Scruffy’s This N That

1 – GREY CUP CHAMPIONS: Do you have the championship t-shirt yet? What about the hat? How bout both? The team that many thought going into the 2025 season was the best team in the CFL is the best team in the CFL as your Saskatchewan Roughriders are Grey Cup champs. What looked to be a game where you could put it in cruise control late in the 3^rd quarter turned out to be a nail-biter as a gutsy Davis Alexander would not give up despite playing on one bad leg with Tevaughn Campbell coming up with a play that will live in Riders history. He forced that Shea Patterson fumble that would have made it a two-point game and who knows what happens then.

At the end of the day, the team that was favoured by many to win the Grey Cup when the season started did win it. Are they the best Riders team to ever hit the field? I still lean towards the 2013 team, but at the end of the day does it really matter because both were damn good squads. 

2 – SASKIE PROUD: Tell me Saskatchewan isn’t the best football province out there. One only needs to look at what the Riders put on the field Grey Cup Sunday to see the homegrown talent this province produces. You had former Regina Thunder and Melfort product Logan Ferland, you had former U of S Huskies Nelson Lokombo and Nick Wiebe and former Regina Rams Jaxon Ford, Mitch Picton, Tevaughn Campbell, Jorgen Hus along with coaches Marc Mueller and Josh Donnelly on the game-day roster with Noah Zerr (Huskies) and D’Sean Mimbs (Rams) on the practice roster. All of those guys are guys that know what football means in this province. How many young kids that watched that game saw that Saskatchewan talent and want to be the next Ferland, Campbell or Picton? Mitch himself is a fine example having gone from RMF to the Riders. It’s great to see.

3 – NOT THE SAME: I had many people ask me in the days leading up to the Grey Cup and the days after about how excited I must have been that the Riders were in and had won the game. I was happy to see the team in and win the game, but it wasn’t the same as it was in that 2007-2013 era when I was either working at CJME, CKRM or writing for the football team.

I made a lot of friends with players, coaches and members of the organization on those teams as did other members of the media. Guys like Ken Miller, Jim Hopson, Scott Schultz, Darian Durant, Rob Bagg, Weston Dressler etc, etc.  The list goes on and on. 

You wanted those players to reach the pinnacle because you knew the guys under the helmet and you shared a lot of laughs with them. As I looked at the guys in the game, there weren’t many on the team that were on it when I stopped covering the Riders, so it was different this time around. Some that are or were playing for the Rams when I was doing p x p are mentioned above and are guys that I am extremely happy for because they are now a champion. Add Rob Vanstone, who is one of my closest friends out there, to that list. When the game was over, I texted congratulations to Rob and I am sure I was not the only one. If you know Rob, you know 1) he has a dog named Candy that he reluctantly puts pictures of on his social media accounts and 2) he is the most passionate Rider fan out there who is living his dream job working for the football team after leaving the Leader-Post where he had the opportunity to write story after story after story on the team—good and bad—over the years. Someone asked Rob if he would get a ring and in typical Rob fashion, he said the only rings he has are wedding and onion.

There is no doubt in my mind that Craig Reynolds will make sure he and other members of the organization will get a ring and when he gets it, it wouldn’t surprise me if he breaks down because of how much that team has meant to him and how much it means to him.  

The reporters of today who followed this team this year and experienced their first GC like CJME’s Britton Gray and CTV’s Donovan Maess hopefully got memories of Winnipeg that I had in Toronto in 2007 when I experienced it. Donovan put a video of him getting doused by head coach Corey Mace on his social media accounts. That was me in 2013 courtesy Tyron Brackenridge. It was great! 

For me, the appearances in ’07, ’09, ’10 and ’13 were ones I fondly remember because I had a front-row seat even for the two that didn’t end well. That wasn’t the case this time around, but it doesn’t take the good feeling away. 

4 – ZIP IT: So the Riders win the Grey Cup and they announce two events and people cry. C’mon people! Some were not happy with the fact that both the welcome home ceremony and parade were held in the afternoon. Some felt it should have been pushed back to the weekend and some were upset over the fact that the event at the Legislature featured a lot of alcohol and some four-letter words. How Saskatchewan!!! As I have always joked, the provincial slogan on the licence plate should be “What are we going to bitch about today?” 

If you were offended by what happened Tuesday, take the stick out of your ass and start enjoying life. Have you watched a locker-room celebration or championship parade? Did you see the many Blue Jays parties? Do you get upset when a curler delivers an F-bomb on TV? It happens and it will continue to happen. If you can’t handle that, that’s on you. For what it’s worth, Mace wasn’t apologizing for everything that went down nor should he.

As for delaying things, I guess it doesn’t matter to you that players want to get home to their families after being away from them for so long. It was get home Monday, have the parade Tuesday – which I’m sure was followed by a team-only dinner or something on Tuesday – with garbage bag day on Wednesday. If it was like years past, many guys were on flights Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning at the latest. 

Be better and realize that sometimes it’s not all about you! 

6 – BRINGING IT BACK: At the Legislature on Tuesday, Trevor Harris suggested that its time to go back-to-back. With all apologies to Trevor, I would be OK if the team didn’t win it all in ’26, but I would love them to hoist the trophy high again in 2027 when the game returns to Mosaic. Everyone knows that the 2026 team will have changes from the 2025 team for a variety of reasons. GM Jeremy O’Day did a great job at the end of the ’24 season in retaining possible free agents and it will be up to him and the rest of his staff to determine who are guys they want to try and keep and who aren’t. Who stays and who goes? Those are decisions that O’Day and company can start making as the free agent list is long if what 3Down Nation is reporting is correct and I have no reason to believe that they aren’t.

As I said last week, I would think B.C and Montreal are favoured to win it all next year, but no one can accurately make predictions until training camp starts when we see what everyone has as you know there will be a lot of free agent movement across the league. If O’Day can keep the core, you would be hard-pressed to bet against him and the Riders but that is a conversation we can have in April. 

7 – VANIER CUP: It obviously isn’t what organizers of the Vanier Cup in Regina wanted, but having the University of Saskatchewan Huskies in the Canadian University football championship should mean the event is a success as many from Saskatoon will take the trip down Highway 11 as we see another Saskatchewan-Montreal battle on the gridiron for a Canadian title. 

The Huskies will obviously be the team getting the most support at Mosaic Stadium for good reason and if they do, I hope their quarterback Anton Amundrud is part of the celebration. It was a gutpunch to the young man and the Huskies athletic program when it was revealed he is fighting a battle with lymphoma. Amundrud has seen since the announcement was made how much support he has in his corner and if he can be a part of the celebration should the Huskies win, it will bring him some light in what has been a dark couple of months for him. 

• While on the topic of the Vanier Cup, I will just bring this up again as it is one of my pet peeves. Why isn’t this game or other USports events on Canadian television? No, CBC Gem does not count. Why does this country ignore University sports? Those that know me know I am very passionate about U of R athletics for a variety of reasons. There are so many good athletes and good stories that come from USports athletes. Those athletes and stories deserve to be recognized. The Vanier Cup, football in general along with other team sports should be able to be found by Canadians by going to TSN, Sportsnet or CBC. At least, the Vanier will be on CBC with our good friend Arash Madani being a part of the crew. 

8 – WEEK 12 NFL NOTES: Here are some tidbits of information as you settle in to watch another Sunday of NFL action. 

• Minnesota has won 38 games since hiring coach Kevin O’Connell prior to the 2022 season. Of those victories, 33 have come when the Vikings were ahead or even in the turnover battle. This season, turnovers have been a key metric in their disappointing start. They have committed the second-most turnovers (18) and are tied for sixth fewest in takeaways (nine), five of which came in one game. The Vikings are in Green Bay this week. 
• The Bengals have allowed 27-plus points in nine consecutive games, which is tied with the 1964 Broncos and 2020 Chargers for the longest single-season streak in NFL history. Cincinnati is home to New England on Sunday.
• Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott passed for 268 yards and four touchdowns last week, his 41st career game with at least three touchdown passes since entering the NFL in 2016.   With three touchdown passes on Sunday against Philadelphia, Prescott will surpass Russell Wilson (41 games) for the fifth-most games with at least three touchdown passes by a player in their first 10 seasons in NFL history. Hall of Famers Peyton Manning and Dan Marino have the most at 48.
• Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford leads the NFL with 27 touchdown passes this season and can become the first since Tom Brady (2021 with Tampa Bay) with at least 30 touchdown passes in his team’s first 11 games of a season.

9 – SWIFT CURRENT: One of the biggest questions going around hockey circles in the 306 right now is what is going on with the Swift Current Broncos? For the 2^nd time, the team has separated from its head coach because of on-ice conduct issues. First, it was Devan Praught a couple of years ago and now it’s Dean DeSilva. I have heard a lot of stories about what is going on. One of them has to be true, but not all of them. The questions I have is who is making these hires and if it is GM Chad Leslie, maybe he has to be shown the door as well. I don’t know Chad and I think I have spoken to him once, but you can’t tell me that his hands aren’t a little dirty on this. 

To his credit, Leslie took responsibility when he faced Swift Current reporters last week after the decision had been made, but what else could he do? He can’t deny that he has a part to play in this even if the reasons for dismissal are soft in nature and we know that like other sports, coaches can’t maybe coach the way they want to. This is an issue that I am guessing is the talk of the town in the WHL’s smallest market. Perhaps the Broncos board has to take a long look at what has occurred over the past couple of years and like it or not look for a new GM. A clean slate is obviously needed. You can give the organization a pass for what happened with Praught, but you can’t turn a blind eye to what has happened now. 

10 – HEADING WEST:  The Pats are on their West Coast swing as Agribition invades REAL. After a slow start to the season, Regina headed to the U-S with a .500 record as they were 9-9-2-1—good for 8^th in the East. The team is no longer having no problems putting the puck in the net like they did last year as they have four players that are already in double digits and neither player is named Schultz or Pue. I didn’t think the dynamic duo would make that trip but they are. My rationale on that is that the club wants them to see the grind of this long roadie. 

It’s nice knowing you can go to the rink and see this team play competitive hockey again and that the chance of seeing a win is high. It wasn’t that way for past couple of years.

*RANDOM THOUGHTS:

• Davis Alexander could be mistaken for Dodgeball villain White Goodman!
• Avonlea has been selected to host the 2026 Hockey Day in Saskatchewan festivities in mid-January. They will do a great job. We know how much the rink means to rural Saskatchewan. 
• That kid who gets excited at the fact his family is going to Swiss Chalet has not had a good childhood. 
• Remind me not to go to a New Jersey Devils team party. Have we heard the real story as to how Jack Hughes cut his hand? 

That’s all I got. Have a great week!