Calgary, Alberta -- A snapshot from the 1993 Grey Cup:
I am up in the nosebleed seats of Calgary's McMahon Stadium, surrounded by 50,000 locals and out-of-towners -- most of them toque to boots in polar ice-cap gear. The crowd is cranked up for the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League's championship -- a.k.a. Canada's national drunk. The crowd wobbles upright and sings "O Canada" with abnormal fervor, Canadians being a reserved lot. Then the announcer cheerily encourages fans to salute the CFL's new American franchises in a rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner."
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" This reserved lot, chemically altered by Molson's and Labatt's, is not impressed.
And a year later, Canadians still aren't impressed by the idea of U.S. teams in the CFL. When the Baltimore un-Colts take the field in Vancouver for Sunday's Grey Cup, they will be heartily booed from the stands and from living rooms across Canada.
It's not "anti-American hysteria," as Ken Rosenthal has suggested. Canadians and Americans get along just fine. The real fuss is about lost tradition, inferiority complexes, national pride and stupidity. In a nutshell, Canadians can't stomach the idea of a team from Maryland -- with no Canadian players on its roster -- heading through Vancouver customs Sunday night with a trophy that has been awarded to the top football team in Canada since 1909.
We've long celebrated our game for its differences -- the three downs, the 12 players, the wide and long field. For years we've tightly held to rules about maintaining Canadian players on rosters. The league's history is marked by rich tradition -- with names of CFL legends like Russ Jackson and Normie Kwong that are utterly foreign to Americans.
For decades, the onset of winter was marked by this big national bash, with Canadians gathered in front of TVs to watch East meet West for the Cup. The game was as much a party excuse as New Year's Eve.
That sort of tradition started to change in the 1970s with the onset of U.S. cable TV. Suddenly we were getting the NFL and the Super Bowl, and everything and everyone seemed bigger, faster, better. Pessimists started talking about how much better the football was down south. Chest-thumpers said bring the Yank champs up here and have 'em whupped by our Grey Cup champs.
Realists said the CFL and NFL play two different games, and the comparisons ought to end there.
Instead of the apples-and-oranges approach, many Canadians -- particularly the CFL's decision-makers -- developed an inferiority complex. The end of the CFL as we long knew it began once we decided to steal top draft choices and pros from the NFL to show we were big-time, too. At its worst, the CFL stole Vince Ferragamo from the Rams. He was a dud on the field and at the gate.
But we kept at it. Big-name players with big-number contracts inevitably started dragging down teams in a league where players had typically worked off-season jobs to pay the rent. Team salaries went up and up. So did ticket prices. And down went attendance. This slow spiral has been going on for years now, and as much is written about team finances and musical-chair ownerships as on the actual game these days. CFL teams are being bought and sold now by stock promoters and wheeler-dealers who often seem just an affidavit ahead of a judge. You can't keep track of the owners without a program.
All this instability was supposed to change as the CFL entered a new era through rapid expansion into the United States -- land of jumbo TV contracts and a love for anything with a team logo on it.
But aside from Baltimore, U.S. expansion has been disastrous. Few Canadians see much of a future for a Canadian league. The franchise in Hamilton -- an unemployment-wracked steeltown -- is all but dead. Toronto's Argonauts draw flies in a market of 3.5 million. Ottawa has been hanging on by fingernails for years now. And most of the other franchises seem in endless financial peril. Most of us suspect CFL team owners will eventually seek a name change -- maybe the International Football League or something less Canadian.
There are also strong feelings that this will be the last great Grey Cup. So, we'll load up on beer and chips and have some fun. The cheering has historically been an East-West thing, but this year it's different. Most Canadians will be cheering hard for British Columbia, our Team Canada by default, and booing mightily That American Team. But the jeers won't be aimed at Baltimore, or at Americans in general. They're really intended for the CFL's grand visionaries who've put Canadian teams and their fans at third and long, with time running out. Dave Haynes is an editor at the Calgary Herald.