Saying goodbye to Canadian professional athletics

I think it really is appropos to say goodbye to Canadian professional athletics, just as the Canadian Football League celebrates its 100th Grey Cup this weekend in Toronto, to be played in the Skydome or I guess Rogers Centre where a repeat of last year's Mcmaster University Marauders double overtime defeat of Université Laval Rouge et Or 41-38 was naught and the 11-0 Macman lost their Vanier Cup and national crown falling down to an 11-1 Laval 37-14. They have taken so much attention, interest, effort and of course funding away from amateur sport, where a win is worth so much and the people involved still care more about the game, rather than how much it pays them back in greenbacks. I guess when you look over at where things are at for the old 0 for 4 Super Bowless Buffalo Bills, who could be bringing back over the National Football League franchise into the Niagara-Hamilton-Golden Horseshow region of Ontario anytime, as well as the failed experiments in the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball outside of Toronto, read the Grizzlies of Vancouver and Expos of Montréal, you just have to simply throw up your arms to say forget about it and move on.

So once more, the first absolutely full game, as I watched bits and pieces of the ones earlier, of the Canadian Football League's Grey Cup I watched as a child was the 79th Grey Cup in 1991, the league championship game where the Beast of the East Toronto Argonauts went to cold, snowy and windy Winnipeg Stadium in Winnipeg, Manitoba to face the Best of the West Calgary Stampeders, as we all watched the marquee all star $4.55 million per season rookie Rocket Raghib Ramadian Ismail record a 87 yard touchdown on a kickoff return on his way to winning Most Valuable Player and helping the Argos defeated the Stamps 36-21!

Those same franchises meet again, except this time in Toronto, yet the same excitement is not there, perhaps due to a crumbling facade that was tradition, such as the loss of the epic unique history in Hamilton, as the Ivor Wynne Hamilton Civic Stadium faces complete demolition, leaving another deeper and darker shadow over the community on the corner of Beechwood and Balsam Avenues, or maybe the greediness of professional sports like hockey, where another strike by the National Hockey League shows us it really is all about the almighty dollar. All I really know is that professional athletics has always left a little bit of a greasy, gritty and commercial feel to me personally every time I came up close and personal with it, something that always made it easy for me to retreat back to amateur status as quickly as possible, I think I am pretty close to realizing the reasoning, but not being sixpence the richer, I can safely still say at least I played hard, with heart and left my honour on the field doing what I did. As I say goodbye to to Canadian, American and the rest of the other world professional athletics, an other world that plays the game of name, big dollar and even bigger pride with prejudice and without talent necessarily, I ask just a simple question, so can you?