Grey Cup Week remains unique among pro sports
Only in Canadian game do players, fans and media interact on such an intimate level
James Wilder showed up for Grey Cup Week the other day without his suit and was going to pass on the annual awards show because he didn’t have the appropriate clothing.
It was then he ran into Danny Austin, who covers the Stampeders for the Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun, in the lobby of a downtown hotel. Austin asked Wilder, the star Toronto Argonauts running back, a simple question: “What size are you?”
Within minutes, the football player was trying on Austin’s suit. Turns out they were the same size. The suit fit. The dress shoes fit. The well-known player went off to the awards dinner looking fine.
Only in the Canadian Football League does this happen. Only during Grey Cup Week.
I was at the packed Spirit of Edmonton room years ago, the way I am at almost all of the Grey Cups I’ve covered, and the noise was blaring and music playing and I heard my name being shouted rather loudly. I looked across the crowded room and there was Henry Burris, allstar quarterback, former Most Outstanding Player and Grey Cup MVP, and he was calling my name, waving his arms.
And I’m thinking, would this ever happen at a Super Bowl? A Stanley Cup final? Would this happen if it was Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers or Sidney Crosby?
It happens in the Canadian Football League. It happens during Grey Cup Week.
What exactly is Grey Cup Week? If you’ve never been, you’ve missed something. It’s a Canadian celebration that rarely changes. It’s Stampede Week without a rodeo. It’s a clock forever turned backwards, with late nights and early mornings. The venues may change. The cities may change. The players may change. The teams always change. But the party, surprisingly, seemingly always goes on.
“People have been trying to kill this league forever,” said Bob Irving, the Winnipeg broadcaster who is at his 46th Grey Cup. “There’s no way you can ever do that. But we have to come up with new ways of getting people into the stands.”
And that is forever the Canadian Football League challenge. Grey Cup Weeks stands alone as a tradition of Canadiana. It may not be the national celebration it once was — when was the last time you were invited to a Grey Cup party? — but it has this enduring quality of part party, part wild event, part football game, part annual vacation.
The broadcaster, Irving, walked into the Ottawa practice facility on Thursday and star receiver Brad Sinopoli was sitting on the floor, waiting for Trevor Harris, the Redblacks quarterback. Irving asked Sinopoli if he could interview him. It wasn’t an interview time or place.
“So Sinopoli jumps up, does a four-minute interview and at the end of it, he thanks me. I said to myself, this is why I love covering this. The people are real. The players are real. I’ll bet this couldn’t happen in the NBA.”
Downtown Edmonton this week is a sea of CFL colours. You can’t take a step, walk a block, without seeing the Green of the Roughriders, the Blue of the Bombers, the Red of the Stampeders, even the Double Blue of the forever struggling Argos. This is dress up and show off time.
You can go to Grey Cup Week alone and leave with a boatload of friends. It’s the football equivalent of a drinking cruise, only there is no boat.
Everywhere there are events, so many of them scheduled, featuring music and dancing and drinking. There is always drinking, often too much of it, at the Grey Cup.
Here in Edmonton in 2018, where there are more events and more inclusion than ever, the audience still doesn’t look enough like Canada. It is too white and too old. That’s forever the challenge for the CFL, changing its look, changing its dynamic, lowering the age of the avid audience.
“There is a culture around the Grey Cup,” said commissioner Randy Ambrosie, who did a town-hall meeting with a vast collection of CFL fans on Friday.
The league is kept forever alive by those crowded in to the commissioner’s event. These are the diehards, those who never miss a Grey Cup, those who plan for where they will be every November.
This isn’t anything like Super Bowl Week. I’ve been to almost 20 Super Bowls. That is an event made for the wealthy, by the wealthy. It isn’t a whole lot of fun. There aren’t a whole lot of things for fans to do, and those events that are put on for fans tend to be on the expensive side.
Super Bowl is built for the corporate guy on an expense account. Grey Cup is built for the average guy who just wants to have a little fun.
“I think every Canadian who hasn’t been to a Grey Cup should come,” said Ambrosie. “And I guarantee you they will feel more Canadian when they leave than they were before they got here.”