Last weekend was a long weekend in ways other than an extra day off for many CFL fans. My heart goes out to Toronto football fans who had to witness the Bomber-Argo game without the benefit of excessive alcohol. The Ontario Liquor Board suspended the liquor licence for the game due to violations in past events.
Years of experience have taught me that alcohol consumption is absolutely done best in moderation.
People do not get smarter, funnier or more fun to be around when booze takes the controls in their decisions.
A generous amount of alcohol will cloud the reality of their worlds enough for them to actually believe that sober people really enjoy their company.
The Argo-Bomber game was definitely one of those rare occasions where a mind- numbing amount of booze consumption would have been an appropriate measure for the game. The kind of drunk-athon that would obliterate memory banks right back to the ill-fated decision to even go to the game.
Normally I would emphatically not discourage fans from actual attendance, but the Argos embarrassed themselves with seven turnovers in one game. The team faces a huge battle for an identity in Toronto, where unconditional forgiveness for incompetence is reserved strictly for the Leafs.
The scorn of Rogers was very obvious with the baseball configuration on the football field. Rogers is the parent company of the Jays and a driving force behind a bid to get the NFL Bills into the Rogers Centre on a permanent basis.
The Bombers and Argos were forced to scramble around on a dangerous mix of clay baseball infield hazards on an artificial turf and neither team deserved a higher risk of injury in an inherently violent game.
What both teams do deserve are competent young quarterbacks and not a couple of guests who stayed way too long like Michael Bishop and Kerry Joseph.
The Edmonton Eskimos ended the unbeaten streak of Montreal with a convincing win at home. It is impossible to run the table in the CFL because it is an eight-team league and teams see each other a lot in a season. The book on opponents gets thicker and good coaches use the information to great advantage.
I regret that the Eskimos were the team to do the honors, because too few of their Oiler-obsessed fan base bothered to show up for two of the greatest quarterbacks in league history. Hey Edmonton, you have two major sports teams and one of them is actually worth watching — plus they don’t rob you for the privilege. At least Argo fans have reasons not to attend: no beer and no offence.
I almost feel sorry for the B.C. Lions. They will suffer the wrath of the league’s second most spoiled fans behind Montreal. Wrath in Vancouver means complete and utter indifference from bandwagon fans who are not used to mediocrity from the Lions.
Lastly, I am not a big Stampeders fan and their antics in Saturday’s game were an example of their lack of class. The players showboated after many average plays and — here’s a newsflash gentlemen — you lost the game. The Stamps won the Grey Cup but they need to learn how to act like champions. ’Nuff said.
Jim Sutherland is a freelance writer whose column on the CFL appears twice weekly in the Advocate. He can be reached at mystarcollectorcar.com