Oh, and I forgot to mention Chris Cuthbert and Glen Suiter. Great job. My favourite play by play duo.

I don't know how many Grey Cups Cuthbert has called, but it's a bunch.

Only a diehard CFL fan would post this in "Global Issues"!
Much elation these past few days in the T dot & the Grey Cup parade today.

I think some of the heightened enthusiasm for football here has been the result no hockey this season. Not a bad thing. The Argos win filled the void nicely.

nice to see a Canadian touting Canada :3

I'm not a huge, huge CFL fan but I take in a few games a year. Since to the extent that I'm a CFL fan I'm an Argos fan, I thought the game was great! Haltime shows don't really interest me so I didn't really watch Lightfoot or Bieber or anyone else, but I agree that your typical football audience really isn't a Bieber audience, although I guess if the CFL is wanting to expand its fan base then Bieber fans would be a new demographic for them!

I grew up in Toronto. I can remember back in the 70's the CFL was really big there, the players were household names and there was almost as much angst about the Argos (then) Grey Cup drought as there is now about the Maple Leafs Stanley Cup drought. I suspect there are still a lot of CFL fans in Toronto, but the city is so big that they don't stand out and even just in terms of sports they have to compete with the Leafs, the Raptors, the Blue Jays, Toronto FC, minor league hockey, junior hockey. It's a tough market.

Other than spotting a couple of FB posts and seeing headlines on online news sites I was unaware of it.  I'm really not a fan of super organised sports - and the more the players are paid the less interested I am in their activities.  Did a winner get decided 

I'm surprised, I managed to go almost the whole day with no reminders that it was even on!  Usually I hear something, whether it's social media or something else.  I did hear the day after that the refing was bad, and Calgary looked like the didn't put in the effort.

Beiber was an odd choice.  Even if he performed well with songs that appealed to the audience, people wouldn't have been happy.  Why not give the crowd someone they are happy to see?  Jepsen might have been ok if they wanted to broaden their fan base, as long as they had her with someone more suited to the average football fan.

Not so fast. We probably only made one because we're cheap.

Not a football watcher - but settled in with my knitting to watch the game on Sunday - and to my surprise quite enjoyed it!

One of my observations is that while I had previously thought of it as a very aggressive game - I now think I'm mistaken in that.  I saw very good sportsmanship displayed by the players - much much moreso than in hockey ...  rules seem clear and respected, people helping each other up off the ground - no personal aggression or nastiness that seems to prevail in hockey, no fights ... interesting!

Oh, chansen, we didn't pay for the Grey Cup. It was paid for by Earl Grey, just as the STanley Cup was paid for by Lord Stanley.

Both cups were intended for amateur teams A gentleman of just over a century ago did not play sports for money, especially team sports. That's why the Oympics originally permitted amateurs only. Professionalism as for the lower sorts.

Hockey professionalized first, almost from the start. Football took much longer. There were still amateur teams competing welll into tohe 1940s. Red Storey, who set a record four (I think) touchdowns in a 1930s Grey Cup played as an amateur. And looked, into his eighties, like a man show could score four more any day. Into the 50s, it was common, even for the pro CFL players, to get as little as $50 a game. Usually, these would be local players.

To this day, hockey reflects its working class origins with most of its players coming from among those who, at most, finished high school. Football, retaining a good deal of its "gentelmen only' background, recruits largely from the universities.

Justin Bieber should not be allowed to sing in the presence of adults.

In thinking about the 100th Grey Cup held here in Toronto, let me give a big shout out to the Argonotes. Let's hear it for the band! You all did a great job entertaining the crowds and getting them into the spirit of the game. Argonotes forever!

Well, it's not like the good, old days when the Alouettes used to win.

sorry i'm late to this, but i thought it was an awesome game.  wish calgary had been a little stronger, but hey, not every game is going to be as FABULOUS as the '89 grey cup was... THAT was a true classic.

i am SO MISSING having a CFL game to watch on the weekends now!!

You mean 2010?? That's hardly "old"

It seems old. I mean, with a league full of teams from nondescript cities like Toronto and Calgary and Hamilton and Regina - well - one sort of expects more.

lol!

maybe you mean the grey cups that were known for the alouettes winning, rather than 'the 13th man' cup where nobody really remembers who won, only that the riders lost??

geez, how old are you, graeme?? 

i mean hey, being from regina myself, i MIGHT be able to say the same thing about YOU....

Yeah.... Well.... Calvillo can't play forever. He's only got another 15, maybe 20 years left in him.

Then what?

Today's Montreal Alouettes are really just the Baltimore Stallions moved north. A reminder of the ill-fated US expansion of the CFL that resulted in the Grey Cup being won by - yuck - Baltimore in 1995 before they moved to Montreal.

I'm so old, I knew a famed punter who played for (I think) Regina. I know it was one of those cities where you tied  your horse at the saloon door, and a gentleman is someone who not only aims for the spitoon, but hits it.

The Punter was a tall guy, very handsome (he was from Montreal) who played in the 50s and into the 60s. As I remember, his name was Reg Jackson.

Local promoters are pushing for Moncton to get a CFL team. This is for a population "greater Moncton" of maybe 160,000. It's almost certainly scam. Montreal has the mafia. we have scams by espectable people. The mafia is better.

I really hope it's not a scam, graeme. There's been talk around the league for a while about expansion into the Atlantic region; either Moncton or Halifax. " Greater Moncton" is about the same size Metro Regina. If done right, I think it could fly. I would love to see a 10 team CFL.

If memory serves there was an announced CFL expansion team into Halifax many years ago (maybe early 80's?). The team was supposed to be called the Atlantic Schooners. I don't know what happened that it never got off the ground. There's also some reports that the Hamilton Tiger Cats might play a "home" game in Moncton next year because their new stadium won't be ready until 2014.

Personally I'd love to see an Atlantic team join the CFL along with the Ottawa team that's supposed to start in 2014.

Moncton is working very hard at getting a team. It really would like to get the Ti-Cats, themselves. But I think that's dreaming in colour. A problem is that there are only two, small cities within two hours' drive. Halifax would certainly be a wiser choice.

About five years ago, i taught two brothers who were line-backers for Hamilton. Both looked very much like line-backers. One looked like a shorter version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Can't remember their names, though.

anyone got the 2012 Grey Cup loonie? :3

Hi InannaWhimsey,

No.  Since he was awarded the stay he is still Mayor of TO.

Grace and peace to you.

John

I had to read it twice. But it was worth the effort.

I am a huge CFL fan and thought the Grey Cup was great.  The Grey Cup train was a brilliant idea.  The train travelled across the country for 70 days with the cup and made 150 stops to communities big and small.  The train and the Grey Cup, two unifying Canadian symbols.  The Grey Cup walk from Rosedale field (the site of the 1st Grey Cup) then to Varsity Stadium then to Skydome with the Cup being passed along to fans along the way.  The CFL for all it's warts sure does it right, for connecting the game, it's players and it's trophy to the fans. It pains me to say it as a Tiger Cat fan, but it was nice to see the Argos win at home and made the city actually care about Canadian football for a short period of time.

m-m-m-m   I'm surprised nobody has mentioned where Canadian football was invented (and why) and where the first game was played. Or how it was Canada that introduced North American football to the United States.

Hint - it was a a city whose bicycle club had a crest that became the model for the crest of the Detroit Red Wings.

It's not a western city. - though the west does get credit for the invention of hockey goalie shin pads. (a player for the city's cricket club was also a hockey goalie, and skated onto the ice one night wearing his cricket shin pads. Can't remember which city. Might have been Regina.

Graeme would that city be Montreal?  I seem to recall that McGill challenged Harvard to a game of "rugby-football" in the late 1800's.  Not sure what the reason was for the invention of Canadian football or where the first game was played. 

most team games of the period were played only by "gentlemen" - the sons of the rich. Most came to North American from Britain - as did rugby football. Since these games were played by only a small number of people, and commonly over a small region due to reliance on  horse travel, the rules were more understood than written. To be a gentleman meant to grow up with the rules as a part of one's social set - so even the written rules sometimes made no sense. But everybody understood. Thus the expression "that's not cricket" meaning that it may not be written down, but you can't do that.

The games came to Canadian and american universities, the finishing schools of the rich. But, especially with the railway, the games spread over a wider area, often connecting players who, despite their wealth, had grown up in more mixed economic environments.the games were chaos.

The opening lines were not supposed to touch each other. So McGill moved them apart. But then it was impossible to begin play by linemen kicking the ball down the line to reach a runner.

So the McGill rule was to begin by giving the ball to the man at the centre of the line. The nearest player to him was the quarterback, so-called because he played a quarter of the way back on the field.- who then might find it convenient to toss it to one of the runners who played half-way back. In the process of coditying the rules, McGill had invented a new game, quite unlike the game played at Rugby.

This new game met the North american need for clearer rules. But it remained largely a university game or one for gentlemanly private clubs like the Montreal Winged Wheelers (originally a bicycle club) and the Toronto Argonauts (as a Fall sport for what was originally a rowing club). There were no professionals because gentleman did not play for money. Only common people did that.

the result was a Grey Cup for the amateur championship. And amateur players dominated the game until the period of World War 2. To this day,  colleges are the normal recruiting grounds of football players.

Hockey, originally also a game for the gentlemanly class lost prestige and status when it professionalized with a generation of its founding. The result is that hockey players, typically, are common folk recruited at high school age.

For football, Montrea was the founding place for the North American version of football where McGill taught it to Harvard, which led to a slightly different American game. Australia took a different route. it developed Australian rules football, partly because Australian gentlemen used the officers' playing fields at military bases; and the officers, as gentleman, made their playing fields oval - for the gentlemanly game of cricket.

Foro those who know montreal, the first game was probably played on the campus field that still runs west from University Ave and along Sherbrooke. Touch games are still played there.