These Stamps arguably the best in long and storied franchise history

Going by the numbers, the 2014 Grey Cup champions are without peer

Those furballs being coughed up down east, the aggrieved (Tiger) caterwauling of unspeakable injustices aside, the best team in the CFL, from start to finish, stem to stern, hoisted the Grey Cup on Sunday afternoon.

When the Tiger-Cats were mounting their comeback and the skeptics were wondering if the heavy Western favourites might live down to their recent frailties and drown in their own sweat, the Calgary Stampeders beat back not only the stubborn Tabbies but also their much-checkered recent playoff history.

For anyone, that should be proof enough of championship credentials.

A special group, as all titlewinning aggregations are obliged to be. United. Single-minded. Undaunted. Malleable.

Might this even be considered the greatest single-season Stampeder team ever?

On sheer number of wins capped by a championship, 17, it is. On resiliency to overcome a lengthy laundry list of injuries and continue to march relentlessly forward like a platoon of African army ants, most probably. On depth, you could certainly make a strong case.

Old-timers will point, with some justification, to the legendary 1948 group and the start of the Grey Cup as a national spectacle. Les Lear’s team that season was unbeaten in 15 (14-01) starts. A feat surely never to be The television ratings for Sunday’s 102nd Grey Cup between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Calgary Stampeders were down slightly from last season. An average of 4.1 million viewers tuned in to TSN to watch the Stampeders edge the Ticats 20-16, according to preliminary data from the audience measurement firm Numeris. That was down from the 4.5 million who watched last year’s game between Hamilton and Saskatchewan. Overall, more than 10 million Canadians tuned in for some portion of Sunday’s game, 1.5 million fewer than last season. Audience levels peaked at 5.1 million — 400,000 fewer than 2013 — late in the game as Hamilton mounted a fourth-quarter comeback that stalled when Brandon Banks’ touchdown return was nullified due to a penalty. The Grey Cup record average of 6.1 million viewers was set in 2009 when the Montreal Alouettes defeated Saskatchewan 28-27. That game was played shortly after the introduction of a new ratings measurement system that has seen sports TV ratings skyrocket. duplicated.

During the modern era, those magnificent Wally Buonoassembled and -guided teams of the mid-90s flare brightly in the imagination, but for the vast collection of talent on view only two collected championships, coming in ‘92 and ‘98 on Doug Flutie’s 480-yard passing day and Mark McLaughlin’s final-snap field goal at the old Winnipeg Stadium on Maroons Road, respectively.

Wonderful, wonderful team, that. No doubt. But this bunch went a pristine 15-3 on the regular season. Those groups finished a somewhat more modest 13-5 and 12-6.

No, the more you look, the deeper you dig, the more the 2014 edition holds up to scrutiny.

OK, outside of glam tailback Jon Cornish, the individual pieces might not yet stack up when compared with the giants of yore. The laid-back Texan Bo Levi Mitchell has a blindingly blue horizon stretching out in front of him, but there’s a ways to go before he makes anyone forget the singular virtuosity of, say, Doug Flutie, or the toughas-tungsten indomitability of mentor Jeff Garcia.

There’s no receiver to match Allen Pitts’ athletic elegance, no D-lineman as singularly rampant as John Helton, no linebacker that leaves the imprint of The Thumper, Wayne Harris (although the talismanic Juwan Simpson is inching up into alltimer range).

What this edition has, though, in vast supply, is the shrewdness to bring in oodles of talent, and when coupled with a buy-inability for the greater good that supersedes individual achievement, you’ve got yourself a pretty potent combination.

“I think,” bragged slotback Nik Lewis amid the euphoria on field at BC Place, “this is one of the best teams to suit up in the history of football. We won when you took away Cornish, we won when you didn’t take away Cornish.

“There was nobody we felt you could take away that was going to stop us from winning games.”

Nik’s apt to be a bit biased on the subject, of course, and being caught up in such a cameo-keepsake moment leads to a fella waxing wildly poetic. The history of football takes in an awfully wide swath of territory.

But here, in this town, in this league that’s been around for over a century, this particular team, and what it’s done, certainly ranks right up there.

During the John Hufnagel regime, the organization’s ability to replenish, to unearth talent, to mix-’n’-match and continue to remain relevant and vibrant has been unparalleled and mighty, mighty impressive. What had been lacking was a second Grey Cup to seal the deal. And that has now been achieved.

In just seven seasons, remember, Hufnagel has moved to within one Grey Cup of the Calgary total of his mentor, Wally Buono, head knock here for 13. No wonder he’s put off bumping himself upstairs for at least one more year.

“What I think our program does is we are consistently honest with our players, we’re always looking to get better,” said offensive co-ordinator Dave Dickenson, Hufnagel’s heir apparent, on Sunday. “We found a couple of diamonds late like Eric Rogers, getting him on the field, seeing what he can do. The stability starts with Huff and comes down through our scouting department. Just try to keep everything pointing forward. We’re not looking back, not looking what other teams have done.

“This was a really special team. To me, this is one of the best teams that this league has seen. We had so many people hurt and it didn’t matter.

“This was a full team effort, good defence, good offence, good special teams. Seventeen wins, that’s a great year.”

Given the meticulous way this team has been constructed, there’s no reason to believe this is close to the end of the good times.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to compare eras. Would the unbeaten Rocky Marciano, at 180 pounds, have been any match for the hand and foot speed of a pre-anti-Vietnam-stance Ali? Could the pitch-perfect Miami Dolphins of 1972 have hung in against the 49ers of Montana or the Belichick-Brady dynasty in New England? A ton of fun to debate over a pint or two, anyway.

So might this, in fact, be the greatest-ever single-season Stampeder team?

Perspective being what it is, a definitive answer is impossible, of course. Given what it’s done and all that it’s overcome, though, you could make a strong case.

And that in itself is something quite spectacular.