Posted by On August 26th, 2017 I found myself at Lansdowne Park for a Canadian Football League match between the hometown Ottawa Redblacks (née the Renegades and even more née the Rough Riders*) and the Lions from British Columbia. I had been happily surprised to receive a group email about the game a few days earlier and though my interest in football on-the-whole was negligible my interest in spending quality time with good friends just a stone’s throw from my house was not, so there I was.
I was further surprised to discover just how into the team my friends were, which was weird. I guess everyone kinda knew that I wasn’t very sporty so sports rarely came up in regular hanging-out conversation. It also made me rather suspicious that I might have somehow landed on the recipient list by accident but no matter, I had a great time (even though we were seated in the lesser North Side stands) and I don’t think I detracted from anyone else’s great time, which is always the primary goal.
The Redblacks even won the game 31-24, which just made for that many more high-fives before we filtered out of the stadium and into the nearest bar. I only hope that I feigned enough excitement in the game to keep myself on the email list.
*Incidentally, the Ottawa Rough Riders football club was founded in 1876 and was one of the oldest and longest-standing sports teams in North America, but they obviously weren’t that good. Despite being around for so long (more than 120 seasons!) and in a field of so relatively few competing teams (the CFL generally has less than ten teams in the entire league) they only won the Grey Cup nine times. (And here you thought this asterisk was going to refer to the remarkable fact that a tiny league like the CFL had two different teams simultaneously named the Rough Riders** for over seventy-five years.
**Okay, the Saskatchewan team was spelled as one word – “Roughriders” – but you’ll find it’s still easy to confuse the two.
Todd Man Out 