Hear the 109th CFL Grey Cup this Sunday on Canada Talks
Every 72 years or so, the Toronto Argonauts and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers get together to battle for the Grey Cup and the title of CFL Champion; the last time being in 1950 at the famed Mud Bowl at Varsity Stadium in Toronto. Historically, that was the sloppiest sports event to ever be staged, with both the Bombers’ Bud Tinsley and Argo MVP running back Nick Volpe claiming near-death experiences lying face-down, semi-conscious, almost drowning in puddles of dirty water. This time around, these two teams, both winners of their respective divisions, will have it a lot cleaner on the artificial turf at Regina’s Mosaic Stadium, so we can expect a more traditional outcome than the last time Winnipeg and Toronto kicked it around at the 38th Grey Cup Championship.
And let me underscore that that was 72 years ago. 1950, when Louis St. Laurent was Prime Minister of Canada, Gordie Howe and the Detroit Red Wings took the Stanley Cup over the New York Rangers in seven games, Canada sent their first brave young troops to fight in the Korean War, and Charles Schulz launched Peanuts. Good grief!
Putting Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown aside for the moment, let’s fast-forward to this Sunday’s match and let those 72 years dissipate into 2022 and the 109th Grey Cup in Saskatchewan. What are we looking at here? Well, if the Winnipeg Blue Bombers win this game, it will be an uncontested full-fledged dynasty with their third straight Championship and remember, it was only at the start of this reign that they had rid themselves of a 29-year drought. So yeah, good times for the Bomber faithful. However, in the half dozen previous Grey Cup tilts between these teams, the Argonauts have won them all. Six for six. Batting a thousand. What does that have to do with Sunday’s game? Not a thing, so enough with the history lesson.
As former Alouette coach Marv Levy would say, “where else would you rather be than right here, right now?” And right now, we have two all-star quarterbacks in the Argos McLeod Bethel-Thompson and Winnipeg’s Zach Colleros, who was hobbled in the Western Final against BC, so we’ll see about his status this week. We have future Hall Of Fame running back Andrew Harris ready to stick it to Winnipeg, his hometown and former team, for allowing him to walk this past off-season. We have young Brady Oliveira, eager to show Winnipeg fans that putting him in the backfield over Harris was the right move after all. And we have two fan bases that are ready to rock after a 72-year hiatus between Grey Cup snaps.
This Sunday, November 20th at 6 pm ET, it may not be the Mud Bowl from 72 years ago, but with the always volatile Andrew Harris in beast mode to prove his former bosses in Winnipeg wrong and with the Bombers in-your-face defence led by Bighill, Jeffcoat and Jefferson, I imagine there’s going to be plenty of mud-slinging after all. Real down and dirty stuff. \
At least there’s little chance that somebody will almost drown.
The 109th Grey Cup can be heard on Canada Talks, channel 167, this Sunday, beginning at 6 pm ET, live from Regina, Saskatchewan.
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