OUT OF THE TUNNEL: CHANGING BY THE MINUTE

BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF

As this new normal settles in for all of us, we each keep looking for glimmers of hope to get us through the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the perils it has wrought. Many of us remain hunkered down in our homes, practicing physical distancing and if you do have to go out, please remember to wash your damn hands!

The small peeks into what normal used to be are becoming few and far between. But two are on the horizon with both the NFL and CFL drafts. That news was tempered this week by two pieces of difficult news that hit the football world.

The CFL announced that the season will be pushed back and won’t start until at least July. The league and all of the teams are contingency planning for all sorts of scenarios to be able to have some sort of 2020 CFL season.

Many teams have started to furlough their employees or cut salaries. One team that hasn’t taken that step yet is the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The football club is in a tough spot. As hosts of the 2020 Grey Cup, they have hired a handful of employees to help with the execution of all of the events and festivals which revolve around the greatest week of football in November. 

The Roughriders have to walk a fine line here. They need to keep as many employees as possible to execute a  possible shortened season and potential Grey Cup festival and game. But as time goes on and the rainy day fund begins to disappear, there needs to be some hard decisions on what to do for not just the 2020 season, but for the good of the franchise going forward.

The tough part is that many of these decision are out of their hands. The Roughriders, good or bad, will have to look to the CFL for all of their guidance over the coming months. 

The other bit of sad football news was the dissolving of XFL 2.0. Vince McMahon’s second attempt at a spring football league was slowly starting to gain steam but once the league shut down, it was the beginning of the end for yet another spring league.

There isn’t much of a scenario that will see the XFL or any other spring league return in the near future. The pieces that are needed to succeed are not there and will not return as everyone in North America will try to recover from the economic crisis that COVID-19 has firmly placed on us all. 

So, sadly, let’s place XFL 2.0 in the shoe box with all of the other spring leagues that have come and gone, placed in the back of the closet next to that one piece snowsuit you wore in the 80s and can’t possibly fit into but just can’t give up. That’s sort of like American spring football league for us here at OOTT, that one piece snowsuit that we just can’t give up and hope to one day squeeze into again.

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Now that TSN is starting to televise “throwback” games (if games from only the past 15 years is considered throwback), we are going to continue to ask for the strange and sublime games that are truly CFL only games.

After writing about the truly stupid games the past three weeks, we are going to go back to one of the best games the Saskatchewan Roughriders ever played over their decade of ineptitude from 1977 to 1987.

It was a game that really cemented yours truly as a fan of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and of football itself.

Let’s rewind to 36 years ago and July 29, 1984. The Saskatchewan Roughriders were in the final year of wearing the circle “S” logo. The next year they would radically change their uniforms to the slanted “S” and silver pants.

It was the annual battle of the “Roughriders”. The Green and White were in Lansdowne Park in Ottawa to take on the black and white Rough Riders. 

The game was on CBC and like most families in Saskatchewan, we gathered en mass to watch the game and have a giant barbecue. Uncles, aunts and cousins all together to get a rare sight of a triumphant Rider win in the early 1980’s.

This was a time when home games were blacked out and we only saw the Riders play on the road. It was like this until the CFL began to relax the blackout rules in the mid-2000’s and allowed the games to be broadcast in their home markets when 90% of the seats were sold in the stadiums.

Saskatchewan entered week four of the 1984 CFL season with a tie and a pair of losses and needed a win on the road to gain any sort of momentum in head coach Reuben Berry’s first full year (and last) as head coach of the Green and White.

This was an odd game that saw the Roughriders dominate the Rough Riders 46-24. Like we have the past few weeks, a great quote from a hall of fame writer sums things up. This time it’s the Leader-Post’s all-time great, Bob Hughes, “After 11 months of coaching the Saskatchewan Roughriders, latest in a long line to be shuffled into the hotseat onboard the Titanic, Reuben Berry had won what all will come to know as a big game. He really had.”

When a team scored 46-points, one would figure the offence was lights-out. Well it was more like lights-dim. The Green and White could only manage 308 total yards of offence.

If Roughrider quarterback Joe Paopao was even a little better than his pedestrian 17/29 for 204 yards with no touchdown or interceptions, it would have been an even bigger blowout.

The world was in the hands of future Hall of Fame kicker Dave Ridgway. He set a CFL record for field goals in a single game with eight (which has been tied three times since). Ridgeway connected from 41,30,21,27,20,40,50 and 46.

It was a game that finally sealed Ridgway as the kicker of the present and future of the Roughriders. Earlier that week, Berry said Ridgway’s job was in danger and brought in veteran kicker Paul Watson to compete for the job in practice. 

The game was all Ottawa as quarterback J.C. Watts led the Rough Rider offence to a 15-13 lead early in the second quarter. That’s when he went down with a thumb injury.

In came a name that will be burned in the memory of yours truly forever, Prince McJunkins.

McJunkins came from Wichita State and was the first quarterback in NCAA history to rush for over 2,000 yards and pass for over 4,000 yards. He was well groomed to be a perfect CFL quarterback, unfortunately this would be the day that would sum up his woeful CFL career.

The Roughrider defence sacked McJunkins seven times and forced three more interceptions in just three quarters of football. Every time we looked up from our barbecued food, we would hear the announcer say, “McJunkins is down…again!”

The final stat line for McJunkins would be 3/9 for 29 yards and three interceptions. His career would end at the end of 1984.

This game would be one of the very few bright spots of a 1984 Saskatchewan Roughriders season. They would finish 6-9-1 and miss the playoffs for the eighth straight season. Berry would be let go and CFL veteran coach Jack Gotta would be brought in.

For all of the great names in Saskatchewan Roughriders history that dotted the lineup: Ray Elgaard, Chris DeFrance, Roger Aldag, Greg Fieger and Dave Ridgway, it was the Ottawa back-up quarterback that would, for some stupid reason, remain burned in my brain; Prince McJunkins.

(RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF/PHOTO: EDMONTON ESKIMOS)