The News Review Sports is sharing its favourite moments from 2013. Following is a column on the Saskatchewan Rough-riders Grey Cup win from Chase Ruttig.
With apologies to Ron Lancaster, George Reed, Kent Austin, Kerry Joseph and anyone else in between, the 2013 Saskatchewan Rough-riders are the best team in the storied (or not so storied depending on your perspective on life) history of the Roughriders. Winning convincingly over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Sunday at Taylor Field in the 101st installment of the Grey Cup there was little doubt left in my mind once the game came to a close. Basking in the cheers of about fifty or so patrons at one of Yorkton's local sports bars, a place that was so loud that you might have been mistaken whether or not you were in Regina, there was little doubt left in my mind. It will take a long time before anything tops this. The 2013 Roughriders can stake their claim as the group that gave Saskatchewan its most memorable ride, treating the province to the dream season it has always wanted.
While writing this column I thought back to my glory days as a Rider fan, and the glory days of most sports fans, my childhood. The days without the knowledge and foresight that life goes on once the game is over, gluing myself in front of the TV (We didn't even have HD back then. Gasp) every fall in the early 00's hoping that this year would be different. For a long time it didn't happen. Near misses under Danny Barrett piled up. A close loss on the road in November was about as much of a guarantee as the new Nickelback album debuting at #1 on the charts back in those days. The most memorable of those misses being Paul McCallum's chip shot in 2004, a loss that kept the Riders from the Grey Cup and continued the pain of a province that was longing for a title since 1989.
When we finally got one in 2007 that was special in itself, a win over the rival Winnipeg Blue Bombers led by the man who last led the Riders to the Grey Cup in Kent Austin in head coach. A win that then captivated the hearts of the province, but saw that Grey Cup winning team quickly disperse. Kent Austin left to go coach college football down south, Kerry Joseph ran to Toronto for a big payday and was replaced by a guy who back then was just a backup from the University of North Carolina named Darian Durant.
After that win the Riders as we know them now were formed, CFL's flagship franchise as everyone now likes to refer to the team that once had to take wheat from farmers for season tickets, grew into Saskatchewan's heartbeat. Players have turned into legends since then, Chris Getzlaf went from being NHL player Ryan Getzlaf's brother to a Saskatchewan folk hero, as has fellow receiver Weston Dressler. John Chick returned back home from the NFL this season, even the Riders old enemy Geroy Simon, turned himself into a Rider for life this season with his big catches against Hamilton. It is hard to picture anybody else on the Green and White than the players who stepped on the field Sunday.
Out of heartbreaking Grey Cup losses to Montreal in consecutive years before missing the playoffs and losing in the first round became a sense of team the province has now taken as part of being from the province as knowing when it is Harvest season. If you are from Saskatchewan, not only do you know that the Riders are playing a big game. You care. People who couldn't tell you the names of the two teams in last year's Stanley Cup, World Series, Super Bowl could likely rattle off every player on the Riders roster and what they do for the team. In a league that is often dismissed as a second rate product to the NFL, the Riders have emerged as one of Canada's iconic franchises despite facing significant roadblocks.
From the size of the province, a old harsh stadium in Taylor Field, to the simple fact that it isn't exactly easy convincing Americans who once had dreams of playing in the NFL out of college to move to Regina of all places, this was never supposed to happen. The Riders were supposed to fold before they became a national phenomenon.
You could say the same about the 2013 Riders. Heading into the playoffs the script was written, and this Riders team was supposed to lose. Calgary was the better team, the Riders had already lost to them the year before and had earned the reputation for losing in a heartbreaking fashion from their previous three playoff exits. With so much at stake and a chance to host the Grey Cup on the line, many expected the pressure to be too much. In the end the Riders rose to the occasion, and gave the Riders a week to remember before the Grey Cup even started.
For a whole week Saskatchewan swarmed Regina, filled its bars, attended almost every event leading up to the big game and showed that while hockey might be Canada's sport, the CFL is Saskatchewan's game. Every writer who left here on Monday left with a story about how special our connection with the Riders is, how much that something that may be an afterthought in Vancouver and Toronto is as close to life and death as you can get in this province. We might not have the Maple Leafs, or the Dallas Cowboys, but our big ticket is all that we need. We don't need anything else.
Guys who have second jobs in the offseason are superstars. Darian Durant is more of a household name in this province than Peyton Manning. Riders are on our cereal boxes, our bags of chips, when they come to cities across the province for events, it is as big of a deal as if Wayne Gretzky was in town.
Generations of lifelong Rider fans got to witness something they might have thought was impossible. Witnessing the Grey Cup being played in Regina, Saskatchewan after four straight days of weather that was as cold as you can get in the province, sold out with 42, 000 plus fans with many more wishing they could have got a ticket, all witnessing the team that filled their childhood memories lift the Grey Cup. For one day on Sunday, all of the cliches about this province held true. Yes, we are generally always friendly to each other, yes we like to have a good time, and yes we love to cheer on our Saskatchewan Roughriders from the beginning of July to the cold of November.
Most importantly, somewhere in a nursing home in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, my great grandmother, who has witnessed every Grey Cup win and about close to a thousand more losses, got to see the Riders lift the Cup one more time. For everyone around the province, those are the type of stories that capture just how much a small team, from a small province, playing in a league that "nobody cares about" can mean to an entire province. Great teams and championship seasons come and go, and many are forgotten. In 25 years the 2013 Riders might not be as special to someone my age as they were then, but for the people who experienced Sunday, they will never be forgotten.
