What’s so easy about wearing a Grey Cup ring? The weight of the ring is too heavy for mere mortals. Some guys play a life time on a youthful never ending quest to obtain a ring and then in the twilight of the career they run out of time, gas, and retire, or worse get cut without the one thing they were after all along. For those in the back nine its dodging the specters of age, suspect GM’s, vultures of youth, and they finally get their lucky number called. The ring is the one bauble to make all those years and battles worthwhile. Forget the individual awards, pictures, placards, jerseys, and little black book friends. The ring is what you want! I didn’t comprehend it as a youngster. The idea to play pro football was all consuming, considering how hard it is to first be invited to camp, and then make a team was first and foremost in the thoughts. After getting into the profession becoming the best is what took center stage, and then one day after coming close to going to the show I was bitten by the, “must get the ring bug.”

Older players can handle the weight of the ring, and that being only some older players. Having a ring and a title“Grey Cup Champion” is a bit more than some simple sporting souls can handle. Wasn’t it Shoeless Joe Jackson who said,“I would play for food money." Which was probably why Joe was shoeless. I’ve watched pineriders, walk into a bar with a GCR and all of a sudden these guys became Rock Stars. The ring pulls old men, young men, and women like a tractor beam from all corners of the bars, and restaurants to behold the shining hunk of metal on this now godly finger. The drinks, the conversations, the chinning, and grinning of being so close to a GC ring easily makes average ale 200 proof.

I remember in my early ring wearing period. I underestimated the power of “the GCR”. I was at dinner in Whistler with friends from California. These were the“old friends” the sort that knew me back when I was captain of the art club. These are guys who would laugh hysterically when the mere idea of Daved being a pro football player would enter their thoughts. I was a running, gut busting joke. How could this goofy guy who was first to throw water balloons into a crowd of sorority girls, and the last one to walk out of a massive Toga party wearing one shoe with the police helicopter overhead lighting the neighborhood, now be a pro football player, let alone a Grey Cup Champion? 

At the end of a dinner, a group of ski sweatered, snooty, baby boomers were a booth away when the leader of the group happened to walk by our table and noticed the ring. Biff stopped gazed at the ring, introduced himself, then his wife Buffy, and his other dinner guests flocked over and marveled at the ring. Our table became the center attraction. I didn’t think it was a big deal because he said he was a long time football fan but he had never seen the GCR up close before. My friends were fascinated no longer laughing. Then I took off my ring and handed it to the man. He tried on the GCR and his face lit up like he had found the fountain of youth. Even his wife who looked like the only thing that would excite her would be a week shopping in Paris was taken by the way the ring took her husband away. The power of the ring! We never got a bill for that dinner.

Fears

What is the biggest fear for any veteran free agent signing with a team that has just won the ring? It’s that the guys in the room are not serious about getting another ring this upcoming season. It is really easy for the guys in the room to make excuses if the season isn’t going their way. You will hear the “I wish so and so were here, I wish this had happened, I wish, I wish.” Vets on the clock don’t have time to sit around and listen to other guys wish, and watch young guys live in the past. Young guys you don’t know when your time card will be punched either. It’s like being hungry and going to a friend’s pad that just crushed an all you can eat buffet earlier in the day. They aren’t too motivated about eating.

Teams that line up to play the Grey Cup Champions have a serious axe to grind. Teams are more aggressive its like if you could step into the octagon with the guy or girl who stole your girl or man. You would bring it! Also having hearing it blared over the PA system that the team you are playing isn’t the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but it’s the defending Grey Cup Champion Saskatchewan Roughriders. Opponents instantly become ticked off and it could be the first game of the season but teams are out to send a message, pile the points on, and will play you like it’s for the last spot of playoffs. It’s a superstition that you like some late night monster will return from the grave just in time to make a magical run during playoffs as if the magic is guaranteed to return. It’s not.

Fans

What about the fans? All the years of waiting for the love of the cup, and for their players to get, “the GCR.” Then once the goal is achieved the parades are over and the sponsors are signed up it becomes the past. It’s now about the present. Because for fans the game is seriously Janet Jackson, “what have you done for me lately.” Fans file the winning year away like a photo album, remembering the experiences that accompanied the run for the cup, birth of a child, new relationship started, new job, girlfriend dumped as all part of that magical year, and then they dust off the new space for the 08 album.

But fans are hungry enough to ask for a “back to back” winning season. It’s expected. Are there fans crazy enough to be consumed by wanting complete and total league domination and another GCR? YES, and it’s a good thing. So word to the 08 players, fans are quick to change tunes like Charlie Sheen changes women, so try not to let a blow out, or two happen, or a few uninspired losing games. The rest of the league is coming, and soon. Take it away Morgan.

Red: [narrating] I wish I could tell you that the Riders fought the good fight, and the rest of the league let them be champs again. I wish I could tell you that - but the CFL is no fairy-tale world. The Riders never said who did it, but we all knew. Things went on like that for a while - CFL life consists of routine, and then more routine. Every so often, the Riders would show up with fresh bruises. The league kept at them - sometimes the Riders would be able to fight 'em off, sometimes not. And that's how it went for the Riders - that was routine.