazy. This time I won't dwell on it too much because we got the result. Hopefully we can clean up those logistics and not let it happen again."

It can't really be that hard to count to twelve. Naturally, we'll get a little more reaction out of Saskatchewan on this tomorrow, but, geez. Just because you only have ten fingers (well, the lucky Saskatchawaners anyway) doesn't mean it ain't easy to count to twelve. Use your toes if you have to. Or just take a guy off the field at the start of the game.

-In the other game, Calgary and Toronto combined for six fumbles and two interceptions and wasn't really as well played or entertaining. Jermaine Copeland, now an Argonaut, looked lost without Henry Burris. Cleo Lemon, the newest Argonauts quarterback, looked lost in general.

-Meanwhile, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats become the newest team to arbitrarily 'fine' players for disrespecting locker-room logos. It will cost you 25 push-ups if you walk on the Tiger logo in the middle of the floor. Because that's what's keeping you out of first place.

This has become quite commonplace, with fines in the NHL ranging from $10 to $25. I guess the Ti-Cats recognize no CFL player can afford that kind of money.

But seriously, how many pushups are the Alouettes going to have to do this year, when they inevitably walk all over the Tiger-Cats this season?