The Grey Cup game for the Championship of the Canadian football League is set; the two preliminary rounds of the playoffs are in the books, and the championship will be decided on November 16th in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The game will involve the Montreal Alouettes and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. To see the game, you will need access to CBS Sports Network or to a variety of streaming services.
The Alouettes finished the regular season at 10-8-0 putting them second in the East Division; they arrived at the Grey Cup game by beating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (a “crossover team” for 2025) and then the Hamilton TigerCats who finished first in the East with a record of 11-7-0.
The Roughriders finished the regular season at 12-6-0 making them the West Division Champions for 2025. The Roughriders lost their last two regular season games but put the pieces back together to beat the BC Lions by a field goal in the Division Finals.
These two teams met twice in the regular season; looking at those two results, they paint a murky picture for the game next week:
- In early August, the Roughriders were on the road and dominated the Alouettes 34-6. [Aside: Holding an opponent to only 6 points is uncommon in the CFL; as a data point, the worst CFL team this year averaged 318.6 yards per game and the lowest scoring team in the league averaged 23.2 points per game.]
- Then in mid-September, the Alouettes went on the road and dominated the Roughriders 48-31.
- Now, at a neutral site …?
The betting line for the game looks like this:
Alouettes vs Roughriders – 4.5 (51.5) Game is played in Winnipeg: The Alouettes have won the Grey Cup 8 times, and their last victory was in 2023. The Roughriders have won the Grey Cup 4 times, and their last victory was in 2013. The last time Winnipeg was the site of the Grey Cup championship Game was in 2015.
I am going to root for the Roughriders in the game. I read a book by Rob Vanstone called 100 Things Roughriders Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. In that book, I learned the “history” behind the Saskatchewan version of Green Bay Cheeseheads. Roughrider fans wear carved out watermelons on their heads; they are the “Melon Heads” which makes as much or as little sense as does “Cheese Heads”.
The weather forecast for kickoff time in Winnipeg on Sunday calls for the temperature to be 28 degrees and dropping. Anyone who can watch that game with a cold watermelon rind on his head for 3 hours deserves my support. Go Roughriders!
Moving on … Cleveland Guardians pitchers, Emmanuel Clase and Luiz Ortiz have been indicted on charges that they took bribes from gamblers to throw certain types of pitches in specific situations so that the gamblers could cash bets on those pitches. MLB had suspended both pitchers pending “investigations” and now MLB and its “authorized gaming operators: will put a cap on bets involving individual pitches and exclude any of that sort of betting from “same-game parlays”. According to an AP report, these restrictions will apply at 22 different sportsbooks.
The charges against Clase and Ortiz sound ominous indeed:
- Wire fraud conspiracy
- Honest services wire fraud conspiracy [Aside: Google this one yourself; if you understand it, you are a step ahead of me.]
- Conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery
- Money laundering conspiracy.
Switching sports – – but not gambling troubles … Again, according to an AP report, more than 1000 players have been suspended by the Turkish Football Federation in what the AP described as a “widening betting scandal.” The juxtaposition of “1000 players” and “widening” is frighteningly interesting. One bit of backstory here; there has been an ongoing investigation in Turkey involving possible betting on games by referees and my guess is that some things are coming to a head in Turkey because the Football Federation has cancelled all games below the second tier of competition in Turkey. Here are two chilling statements from the AP reporting on this situation:
“More than 150 referees are alleged to have bet on games, including seven who are approved to handle top-level games and 15 top-level assistants.:
And …
“The president of top-tier club Eyupspor and the former owner of Kasımpasa have been implicated and questioned.”
Finally, an astute observation by Johnny Carson:
“If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
I remember when Bowie Kuhn banned a retired Willie Mays for being a Bally’s casino rep in the late ‘70’s. Now we have the NFL partnered with Caesars, Fan Duel and Draft Kings. The in game bets are a threat to any sports integrity.
An anecdotal observation regarding the reffing of the MNF gave concern about the integrity of officiating on non- calls and what appeared to be flagrant calls. The integrity of sports is in question and under the microscope.