 |
| Head coach and GM Chris Jones, centre, and the Roughriders lost a bad one. |
On June 15, the Roughriders opened the CFL regular season
with a 27-19 victory over the defending Grey Cup champion Toronto Argonauts in
the friendly confines of Mosaic Stadium. Everything was great, and Roughriders
fans seemed to have visions of a memorable campaign ending in a Grey Cup
triumph.
On Thursday, the Roughriders played their second regular
season game traveling to Ottawa to face the host Redblacks. Before 24,224
spectators at TD Place Stadium, the Redblacks rolled to a 40-17 victory.
The Redblacks played great, but the Roughriders put on one
of their classic stinkers. It seems like Saskatchewan is good for three of those
a season even in championship campaigns.
All of a sudden, it seems like a huge vocal group of
Roughriders fans collectively push the panic button. The comments on sports
talk radio and social media lines seems to be similar every time the
Roughriders lose.
There are calls for players to be traded and coaches and
managers to be fired. At times, it seems like no one is immune to criticism in
the Roughriders organization.
If you search hard enough, you will probably find blame
getting spread to the waterboy, Gainer the Gopher and the Rider Cheer Team.
 |
| Charleston Hughes (#39) and the Roughriders had a rough day in Ottawa. |
In most incidents where that type of situation occurs in
professional football, a blowout occurs where the club with the extra rest wins
by a lopsided score.
Thursday’s loss made me flashback to a bad setback the
Roughriders had in the 2008 CFL season. On Oct. 13, 2008, the Roughriders were
heading to Calgary to play the host Stampeder at McMahon Stadium.
Both teams went head-to-head 10 days earlier at Taylor Field
in Regina, where the Roughriders pulled out a 37-34 victory.
Both clubs were sporting 9-5 records and the winner would
sit alone in first place in the West Division. The squad that lost would fall
in a three-way tie for second to fourth in the division with the Edmonton
Eskimos and British Columbia Lions, who were both 9-6.
It felt like the clash on Oct. 13, 2008 at McMahon Stadium
was over minutes into the first quarter. The Stampeders romped past the
Roughriders by a 42-5 final score.
At the time, I had a number of friends who were playing for
the Roughriders. After the game, I visited with a few of them outside the
stadium where they boarded the bus.
 |
| Rider Nation had a tough day in Calgary on October 13, 2008. |
He pretty much knew most of the messages would be negative
so he selected all of them and hit delete. He expected he would have to do the
same thing after that loss to the Stampeders.
My friend on the team said you just had to correct mistakes
and move on as nothing could be done to change the outcome of that defeat to
the Stampeders.
To show how long ago that was, most professional squads and
high level amateur teams didn’t have policies regarding social media. Twitter
was around but wasn’t widely used and Instagram didn’t exist.
In the current day, most of the fans do their social media
venting on Twitter and Facebook. There might be some harsh words in the
comments section in the pictures teams post on their Instagram sites, but that
isn’t a regular place where displeasure is shown.
On a side note, I remember one other friend taking that loss
in 2008 hard in Roughriders special teams coach Alex Smith. He came out of the
stadium door, said “hi” and walked aimlessly into the distance.
To this day, I think he came back to one of the two team
busses, but I am not sure.
 |
| Members of Rider Nation leave McMahon Stadium on October 13, 2008. |
What seems to be forgotten is that when the Roughriders win,
they still aren’t going to be the second coming of Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay
Packers NFL dynasty teams. When the Roughriders lose, they won’t be the current
day version of the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers sad sack NFL expansion team.
All that matters is the 2018 CFL season still young.
The Roughriders get to go out and try to be a little bit
better in their next game on June 30, when they host the Montreal Alouettes
(0-2) at 7 p.m. at Mosaic Stadium.
Awards loss by Rams’ Cross a “ho-hum” thing
 |
| Rams LB Nick Cross (#9) runs down Thunderbirds QB Cole Meyer. |
During the 2017 U Sports football season, Cross entered his
rookie campaign for the Rams starting at outside linebacker right out of high
school. He appeared in all eight of the Rams regular season games recording 46
tackles, three tackles for a loss including a sack, two pass break ups, a
forced fumble and an interception.
For his efforts, he was awarded the Peter Gorman Trophy as
the U Sports rookie of the year and a second team U Sports all-Canadian
all-star.
On Wednesday, Cross was stripped of both of those honours by
U Sports due to testing positive for cannabis. The graduate of Regina’s Dr.
Martin LeBoldus High School was subjected to a random drug test following the Rams
final regular season game on Oct. 28, 2017, when they dropped a 44-15 decision
to the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds in Vancouver.
While cannabis will soon be legal, it is still on the World
Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list. It will still be a banned substance
during the U Sports competitive season when it becomes legal.
Cross was suspended two months, and he became fully active
to return to team activities on Jan. 4.
Before being suspended, Cross appeared in the Rams 28-21
Canada West semifinal playoff loss to the Thunderbirds in Vancouver on Nov. 4,
2017.
Cross was also stripped of his Canada West
rookie-of-the-year award and his Canada West all-star honour.
The Canada West reward the rookie of the year award to
University of Calgary Dinos offensive lineman Tyler Packer and the all-star
award at linebacker to Cyril Iwanegbe, who is also from the Dinos.
At the U Sports national level, quarterback Tre Ford of the
University of Waterloo Warriors became the new rookie of the year. The second team
U Sports all-Canadian all-star award at linebacker went to Bailey Feltmate of
the Acadia University Axemen.
Of course, Cross tested positive for a drug that doesn’t enhance
on field performance. If he battles with mental health issues regarding
anxiety, it is possible cannabis might help him get calm before a game, so that
technically would help improve performance.
There would have been a time in the late 1990s and the early
2000s, when this would have been a more major story. In Saskatoon, the
sanctions against Cross would have been well known due to the fact he played
for the Rams, the Rams had an intense rivalry with Saskatoon and there were
more people in the mainstream media that would track such a story.
The fans in Saskatoon would be out in full force to heckle
the Rams the next time they played the University of Saskatchewan Huskies at
Griffiths Stadium, and Cross would have been a target. The rivalry between
Saskatoon and Regina was very heated back then.
These days, there likely aren’t very many people in the
general public in Saskatoon who know Cross is. The news of the sanctions
against him are pretty much “ho-hum” thing.
A year ago, Rams linebacker Michael Stefanovic removed
himself from the 2017 CFL Draft after an alleged doping violation. On May 4,
2017, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) announced that a urine
sample provided by Stefanovic during the CFL’s western regional combine in
Regina on March 23, 2017 revealed the presence of drostanolone, which is a prohibited
anabolic agent.
At the time, a violation of the CCES’s anti-doping rules had
not been confirmed, but the news about Stefanovic was disclosed due to the fact
he was eligible for the CFL Draft.
On October 23, 2017, the CCES confirmed Stefanovic’s doping
violation. He was given a sanction of four years ineligibility from sport. He
is ineligible to participate in any capacity with any sport signatory to the
Canadian Anti-Doping Program including training with teammates.
The news around Stefanovic barely made a ripple outside of
Regina. Thanks to the fact he had exhausted his U Sports eligibility at the
time of his drug infraction, there were very few follow up pieces if any in the
mainstream media when his suspension was announced.
It is highly unlikely Stefanovic would play any sort of
competitive sport again, so there wouldn’t be any motivation to do any follow
story in most media outlets.
If what happened Stefanovic occurred in the late 1990s or
early 2000s, that would have added fuel to the fire for Saskatoon fans to
heckle the Rams.
Also during that period of time if members of any Huskies
teams went through situations like Cross and Stefanovic experienced, the
Huskies teams would receive biting heckles by fans in Regina when they arrived
in the Saskatchewan capital for road games.
In the grand scheme of things, what Stefanovic was found
guilty of was likely worse than what Cross was found guilty of. Cross’s
infraction will likely be more of a small bump in the road.
Thanks to the fact U Sports doesn’t have as high of a
profile as it once did due to the media cut era of today, stories like the
situations involving Cross and Stefanovic will be viewed as minor and will
likely be quickly forgotten.
If you have any
comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them
to stankssports@gmail.com.
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