The Saskatchewan Roughriders may get the edge in the luxury department ahead of the Grey Cup, but the East champion has a history of success when the championship game is hosted in Edmonton.
Photograph by: Todd Korol, Reuters, Vancouver Sun
Is comfort worth points? The Saskatchewan Roughriders are about to find out when they check into the Edmonton Eskimos Resort and Spa for Grey Cup week -- a home locker-room facility so over-the-top luxurious, there are National Football League clubs that may be looking north in envy once word gets out.
The Montreal Alouettes? Uh, don't bring too many shoes, fellas. There's no place to put them.
While a massive renovation to Commonwealth Stadium, which could end up in the $140 million range, is heavily weighted to the Eskimos' side for already completed state-of-the-art dressing and training accommodations -- while coaching and administrative office space, a retail store, and a field house for indoor practice are still under construction -- the visitors' spartan digs have basically gone untouched.
In fact, they're a few feet narrower.
That's where the Eastern champion Alouettes will be (literally) holed up this week, dressing cheek-by-jowl, stepping carefully over one another's gear to get around inside a partitioned locker-room so humble, in the Eskimos' new world it's not even fit to be a meeting room.
So welcome to paradise, Roughriders. Wipe your feet before entering -- and try not to sing too loudly in the $25,000, tiled hot tub. It'll upset the visitors.
The quarters the Riders will occupy this week have to be seen to be believed.
A glass-enclosed "water room" with two spacious pools -- hot and cold. A cavernous football-shaped locker-room with separate medical, training and weight rooms, electronically controlled equipment cabinets, 11 plasma flat-screen TVs. ...
Eskimos equipment manager Dwayne Mandrusiak, who's been around since before Hugh Campbell got here in 1977, toured four NFL facilities and researched several others online -- and was a stickler for details of layout and functionality in critiquing the design of the complex. Team
CEO Rick LeLacheur, Mandrusiak said, "told me they would cut back on the [amenities in the] offices upstairs to make sure they got this room right."
They did, and the Roughriders will be happy campers when they settle in.
The question, though, is whether it's an advantage at all to be pampered in the days leading up to an outdoor Grey Cup held in a Prairie city where the temperature Monday was 24-below, though it may rise to single digits later in the week.
Or whether misery shared in close quarters is the key to succeeding on game day, when comfort on the field will be unattainable, no matter how spiffy the locker where your civilian clothes are hanging.
It stands to reason the Roughriders, after two weeks of playing in the cold on snowy, semi-frozen fields, are less likely to be fazed by more of the same Sunday, while the Alouettes, who shellacked the Toronto Argos in the East final under Olympic Stadium's royal blue plastic sky, figure to be irritated by the inhospitable conditions.
Put it this way: The defending champs have already called to ask if there's an indoor field available in the city.
But what does standing to reason have to do with the Grey Cup?
Of the seven Cups the Alouettes have been in during the Anthony Calvillo era, the only two they've won have been in the province of Alberta. Go figure. The last two Grey Cups held in Edmonton? The Eastern team won. And of the Roughriders' three Grey Cup victories, two have been indoors in Toronto, and the other at Empire Stadium.
Of the seven Cups the Alouettes have been in during the Anthony Calvillo era, the only two they've won have been in the province of Alberta. Go figure. The last two Grey Cups held in Edmonton? The Eastern team won. And of the Roughriders' three Grey Cup victories, two have been indoors in Toronto, and the other at Empire Stadium.
That's not exactly roughing it.
In fact, their only two Cup appearances on the Prairies, the Riders have lost -- infamously, on that last-play, too many men fiasco a year ago in Calgary, and to the Argos in Edmonton in 1997 ... though "lost" seems such an inadequate word for what happened when the estimable Reggie Slack was at the controls for Saskatchewan's 47-23 mauling by Doug Flutie and pals that year.
What does it all mean? It means you shouldn't try to predict the winners of Grey Cups contested on windblown, slippery surfaces in the sort of weather in which you wouldn't let your kids play hockey.
It means that a stadium, even one like Commonwealth built for the ridiculously tiny price of $20.9 million in 1978, can be far from obsolete at 32 years of age. That's good news for Vancouver, considering the $450-million-plus PAVCO is pouring into 27-year-old BC Place to bring it up to speed.
And if history tells us anything, it means you can dress at the Ritz, but still play the ... whatever rhymes with Ritz.
Stuff happens at the Grey Cup, where it's always fun but rarely comfortable.
ccole@vancouversun.com
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