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For the last dozen years,
each December we have honoured the best and worst (mostly worst) of the CFL
season. My vision has always been to eventually turn the awards into a live event,
but given that none of the nominees a) know they were nominated and b) would be
willing to attend in person, the live event would pretty much just be me in
front of a microphone in an empty getting progressively drunker and unrulier…
in other words it would be better than half the crap currently on TV.
This year’s award winners get
a gift basket containing a selection of items damaged during Jason Maas’ head
coaching tenure and totally legal supplements personally chosen by Andrew
Harris.
Let’s get to the awards.
Best Player Name
All in all it was a pretty
terrible year for names in the CFL. Nothing really stood out in a hilarious way.
So instead I’m awarding this year’s best name to a global player by the name of
Guillermo Villalobos. I just loved this name Guillermo. Said with the proper Hispanic
inflection it is about 95% effective as effective as lemon gin.
Previous Winners:
Armegedon Draughns, Rakeem Cox, Akawasi
Owusu-Ansah, Lirim Hajrullahu, SirVincent Rogers, Drew Willy, Bear Woods,
Solomon Elimimian, Craphonso Thorpe, Charleston Hughes, Chijioke Onyenegecha
Quote of the Year
In week 8 of the CFL, the Riders
won a close game at Mosaic over the Ti-Cats thanks in large part to late game
heroics by Cody Fajardo. While his onfield play had endeared him to the
province, the post game interview he gave following that game catapulted him to
legendary status and ensured no less than 15% of the babies born in the coming
months will be named Cody. It was the speech where “sprinkle of Jesus” was born.
— Saskatchewan Roughriders (@sskroughriders) August 2, 2019
Honourable mention to Brett Lauther for saying that his plan for dealing with 4 missed kicks was to "drink a lot of beers, go to sleep and wake up and pretend it didn't happen.
Previous Winners: Dave Dickenson, Kavis
Reed/Jacques Chapdelaine, Greg Quick, Solomon
Elimimian, Ed Hervey, Joe Mack, Henry Burris, Eddie Johnson, Jason Clermont,
Mike Abou-Mechrek x2
Play of the Year
.@MiltStegallTSN put on a @sskroughriders jersey and then went crowd surfing 😅#CFLGameday #LiveMic pic.twitter.com/DsfVOGVl3U— TSN (@TSN_Sports) July 2, 2019
Botched Call of the Year
The play I’m choosing to
honour wasn’t actually botched. It was technically the correct call by the
rules. But it gets special honour a) because its such an obscure rule that I
doubt anyone but Al Bradbury knew it even existed and b) because the
explanation made Andre Proulx look like a skilled orator by comparison.
I’m talking of course about
The Card rule. Jon Ryan successfully executed a fake kick with a completion to
Kienan LaFrance for a first down. But to loosely paraphrase Bradbury, he was an
eligible player, playing an ineligible position, on an even numbered Sunday,
during the vernal equinox, (plus about 4 conditions I’m sure I missed)
therefore… Card Rule, repeat 3rd down.
What’s crazy is that the Card
Rule came up again like 2 weeks later. From unknown infraction to award winner.
It’s been quite the year for the Card Rule.
The Commercial I Didn’t Get Sick of Seeing Even Though TSN
Made Me Watch It 54,297 Times Award
The winning commercial is hilarious
and gets bonus points because I’m surprised it got past the censors.
Most Insulted Sports Figure
Early in the season it looked
like Solomon Means would run away with this award… fitting because “run away”
seemed to be what he did when tasked with covering somebody. But when he got
benched a new front runner emerged… our beloved punter.
Look, I realize that in
Saskatchewan, talking ill of Jon Ryan is a crime akin to talking ill of
perogies, or farming. So let me preface this by saying, Jon Ryan is a talented
punter. He had a great NFL career and he does great things in the community.
With all that said, the fact remains he was an average at best punter this
season despite being the highest paid.
I probably wouldn’t have had
such a big issue with him if his tires weren’t continually being pumped by the
local media and fans. Kicking it farther than anyone isn’t a particularly useful
skill if you have no ability to direct it somewhere other than the middle of
the field or completely outkick your coverage in the process. While stats would
show that he wouldn’t crack the top 4 punters in the league this year, evidently
any stat that doesn’t attest to his greatness is made up.
My tireless crusade against
the hype machine made Ryan the most insulted sports figure this season.
Previous
Winners: Brandon Bridge, Steve McAdoo, The
Riders Secondary, Any Rider QB not named Durant, Pat Neufeld, Chris Getzlaf,
Ryan Dinwiddie, Jim Daley, Michael Bishop x 2, Marcel Bellefeuille
Fans’ Choice Douche-Bag of the Year
You the fans have spoken in
record numbers. We almost doubled the previous record for total votes for this
award. We also set a record for write in votes, almost all of which went to
Brandon Banks. This was also the closest the award has ever been. A solitary
vote separated the winner from second place. One vote!
With 38.7% of the votes
(edging out Andrew Harris)…Simoni Lawrence is your Fans’ Choice Douchebag of
the Year.
No doubt the hit on Collaros
on the 3rd play of the season was what was the deciding factor for
most of you but despite his claims that “he’s not a dirty player” he was fined
on 2 more occasions for dirty play. Once for twisting a guy’s leg and once for
another head shot. The fact that he was only suspended once is more of a sign
of how insanely toothless the CFL discipline process is rather than how not awful
Lawrence is.
I’m rather conflicted about
Lawrence. On hand we should probably thank him because without him we don’t
discover Fajardo. On the other hand, he inadvertently set in motion a series of
events that led to Winnipeg winning the Grey Cup. That alone makes him a
douchebag around here.
Previous Winners:
Jason Maas x2, Cory Chamblin, Chris Jones, Jon Cornish x2, Henry Burris, Dwight
Anderson, Mike Kelly, Jason Jimenez, Rob Murphy
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