Friday Round-up: Tailgating and Other Misc News

On this glorious spring Friday morning (I can’t even type that with a straight face)… lousy Smarch weather. Anywho we will start off with a few bits of CFL news and then based on a reader request I will tackle the issue of tailgating.

-       Yesterday was a huge day for the CFL. They signed a 4 year extension with TSN for a reported $40 million a season. Contrast that with the $15 million they are currently receiving and the handouts/Braley pity money they used to rely on. Monday’s post will be devoted to how the league should spend this new windfall of cash. For now though people across the league will be revelling in the moment. The teams struggling to break even can now rest easy, the rich teams will get even richer (diamond encrusted spinners for all) and Mark Cohon can sleep sound at night… on top of piles of money, with many beautiful women.

-       The CFL Regional combines went this week with the main E-Camp going this weekend. As with every year no one in the country will have a clue what the results mean until Duane Ford tells us.

-       Odell Willis just can’t seem to keep out of the public spotlight for the wrong reasons. His latest occurrence was tweeting that there are some “dick riders as fans”. He of course quickly clarified that he wasn’t talking about rider fans but rather about bandwagon jumpers. Riiiggghhht. To be fair there are a few fans out there who have gone from calling Odell Willis an elite pass rusher to calling him a bum quicker than it took Willis to sign his Esks contract. However, the greater majority of us had concerns about Willis at the time of the trade, when he got arrested and throughout the season and for some reason don’t feel the need to cheer for him now that he’s on another team (how rude of us).

Now onto the issue of tailgating. The beauty of having 7 readers is that you can easily cater to all of their needs. I was asked to tackle the issue of tailgating and voila. So if any of the other 6 of you have requests for topics for posts by all means let me know.

This topic comes up all the time. People want to be able to tailgate at Mosaic Stadium like you see in NFL and College ball in the states. Surely it would add to the game day experience. The sad reality though is that it won’t happen because the Riders have no interest in it. Simply put, there is no money in it for them. They are quite happy continuing to charge full price for booze at the practice field which actually earns them $$ rather than deal with the headaches that come from letting people eat and drink for free. There is also the secondary legal issues related to drinking in public on someone else’s property.

But I have never been one to be thwarted by the “it’s not legal” obstacle. So unlike others who dwell on the reasons it can’t (and most likely will never) be done here is the Rider Prophet Plan For Tailgating At Rider Games.

First we need to tackle the legal issue because as long as the cops are the on the Riders’ side we don’t have a prayer. To do this we need to get Rider Nation declared as a religion. It’s really not that big of a stretch, we already have ceremonial clothing, a set calendar of religious observances and a set of religious hymns. Not only would that bring along some sweet tax breaks but it also means that the police can’t stop us from partaking in religious observances… like say sharing a sacramental Pilsner before a game. Naturally this new religion will need a leader and given my many years experience as a quasi-blasphemous religious figure I would gladly accept this high paying job opportunity. With the “religious practices” defense on our side it will give us a lot more freedom to partake in tailgating activities legally.

That only gets us part way there though. Even if we were a religion, Jim Hopson still isn’t just going to let us set up shop on City property. We need a piece of property of our own where our “church” can be located. Ideally we would just buy out a city block near the field and bulldoze the houses (not like anyone would miss them… though then who will phone 911 when the stadium is on fire?) but that would be far too expensive for an upstart religion with a highly paid prophet leader. A more cost effective way of going about this would be to have the piece of land we want declared a protected historical site. This will require some dirty work. Basically we need to dig up the corpse of a Rider great and bury them in the parking lot at Mosaic. Then we petition the city and province to declare it a protected site and make it so only those in our religion can go there to “pray” and “pay homage”.

And just like that we have place to tailgate, a legal reason to do so and a bonus opportunity for tax breaks.

Cross one more problem of the list thanks to the Rider Prophet. What’s next?