Grey Cup Part Two

The Grey Cup match-up for 2015 has been set, and this year's fans are in for another east/west rivalry. On November 29, the Edmonton Eskimos will meet the Ottawa Redblacks in Winnipeg for this year's Canadian football championship. To get there, Ottawa took out Hamilton 35-28 late in their Eastern Division qualifying game, while Edmonton beat Calgary 45-31 in the West.

When the Grey Cup turned 100 years old in 2012, Jeff Goodes hosted a two part show looking at the history of Canadian football's biggest showdown. He talked to the Stephen Brunt who'd just published his book 100 Grey Cups – This is Our Game. Last week, you might have heard part one of that program which covered the first 50 years of the Grey Cup story. In the lead-up to this years 103rd Grey Cup, you can keep on celebrating with part two which picks up the story in 1962.

In 1962 Hamilton faced Winnipeg in what was quite possibly the strangest Grey Cup ever. It was played at the CNE Stadium in Toronto, on the shore of Lake Ontario. But that day there was fog, so much fog that it was impossible to watch the game. It became known, naturally, as the Fog Bowl. The players played on as the fog got ever thicker. By five minutes into the fourth quarter, the conditions were so rough that referee Paul Dojack called the game and announced that it would resume the following day. It had already been a dramatic and close game and this ratcheted tension even higher. Winnipeg was leading 28-27. And that's what was on the scoreboard at both the start and finish of play the next day. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers who took home the 1962 Grey Cup.

In 1963, the Grey Cup was played in Vancouver, no doubt to get away from Toronto's fog. Hamilton faced home-town favourites the BC Lions. It was the fourth time Vancouver had hosted the Grey Cup, but their first one as players. It had been a battle to get there. Vancouver had to almost beg to get into the CFL. The city was considered too far from the rest of Canada, and the thought of travelling all the way there was not an attractive prospect for the eastern teams. But in 1963, there was reason for fans to celebrate: the Lions were in. Like every Grey Cup, a lot of action took place off the field. The streets were packed with partiers "in various degrees of inebriation" and the city police was out in full force. Hamilton won the championship, but not without controversy. Here's what happened: Hamilton's Angelo Mosca and BC's Willie Fleming had a collision.

As Stephen Brunt described it, if you were a Ti-cats fan, Mosca merely flew past Fleming and was in no way responsible for Fleming's concussion. However, you saw it differently if you were a BC fan, who would have said that the tackle was definitely illegal since Fleming was already down when Mosca made contact. In any case, B.C.'s star player Willie Fleming was out of the game, and Hamilton won with a score of 21-10. BC got its revenge the next year though, beating Hamilton 34-24. It is said that the bad blood from that 1963 Grey Cup game lives on to this day. 

In the 1970's, the NFL Super Bowl was becoming ever more popular. Nevertheless there were lots of remarkable Grey Cup games in that decade. 

Take a game from 1976 that's been called one of the all-time great games in Grey Cup history. It was between Ottawa and Saskatchewan. With only 20 seconds left on the clock, Ottawa Quarterback Tom Clements threw a 24 yard touchdown that clinched the game for Ottawa. Tony Gabriel made the big catch. The final score was Ottawa 23, Saskatchewan 20 and Tony Gabriel picked up the CFL MVP Award that year.  

1989 brought another fine Grey Cup contest, between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Hamilton Tigercats. It was played at the Skydome in Toronto with 54,000 fans. UIt was another nail biter. With only 28 seconds to go, the game was tied 40-40. It looked like the players were headed to overtime. But Saskatchewan managed to work its way down the field. Then there was only 9 seconds left on the clock. Saskatchewan kicker David Ridgeway was in position for a 35 yard field goal attempt. The kick was good, the fans went wild and Saskatchewan won its first Grey Cup in 23 years by a score of 43-40.

"It had it all. It was a sensational game in the then-new Skydome. Half the stands were green, the other half black and gold."

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                There were clearly pockets of passion for Canadian football, but the cracks in its foundation were starting to show. By the late 1980's, the CFL's culture was fragile. Attendance was down. Season ticket numbers were shrinking. Canadian fans wondered if the CFL and Grey Cup still had any relevance. Could the CFL keep up with the NFL machine? Had Canada moved on?

In the 1990's, the CFL came up with the idea to turn things around by expanding into the U.S. and become an alternate football league to the NFL.The most famous moment of the American CFL era was in 1995 at the game known as the Wind Bowl. Wind gusts of over 80 km/h blew through Taylor Field in Regina, but that didn't stop the Baltimore Stallions from defeating the Calgary Stampeders. Baltimore became the first and only American CFL team to capture the Grey Cup. It was the first Grey Cup game held in Regina and the city embraced it wholeheartedly, but behind the scenes the American CFL expansion was crumbling. The people running the League knew it. The house of cards may have been collapsing, but the landscape of the CFL was about to change in a way that no one could foresee.

One last notable Grey Cup game from the 1990's...

After Baltimore won the Grey Cup, the next year's game was quintessentially Canadian. It was 1996 and the Argos were up against the Eskimos in Hamilton. The game became known as the Snow Bowl. The game also had what some say is one of the all-time great Grey Cup plays. The snow was relentless, but Edmonton's Eddie Brown caught a 64 yard touchdown pass that had bounced off his foot. In the end, the Argos, led by Quarterback Doug Flutie, took home the Cup, winning by 43-37.

The story of Montreal parallels the CFL story itself: from humble beginnings to giant stadiums, to a near-complete collapse, and then a rebuilding back to former glory. The Montreal Alouettes died, came back as the Concordes, and died again.The feeling was that CFL football in Quebec was over. After the collapse of the American CFL expansion, the Baltimore Stallions were without a home and came to Montreal. They were playing in front of crowds of only 9 000 fans. To make room for a bigger draw - a U2 concert-  the team was forced to change location to a decrepit playing field at McGill University. But then what some people would call a miracle happened. Word got out and the old ballpark started filling up. The city was ready to embrace its team with renewed spirit. It might be the biggest success story in the history of the CFL. In 2009 more than six million watched as the match between Montreal and Saskatchewan was decided on the very last play. In the end, Montreal took the game after kicker Damon Duval made a 33 yard field goal as time ran out.

A final question to leave you with: how healthy is the CFL now? As Stephen Brunt said in 2012 when this show first aired, there are parts of this country where it's not doing particularly well. In Toronto the Argos are up against hockey's Maple Leafs, basketball's Raptors, and soccer's FC. But in other centres, the CFL is still the #1 game in town.

Stephen Brunt's new book is called 100 Grey Cups – This is Our Game. It was published in 2012 by McLelland and Stewart.