Monday Morning Sentimonies: Elation in Rider Nation

It has now been over a week since the Riders won the Grey Cup and this province (myself included) still remain firmly entranced in the championship glow.

Look, Grey Cups in Saskatchewan are a big freakin’ deal! The only other award we tend to get is for being the murder capital of Canada. So you’ll have to forgive us if the party drags on for a while. We have gone decades between them so we got a lot of celebrating to get in in case it needs to tide us over.

One group who is not taking this particularly well is Bomber fans. I get it. Watching your most hated rival win a Cup on your home turf while your team has been out of it for 2 weeks is painful. Had the Bombers won here in 2022 no amount of whiskey would have drown my sorrows (though I damn sure would have tried). But just shut up and take your lumps rather than drawing further attention to how butt hurt you are by trying to hurl terrible unsolicited insults. Topping the list is “You only have 5 championships ever”. This is true but we have the same number of Cups as you since 1990 and more since 2000. No one really cares that you were good in the 40s and 50s. Another popular retort is that “there is no shame in getting to a lot of Cups and losing”. There most certainly is. No one looks on the Buffalo Bills of the 90s as anything but an abject failure. Second place is just the first loser and boy do you know how to lose Cups (more than anyone in history). But if you really want to see a Bomber fan’s logic fail apart and start frantically trying to move the goal posts on the argument tell them “Ok if losing a Grey Cup isn’t a big deal then really the Bomber should be mocked more for 2009 than the Riders because we at least made the finals right?”  

I know there were many idiot Rider fans in the 2 years that Winnipeg won the cup who could not take their butt-hurtedness with any form of dignity but we won this year so we get to celebrate and make fun of you. If you would just quietly skulk in the corner, we’d leave you alone and thank you for hosting a great Grey Cup. But when you attempt to wade into things are start trying to bring us down you just come across as desperate.

We get a few more weeks to enjoy this before reality hits us… everyone but like 5 people on this team are pending free agents. O’Day has a ton of work to do if we are to have even a chance at the first ever repeat in franchise history. But now is not the time to panic. The fact that no one is signed also means that we have a ton of money to sign people with. There is going to be some really tough negotiations and decisions coming up. Myers, KeeSean, Baldonado and Colonel Sanders are coming off rookie deals and have definitely established themselves of players worth more than league minimums. Emilus and AJ Allen deserve to be paid like the top end Canadians they are. Championships, a great coach and a winning culture help attract people here but players aren’t charities.

Expect a few small time Canadians to sign in the coming days. Also Expect Harris to re-sign before Christmas (its so a done deal). Everything else will need to wait until the Salary Cap year resets Jan 1.

As always, the Rider Prophet is here to help get you through the long offseason. We are starting our offseason coverage with the notorious Rider Prophet Awards headlined by the Fans’ Choice Douchebag of the Year Award. Voting starts tomorrow. So be sure to let you voice be heard.