Frankly Speaking: Why Nine would
be Fine
By Greg Urbanoski
An odd number of teams and an even number of games have
resulted in a Canada West schedule that lasts as long as an
average Saskatchewan high school football season.
In a game that sees a great deal of time and effort spent on
preparation, the payoff of eight games seems hardly consistent
and it’s a situation that has some wondering if the schedule
could or should be increased.
“We would like to see the schedule expanded, I wish we could
play 10 games, but with seven teams playing eight games, that
is an increase of 25 per cent, since we added Simon Fraser.”
said University of Regina Rams Head Coach Frank McCrystal. “It
would be easy to do if we had another team and no bye weekends.
But right now, if we start early, we would have student
athletes working their summer jobs”.
McCrystal said the issue of adding games has come up in the
past. He said the University of Alberta had raised the issue in
previous meetings and in a recent discussion with the
University of British Columbia the concept of mid week games
was brought forward.
“That is one way we could do it by adding a mid-week game,”
said McCrystal. “But it’s tough to do because you have two
teams in British Columbia, two in Alberta, two in Saskatchewan,
but what about Manitoba?
“I know there has been talk about Kelowna trying to come in
with a CIS team, but even if they did, we would still have
Manitoba out in the cold and having that mid-week pairing would
be hard to do.”
Another option for increasing the schedule would be not to
start the season earlier, but add games to the tail end of the
schedule. If Canada West did that, it would push the Vanier Cup
towards a site like the SkyDome in Toronto to avoid the
vagaries of late-November, early December outdoor Canadian
winter weather.
“For those players who graduate from the CIS, to say, the
Canadian Football League, it is tough for them to go from an
eight game to an 18 game schedule,” said McCrystal.
“The NHL (National Hockey League) likes guys from the “Dub”
(Western Hockey League) because players on those clubs are used
to the travel as they play all over Western Canada and the
Western United States. Canada West is a touch physical football
league and when you have coaches come in from the outside like
in Calgary and UBC, they see you have to bring it every week
and there are no easy games here.”
McCrystal said a good compromise would be a nine-game schedule,
but said even playing a mandatory exhibition game would be good
to get the players a chance to work on timing before the season
starts for real.
“You spend so much time preparing for a minimum of eight games
that the reward seems all out of proportion to the payoff,”
said McCrystal. “But if you want to compare Canadian university
football to American college consider this. If we go to the
Vanier Cup, we would have played 13 games this season,
including an exhibition game, which compares to what their
regular season is.”
