It is time once again to voice my displeasure with the CFL for the late start to the Grey Cup game. We annually have to cowtow to the Eastern time zone and the rest of the country has to march lock step in line with Hogtown. The 4:30 start locally simply results in hundreds of thousands of fans reporting to work hungover because Grey Cup parties last well into the evening. The CFL makes claims to provide a product to all Canadians yet those watching in the Atlantic region must stay up into the wee hours of the morning to see the conclusion.
Why the league doesn't wise up to the fact that the game would be far better off being scheduled on Saturday, is beyond me. That way most fans have a day of rest prior to heading back to work and those making the trek to watch the game live have a travel day to get home without taking another day off work.
But, alas, expecting the CFL to make a decission based on what is best for the fans is expecting far too much!
What tradition, Grey Cups have been moved around for decades. For most of the 70's and 80's the game was played at around 1:00 Eastern, prior to that the game was played on Saturday. Tradition is only that if you're too wet behind the ears to remember what came before. What about the people who have to take an extra day off work to attend the game.
Why does the CFL continue to play to the Toronto market when Toronto has proven over and over to be a poor supporter.
If the league moved the Grey Cup to Saturday night, then Berezin would be on here complaining about how it conflicts with HNIC, and how him and millions of others will be watching the Leafs game instead.
Did they not have the divisonal semi-finals and divisional finals on Saturday last year? And weren't the NUMEROUS complaints about thos games being on a Saturday and not the "Traditional" Sunday? Yes and YES!!!!!
Would I like to see the Grey Cup on a Saturday? It'd be nice BUT I cope (Kind of like I do with the over abundance of Thursday night games the Eskimos have been scheduled with over the last two years)! As for tradition, that last time a Grey Cup game was held on a Saturday was the 1970 Grey Cup (close to 40 years ago).
And they aren't catering to just the Toronto market with the 6:30 EST start. They're catering to the all the fans out on the eastern seaboard, the fans in Quebec and ALL of Ontario.
I'd rather an earlier start too, but they also have alot of NFl games to contend with at 1.That being said, 6:30's probably a good rating's booster.The family will probably have eaten,the NFL games will for the most part be over,whatever work people are dong today should be close to or totally wrapped up by then,etc.In those terms, 6:30's very reasonable.
I've like the last three years where we've had the Vanier Cup and the Grey Cup played in
the same weekend. And I think the OFSSA football championships were played earlier in the week.
Makes for a great week to end the football season in Canada.
In a country with 6 separate winter time zones there is no one starting time that is going to please everyone.
The game was played on Saturday until the 1st cup in Montreal in (I think) 1968. The "tradition" of a late start began in the 1990s; until then the game usually started about 2:00 local time.
