How was it for you, Vancouver? The Grey Cup championship game and festival, I mean. I left B.C. Place sticky with champagne in my hair and giddy from the Lions exuberance and neversaydie season.
Tens of thousands of visitors joined us for four days to party-all except for family venues, which were indoors and without sky-high big screens-and hopped from the Lions Den and the Blue & Gold House to Tigertown and Riderville. A few pancakes in the morning and the circuit began again.
The Canadian Football League says its average fan is about 30 years old. The revellers I saw were older than that but a handful hit that mark. At the Spirit of Edmonton, four 20-something dudes in Stamps colours danced, drank beer and taunted their Prairie hosts with this name on a jerseys: ESKI H8R. The Booze Brothers' battered mock cop car (a genius tribute to their bluesmobile inspiration) was parked beside the roped-off entrance. A woman fell off her chair while bopping to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." The crowd was positively parental. They were marvelous.
Down, not out
When the yardsticks malfunctioned at B.C. Place, a call went out to Football B.C. and Pat Waslen, an alum of Notre Dame secondary who still contributes to the Jugglers program, grabbed replacement gear from the school's athletic department and delivered it to B.C. Place Stadium 18 minutes before kick-off. The sticks that arrived from the school, which is also Lui Passaglia's alma matter, were set to show the number four, which is the number of downs played in high school football. The CFL plays a three-down game.
Vanier Cup
The best game of the weekend was not the Grey Cup but the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championship played Friday night at B.C. Place. The double-overtime contest between perennial victors the Rouge et Or from Laval, Que. and the yet-to-win McMaster Marauders could stand as the most thrilling football final in the 44 years of the Vanier Cup.
