Gotta throw in a quick note about one of the fun sports/television traditions north of the border.
It's Grey Cup week in Canada, as the Canadian Football League stages its annual championship game. That means one big party, and it lasts for week. Our friends to the north do it up right.
For those of us with access to the CBC, which means in a border state, we get to see "Grey Cup Classics" if we stay up late enough. At about midnight, I think, the CBC each night in the week leading up to the game shows a game from the past.
It's charming, especially the old ones. One game earlier this week must have been from the early 1960's. There were no graphics, no replays. Numbers on uniforms were all over the place, unlike the modern system of standardizing numbers by position. One game the other night had the Ottawa Rough Riders and the Saskatchewan Roughriders -- that's right, two of the nine teams in the CFL had the same name, more or less.
It's kind of like watching ESPN Classic, but this is really classic stuff. I'd imagine it would be even better if I had heard of more than a couple of the players. You won't see NBC try something like this. Too bad; it would be fun to see a couple of those old AFL games from the 1960's in their entirety.
(Oh, and give yourself 10 points if you recognized the title from the Al Stewart song. I think he said it's the only top 20 hit about gun-running in Africa.)
