Are the Riders the best fans in the CFL?

Are the Riders the best fans in the CFL and Sports?

According to a story in Vice the Riders are best considering their fan support, where they travel from to and from games, their passion for the Green Team see link: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/d ... -in-sports

Let's have a poll on the subject :roll:

The test of true fans are ..... will they stick by their team when they lose . Not just a few games but seasons . No other fan base sticks by their team like Bomber fans do. That includes Rider fans !

Let's not go down this road again, please. Every team has their collection of fans who show up no matter what. Those are the "fans".

Ottawa gets good crowds now, but the ones who were there prior to the team being so accommodating and the venue being so much nicer are the "fans". The Saskatchewan folks who showed up in their lean years are the fans. The handful who showed up for Montreal in the Big O are the fans. And they're all equally good for showing up no matter the circumstances. They don't need to be measured against one another, nothing good comes of it.

Good point ! And keep this under your hat and hush hush but the Riders in their last 12 games played dating back to last year including the play-offs are a league worst 2-10. The 2nd yr REDBLACKS even have more wins and a better record at 3-9 than the Melons in that time span. :stuck_out_tongue: The one thing I will say though about these Riders this season is that in spite of their 0-3 start that they are definitely the most entertaining and best 0-3 team I have ever seen. As I said previously though in this thread as to the question : Are the Riders the best fans in the CFL ? Let’s have a poll on it…I’m pretty sure we all know who would win…in a landslide… :lol: :cowboy:

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Well I was going to say how much I admired the fans in Winnipeg for how rabid they are for a team that hasn't won a championship since before US expansion and how loud they are game in and game out for a team that has won but 5 home games in over 2 years. And I was going to say how much I admired Hamilton fans who continually packed 26 and 27k into Ivor Wynne to watch Jason Maas and Casey Printers go 2-16. Gee I'm so glad no one from those 2 teams has tried to start a pissing match of negativity towards another team's fan support ...

I've been to at least one game in every city in the country except Ottawa (and I hope to remedy that in the next couple of years too) and every time I meet amazing people.

It's a smaller group but you will not find better fans, genuine faithful and knowledgeable and welcoming, than in Toronto. The Argonotes, the Argoholics, there's a core of them that hang out across the street in the bar for 2 or 3 hours after the game and talk FOOTBALL.

Hamilton/Toronto have something terribly unique and awesome. They tailgate with each other. Many have seasons tickets to BOTH teams even though they love one and hate the other.

The best part about Grey Cup is that all the colors get together and mix. No, actually the best part is all the cheerleaders, but the SECOND BEST part is the color mixing thing.

I'm a Rider fan. I live in Vancouver. I've tailgated with Lions fans for the past 10 years. I wouldn't trade it for the world. This league rules because we have a great game and we have great fans everywhere.

There are great CFL fans with each team,but, definitely, the Riders fans are the best by a long shot.

Richard

Every team has great fans. Rider fans being better or more loyal than fans of other teams mostly boils down to location and city size, and to some extent cultural diversity. Every CFL city but Regina has to compete with one or more of the big pro sports in North America: NHL, NBA (Toronto), MLS (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto), MLB (Toronto). It's easy to have rabid fans when you're the only game in town. It's also easy when your population is relatively homogenous from the standpoint of ethnicity and generational history. For large, multi-ethnic cities like Toronto and Montreal, it is a challenge to hook immigrant fans on a sport (three-down football) most have no prior connection to or knowledge of. Then there's the competition for leisure dollars that these bigger cities offer, especially in the summertime. Montreal is festival city right now and there are about 100 different ways to spend your leisure money. Smaller cities don't have that range of options so their CFL franchises don't face that type of competition.

This isn't an attack on Rider fans BTW. Please don't interpret it as such. It's merely an observation that all other things being equal, "great" fans are usually the product of a city's size and demographics.

Shows you how much you know :wink: , just for the record Jason Maas and Casey Printers were much better than 2-16 :roll: . Under Maas the Cats had a stellar season of 4-14 and Printers led the Cats to a stellar 3-15 campaign :cry: :oops:
but hey thanks for the (almost) admiration as I was unfortunately one of those 26 and 27 k at Ivor Wynne who sat through those bleak dark years when the Cats on most(all ? ) nights couldn’t beat a bad PeeWee or high school team. Ironically the year that the Cats did go 2-16 (“97”) they had some stiff named Calvillo quarterbacking for them,the guy was a total bum,couldn’t do anything right. As I recall it coach Lancaster cut him before the “98” season started saying that this guy Calvillo will never amount to anything and will never be a starter in this league. :roll:

Sorry to break up the love in , but the Ticats never came close to averaging 26 or 27 k . Your off by a 10k :roll:

https://stats.cfldb.ca/team/hamilton-tiger-cats/1998/

Wrong season. The one originally being referred to is 2006.

https://stats.cfldb.ca/team/hamilton-tiger-cats/2006/

A technical correction - Hamilton doesn’t have teams in the other pro leagues you mention. I suppose you could make the case that sports fans in Hamilton can follow the major sports teams in Toronto if they wish (except the Argonauts of course).

Nonetheless, I find your points above valid. I remember reading a post by someone on one of the TFC forums during the heated argument about the Argonauts moving to BMO Field. This guy claimed that the Argonauts and the CFL have no relevance to the many recent immigrants to Toronto (and their children who don’t get taken to CFL games). TFC was much more relevant he claimed. Of course, my blood boiled when he also wrote that the CFL and the Argonauts were old institutions and should die off. Freakin’ arrogant immigrant who doesn’t respect Canadian traditions! :twisted:
But I digress.

Your reasoning doesn’t make much sense, if you are saying that Regina doesn’t have the ethnic immigrants like Toronto does therefore they have more non-ethnic people to show up to watch football games??
It is estimated that 25% of the GTA’s population of 6 to 8 million are recent immigrants - so that means that there are still over 4 million people in the area that are non-ethnic, that’s still 3 million more than in Saskatchewan.
It’s not like Toronto and Montreal have 90% recent immigrants, only around 25%

The reality is, that the Jays do well, the Raptors do well, the Leafs do well, TFC does well, the Argos don’t do well. Toronto is just not a CFL town, people spend their money on the other sports. If the other sports didn’t exist would fans somehow start turning up at CFL games? I doubt it. Toronto is just not a football town.

Btw, the idea that Roughriders fans are the best in sports is completely absurd.

Until they riot (Montreal, Vancouver), or act like hooligans by hurling racial epithets or preventing black citizens from riding on subways with them (Premier League fans), or outright shooting players to death (Central America and Middle East soccer fans), then Riders fans will at best be considered passionate.
Of course, dumping manure on a player's home property and issuing death threats to that player's wife is a good start. :wink:

:roll:

Exactly CRF thanks for the clarification :slight_smile: the prairiedog was referring to the Maas/Printer years which were “06” and “07”.
And for the record the Cats with an 4-14 season in 06 had a season high crowd of 29,010 and an avg of 26,730 fans at Ivor Wynne. The 07 Cats with an 3-15 season had a season high crowd of 28,644 and an avg of 23,200 fans at home that year.
Trust me I know about the attendance at Ivor Wynne in what we Cat fans like to refer to as the “Dark Years”. Talk about fan support,we Cat fans suffered through back to back to back to back seasons from “05” to “08” of 5-13/4-14/3-15/3-15. Not to mention the dreadful 1-17 season of “03”. The team had a record of only 15 wins against 57 losses in that 4 yr span and still managed to have attendance figures above 20,000 per season. So when you talk about a team trying the fans patience and the fans sticking by them in bleak years,come back and talk to me when your team has gone through 4 seasons in a row like us Cats fans had to endure and maybe you’ll understand just what the definition of hardcore fans is.

2005…5-13…avg att…28,002
2006…4-14…avg att…26,730
2007…3-15…avg att…23,200
2008…3-15…avg att…20,773

If somebody had post #15 in the “When will the manure incident be brought up?” pool, please pick up your prize at the front entrance.

And the lucky person with ticket #15 please come up and claim your prize !!! :lol:

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/eOVGR1b2XIs/0.jpg

Every team his good fans & not so good fans... you really can't say that a particular has the best fans or the worst... the fact is , for this league to survive, fans across this league have to show support for their team, and for each other... every team has it "fair weather" fans who only go to games when the team is doing well... but as long as teams can remain fairly competitive with each other, it makes for a better product, and the fans will eventually come out, even in Toronto... I think the move to BMO will be beneficial to the Argos in the long run... healthier franchises may lead to, dare I say it? Expansion :wink:

Lol…I wish you hadn’t dared…

One of these days, the Argos will be the toast of the town and their stadium will be filled with people claiming to have been fans “forever”.

Similarly, I admit that I get annoyed at some of the folks waving the Redblacks banner now, claiming to be the biggest fan there is, yet I don’t recognize them at all from the RR/Renegades days, or the period while the team was only “conditional”. But what the hell, they do more good than harm…