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CFL’s Grey Cup a Unique Testament To Athletes and Their Game

By @JordanWevers

Getty Images

Getty Images

A true intensity needs to dwell inside the heart of a professional athlete. Every last bit of their inertia must be compelled to pull, reach and dig for something greater on a daily basis. The gift to play can often be taken for granted. It can be bamboozled through a needle or rectified through faith in a higher being if that’s your cup of tea. It can be taken away in a split second or it can drag on for an egregious period of time over fear of what comes next, not wanting to say goodbye or ego-centrism. No single man is ever bigger than the game of football, though he can contribute towards defining it.

All the factors that make a professional athlete strive for things us laymen only hope to experience in another lifetime sets a precedence for the mass media, endorsements, celebrity statuses and controversial contracts that lack a sense of altruism.

Then, there is the life of a Canadian Football League athlete.

The contracts? Engineers can make more in salary a few years after graduating college. Celebrity status? That’s more like cult status within the community you represent. This is especially true if you are featured by the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The game is played by men who have officially been playing it the same way since roughly the year Henry Ford sold his first Model T. The first forward pass was being used in a Grey Cup at a time when purchasing ale from a local tavern in America made the customer a perpetrator. The first Super Bowl was still decades away from being birthed.

The CFL was built around tradition and a sense of nationalism as opposed to the NFL, where aristocracy and business ventures conglomerated from different leagues create a central institution. That’s not to say the NFL isn’t a special game — it certainly is — it’s just different.

If you type the CFL acronym into your google browser, it will likely return “compact fluorescent light” as a higher resulting query on Wikipedia’s featured pages.

Few people are probably aware of it, but the CFL played a role in setting the stage for future multi-million dollar paydays by attracting talent with dollar signings. The Toronto Argonauts deterred Notre Dame All-American Raghib “Rocket” Ismail from the allure of the NFL Draft in April of 1991 with a guaranteed $4.5 million per year contract over four seasons. At the time, the highest paid player in the NFL was San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, making $3.25 million per year.

Still, many CFL players work full or part-time jobs in the offseason. Some even spend time away from a full-blown career, making in-season months more like their offseason. The game is a true labor of love, which hardly makes it anything to scoff at. It paved the way for future Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Moon and helped catapult other Pro-Bowlers like Jeff Garcia, Doug Flutie and Cameron Wake to NFL success, to name a few.

Earning a spot in the annals of Canadian gridiron glory has never been an easy task despite the CFL being composed of only nine teams at present. Last year’s final was played outdoors in Regina, Saskatchewan amidst less than favorable temperatures. Hitting and colliding into other humans with a ferocity and a thirst to win forces players to dig deep when your spit nearly freezes before hitting the turf. The coldest Grey Cup on record was in 1991 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The temperature at kickoff was one degree Fahrenheit, not including the wind chill. The aforementioned Ismail and his Toronto Argonauts ended up winning that game in front of an impressive 52,000 fans in attendance.

This Sunday, the Calgary Stampeders will face off against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the 102nd edition of the Grey Cup. Luckily for both parties involved, it will be staged in the temperature controlled domed confines of BC Place in Vancouver, British Columbia.

One thing this game will have in common with the Super Bowl is that bettors can wager a desired sum on the outcome. However, something no one should be wagering against is the integrity of the game. Its passionate players and the diehard fans who have supported it for over a century of Canadian history deserve mention. If you tune into ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown on Dec. 1, Chris Berman will show this sentiment to be true.

Jordan Wevers is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @JordanWevers, “Like” him on Facebook, or add him to your network on Google.

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