Monday Morning Senitmonies: Catching Up

I’ve been focusing all of my attention over the past few weeks towards the draft. But there have been a lot of other goings on that deserve my irreverent commentary so let’s get caught up on things.

Stadium

After what seemed like endless silence, the news has been coming fast a furious on this one. Allow me to summarize where we are at… instead of the top of the line retractable roof at the CP rail yards with walkways to downtown we will be getting an open air stadium at Evraz place. It’s like going car shopping and realizing that as nice as the Dodge Viper is, you really can’t afford it and have to settle for the used Cavalier. It’s the Saskatchewan way. But we’ll be sure to spruce it up by putting some plastic Wal-Mart spinners on that cavalier though… then we’ll be big pimping… that’s also the Saskatchewan way (sadly).

I still think that if we are going to bother building a stadium we might as well suck it up and build it right (i.e. with a retractable roof so that 10 years from now we don’t have to pump another $400 million into the thing just to cover it, mark my words) but there is a lot of logic around the Evraz proposal.

For one the city already owns the land so the total cost comes down a bit. Parking will be better than it would be along Dewdney (well except for when major events are going on at Evraz then it will be hell). Evraz already has a staff that handles events and maintenance at a number of other large buildings so they wouldn’t have to start from scratch there. Also with the stadium on the exhibition grounds imagine the cross marketing possibilities.

-       During Agribition they could offer a “park and ride a cow to the game” promo.

-       During Buffalo Days we could all get vouchers to treat our favourite carnie or white trash resident of Regina to half price tickets.

-       During the Farm Progress show it could be tractor pull night… literally.

At this point count me firmly in the “just make a decision already and build the damn this” group.

One last thing I want to address is the complaints I have been hearing from people about the “what happened to the 75% the private sector was supposed to pitch in?”. I thought I already explained this once! Don’t you people listen?

It was said that the private sector would pitch in 75% “of the total urban redevelopment plan” not the stadium. The private sector doesn’t give a crap about building a stadium. They make their money building houses, hotels, restaurants etc… So when the city said the private sector would pay for 75% what they meant was the city would pay for a stadium (25%) and the private sector would redevelop the old Taylor Field site in housing and build commercial establishments along Dewdney (75%). Its wordsmithing at its finest. Nothing has changed. Please go find something else to get you panties in a knot about

Jerseys

I find it funny that in a week with a CFL draft and announcement about the future home of our beloved Riders (you know things that actually involve football), the most controversial news was the unveiling of the new jerseys. When did the fine arts club take over Rider Nation?

The re-designed jerseys we’re unveiled last week and they span the spectrum from the good (Toronto, Edmonton, Hamilton,) to the okay (Calgary, Winnipeg’s home jersey), to the minimal effort (Montreal, look the word Montreal is bigger) to the no effort (BC, seriously I wonder how much someone got paid to “design that) to the no very good (Winnipeg’s gold jerseys).

Our fall somewhere in the middle. I like the white’s for the most part, not a big fan of the greens. (Boy am I glad our home colour is green instead of black otherwise that last line could get me in a lot of trouble if read out of context). The greens aren’t awful, they just kinda look like golf shirts and could have been better in my opinion.

Then of course there is the issue of the “tramp stamp”. For those of you who don’t know what a tramp stamp is… I direct to the fount of knowledge know as Urbandicortionary.com. They have many definitions but this one is my favourite:

A tattoo on the small of a woman's back... a good clue if you should wrap it up or not.

Our new jerseys have a Rider logo in the tramp stamp locale. I can’t even begin to fathom who thought this was a good idea. It’s just such a random spot for a Rider logo… and I’m sure they won’t exactly be flattering to the linemen who will be sporting them.  None of the other CFL teams felt the need to incorporate a tramp stamp into their new jerseys. Who ever signed off on this should be forced to sit and stare at the tramp stamp on Jim Hopson’s jersey for 2 straight hours while he does Zumba

So to summarize, new jerseys are so-so… new tramp stamps are so ridiculous. But don’t worry if you hate them, there will be another re-design in a couple years and a new set of retros in between in all likelihood.