This essay begins Contributing Editor Matthew Dorrell's bi-weekly coverage of the Canadian Football League, culminating with our fully integrated assault on the 2001 Grey Cup in Montreal, Quebec. Today is also the launch of the first "sub-site" or "section", or some other "title" which I can't think of right now, for Forget Sports. Every Wednesday (or as close as is possible) we shall be casually re-invigorating the dry-rot farce that is modern sports writing. But it is late right now, and this Wednesday is before you, and Lecky is in the other room. Sick.- Ed.

With fifty-four seconds left in the game and the B.C. Lions up by a mere two points, if you're the quarterback for the Montreal Alouettes, you know one thing for certain: You need the two-point conversion. You just threw a miracle to Ben Cahoon, straight down the middle, and he was gone for fifty-nine yards and a touchdown. The two points are as good as yours. They are yours. They belong to you.

Focus. The ball is snapped to you - for a second your teammates are containing the Lions' blitz. You only need that second. You are pedalling backwards, your eyes fixed on the end zone. You release the ball an instant before the Lions' blitz catches you, and forces you earthward in a hurry. You don't feel a thing and you can't see the end zone. You can't see Haskins catch the ball. And then finally, finally you're back on your feet.

Haskins is not. He is stretched out, in the end zone, on the ground, still reaching for the football, which bounces, wide. Out of bounds and out of reach. And suddenly, it's two days later and you can still see Haskins reaching for the ball and still feel it leaving your fingers. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Montreal was twelve and six on the season, the Lions a mere eight and ten. The pass to Cahoon, straight down the middle, no longer feels like a miracle. It's two days later and you can still feel the ball spiralling out of your fingers.

You wonder if, in twenty years, you'll be able to feel happy for Lui Passaglia. Lui, who after playing twenty-four years for the Lions, scored the last two points of his career on a twenty-nine yard field goal. The mere two points that won the Grey Cup. The largest two points you've ever seen.

* * * * *

The B.C. Lions defeated the Montreal Alouettes twenty-eight to twenty-six in front of nearly forty-four thousand people at Calgary's McMahon Stadium on Sunday, November 26th. Another 3.1 million people watched the game on CBC television.

The 2000 Grey Cup was the 88th championship of that title to be held since 1907 when Lord Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada and descendant of the avid tea-drinker of the same name, donated the trophy to the Canadian Rugby Union (CRU). The CRU, through numerous twists and turns more lengthy and serpentine than interesting, eventually became the CFL in 1958. (For the mathematically inclined who have noted that 1907 + 88 does not equal 2000, understand that the CFL suspended operations during WWII).

The CFL, which has undergone substantial change since its creation, particularly during the failed American expansion of the mid '90s, is divided into two divisions

 

West Division		East Division
B.C. Lions Calgary Stampeders Saskatchewan Roughriders Edmonton Eskimos		Toronto Argonauts Montreal Alouettes Hamilton Tiger-Cats Winnipeg Blue Bombers

Teams play 18 games during the regular season, which begins in late June and runs through to early November, the top three teams in each division advancing to the playoffs. In the playoffs the 2nd and 3rd place teams in each division play each other in the division semi-finals, while the first place teams carouse and chase women (or men if they are so inclined). The winners of the division semi-finals then play the 1st place teams in the division finals. The winners from each division then play in the Grey Cup match. The team with Lui Passaglia wins.

Matthew Dorrell is the starting tail back on the Forget Magazine Rough.Riders.