Prediction? Pain. Hey!
Seriously folks, let’s leave the 1980s references behind and just pretend the nervous nellies and chicken littles in the media and the Covid-19-military industrial complex will not be howling to shut down the CFL because of the spike in Covid-19 cases around, oh, early-to-mid September. Will the CFL lose its nerve and suspend the season? Will any games actually be played in Ontario or Quebec? My Magic 8-Ball told me to stop bothering it, so I’m just going to whistle past the graveyard and get to my dumb and uninformed predictions that no one wants to hear about anyway.
I read the “fearless” 2021 standings predictions at 3DownNation, and all I have to says is it’s pretty much a sausage party over there at 3DownNation (much like any Grey Cup hospitality room around 11:30). Do they even allow a female opinion? Why don’t you at least get Kate Beirness to provide an opinion? I’d listen to her, about anything.
So… 2021 final standings.
First, it behooves me to predict the Saskatchewan Roughriders will end up in first place, in both divisions. I can’t help it; character is destiny. Or something.
EAST DIVISION
Toronto Argonauts – I’m going with the Argos because everyone says the Hamilton Tiger-Cats will win the East, and I just don’t think so. Zach Collaros will be concussed around late August, and after being traded to every other team in the league at least once (and a 48-hour cup of coffee with the Birmingham Barracudas), he will land in Toronto just in time for the final regular season game against the Tiger-Cats, which he will win in improbable fashion. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
PS – That’s not irony, which is itself ironic. Or is it? No, it’s coincidental, at best.
Montreal Allouettes (Jr.) – In its last season as the Montreal Allouettes before moving the Moncton to be the Atlantic Schooners, the Allouettes’ Vernon Adams Jr. will carry the entire team to second place. I am predicting this because the CFL Board of Governors passed a law that mandates Vernon Adams Jr. must be mentioned in the first sentence of any discussion of the 2021 Montreal Allouettes, preferably as the first word.
It remains unclear to me whether there are any other players on the Montreal Allouettes roster other than Vernon Adams Jr., so in closing, Vernon Adams Jr.
Did I mention Vernon Adams Jr.?
Hamilton Tiger-Cats – I am placing the Tiger-Cats in third only because the REDBLACKS! are going to be so bad this year, I cannot in good conscience place Hamilton in last place. I must preserve what’s left of my credibility. History will be my judge! Or something.
The 2021 Hamilton Tiger-Cats remind me of the 2013 Saskatchewan Roughriders. Both teams were stacked and the Grey Cup was going to be played “at home”. History will not repeat itself since this is just too obvious. Never gonna happen. The Tiger-Cats will not even get to the game.
It’s just as well. Who wants to play football in Hamilton in December? No one! And certainly not the Hamilton Tiger-Cats players. What are you… stupid? The players will tank their season as soon as they start playing their final regular season games in late November. They’ll be all “fuck this bullshit” and decide to wait until next year. And then someone will tell them next year the Grey Cup is being played in Regina. November in Regina is even worse than Hamilton in December. Again, fuck this.
The CFL should have taken its head out of its ass and dropped the 2021 Grey Cup into Vancouver if they wanted to play football in December. Morons! And while we are talking about this (or, at least, while I am ranting to myself alone in my mother’s basement about this), does anyone else think it’s dumb that the only indoor stadium in the CFL is located in the city with the mildest winters? Gees people… think!
Ottawa REDBLACKS! – Terrible team, just terrible. Scrolling through the roster, I hardly recognize any names. Who will Matt Nichols be throwing to, other than opposing teams’ defensive backs while running for his life?
Ryan Ballantine over at 3DownNation (assuming that is his real name) called the team “hot garbage”, which is an insult to hot garbage. But why “hot” garbage? What does that even mean?
When in doubt, google. Urban dictionary (which I consult any time I hear a word or phrase uttered by anyone under 30 which sounds like it might be slang for some really dirty sex act) says hot garbage refers to how garbage smells worse when it is hot, so hot garbage is worse than normal garbage. Okay, fair enough; I guess I kinda knew that. However, google also told me Hot Garbage is a song by The Grammar Club, a band that I had never heard of.
When I googled The Grammar Club, google told me that people also searched for MC Frontalot (who looks like a guy who dresses nerdy just so drunks pick fights with him and then it turns out he’s a 8th degree blackbelt or whatever and beats the crap out of them), Jesse Dangerously (not to be confused with Paul E. Dangerously), Wordburglar (not to be confused with Hamburglar; I always make that mistake), the “OneUps” (‘natch) and MC Lars (who went to Stanford University… hmh).
Other songs by The Grammar Club include “Sex Person”. I just thought you’d want to know that, you… sex person.
Hot Garbage is also a Toronto band. Coincidence or ironic?
Neither.
WEST DIVISION
British Columbia Lions – As the only CFL team owned by a dead guy, I am predicting big things for the BC Lions in 2021.
Actually, the only reason I am going with the BC Lions is that no one else in their right mind (and I am not in my right mind, ever) would possibly predict the BC Lions will end up in first place in 2021, but I have a little secret. The Lions play Saskatchewan first this year, and a major upset of the Saskatchewan Roughriders is exactly what the Roughriders have in store for the sold-out home crowd of loyal supporters at Mosaic this Friday. This completely predictable surprise upset victory over the inexplicably incompetent, unprepared and lethargic Roughriders will propel the Lions into a sense of confidence that will last the rest of the season.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders, as an organization, like to kick their fans in the nuts, just when their fans are expecting it the least (especially when their fans are expecting it the least), and there is no ball-shot like an opening day loss to a team widely assumed to be the “hot garbage” of the West Division.
I’m glad Michael Reilly finally told people to start calling him by his actual name. Mike sounds like the name of the unemployed guy who mows your lawn when you’re on vacation.
Edmonton Elks – Look at all them Elks! And Reindeers and Mooses!
Whatever.
Actually, with the Eskimos called the Elks and Mike Reilly called Michael, I can’t keep track anymore.
I would have ranked the Elks lower but, at press time, word got out that the Elks are going to be going with four starting quarterbacks. “Innovation always starts in the CFL,” explained Elks’ head coach Jaime Elizondo. “I predict this formation will be standard in the CFL and NFL within five years.”
Calgary Stampeders – With The Karate Kid on fairly high rotation on TV lately, and Cobra Kai on Netflix, I think we need to discuss how much Billy Zabka and Bo Levi Mitchell look alike. C’mon people!
This is not the first time I’ve said this. It’s actually a bit of a one-man crusade. Everything I do is a one-man crusade. I’m not much of a leader.
The real question is who would be the Stampeders’ “Tommy”, the annoying Cobra Kai kid who laughs like a hyena during the climactic All-Valley Karate Championships.
Maybe Nick Holley? He’s currently on the practice roster, but he’s got a little “Tommy” thing going, doesn’t he?
In hindsight, I’ve often though that the “All Valley” Karate Championships were pretty low-stakes. I mean, it’s a movie, so they could make anything up… California U18 championship, Tri-State championship, Olympic qualifiers, something with the name “regionals” in it, which always sounds pretty important (Americans love their “regionals”, whatever they are). But “All Valley”? Meh. What valley? Qu’Appelle?
By the way, 3DownNation: Is this a serious headline?
Stamps’ QB Bo Levi Mitchell ‘feels great’ after resting tight groin during training camp
This is news? We all feel great after resting a tight groin. Talk about “Dog Bites Man”.
Anyway, yeah, Calgary Stampeders in third. Seems a pretty safe bet, right? Sure. I mean, these days, the Stampeders are never bad, per se, but other than Mr. Zabka, what do they got? Nothing really, and the problem is that Mr. Zabka seems pretty brittle at this point in his career, so he’ll play enough games to get the team to the playoffs, but after that, pffft. Head Coach Dave Dickenson should have just stayed with the Wildcats.
Winnipeg Blue Bombers – Zach Collaros (who just announced he wants to be known as Zack) and Andrew Harris (who just announced he wants to be known as Andy) are both too old and broken down to carry this team.
Mr. Collaros, who I think has always been highly underrated despite almost constantly showing himself to be a top-tier quarterback and total winner, has reached the end of the line. He gets concussions from a stiff breeze these days. And Mr. Harris, who kinda scares me so I don’t want to say anything bad about him in case he accidentally reads this after finding this post on the 200th page of an obsessive google search and then contacts me to threaten to come to my basement bachelor suit and murder me, is a 34 year old running back. 34 years old. That’s not dog years. In football years, that’s 80 years old (not including Tom Brady; that guy is a freak; did you see that video of him throwing the ball into a JUGS machine?).
Incidentally, the helmet Mr. Collaros wears always reminds me of the helmet worn by Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber. I totally understand why Mr. Collaros wears the helmet, and I hope he keeps safe, but damn.
Here is the real reason the Bombers will stink this year. They don’t care. They won last year in a legendary season that will go down in the annals (or anals; this is Winnipeg we’re talking about here) of Bomber history as one of those magic seasons that should have never been. The West Final alone was an epic contest that saw a magnificent firing-on-all-cylinders first place Saskatchewan Roughriders team pounding on the door all game, one play away from crushing the Blue Bombers’ decades-long dream, only to be turned back by a defense of mythical power, ultimately saved by the intervention of the Footballs Gods with the clang off the crossbar.
What do the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have to look forward to this year? Hamilton… in December? Fuck that. They got nothing to prove this year. They can reload and get ready for 2022. In Regina. In November. Okay, maybe wait for 2023.
Saskatchewan Roughriders – If there ever was a sports fan base that needed the 2021 CFL season, it is Rider Nation. And if there ever was a football team that could disappoint its fan base in a more spectacular, heartbreaking and gut wrenching manner, it is the Saskatchewan Roughriders. This guarantees a catastrophically bad season.
Picture 30,000 Roughriders fans, a massive blob of Riderville, after a 53-3 thrashing at the hands of the Lions, all catatonically departing from Mosaic Stadium this Friday like puss squeezing out of a festering scab.
If you want a vision of the 2021 Roughriders season, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. Yes, I know, very Orwellian. But true.
To be a little less disgusting and depressing, you could go with what Josh Smith over at 3DownNation (if that is his real name) wrote. He thinks Cody Fajardo is a flash in the pan. Maybe. The second coming of Joe “747” Adams, perhaps. Ad a dash of Brett Boyko to force Mr. Fajardo into running around like his hair is on fire, and you got yer’self a heapin’ pile of hot garbage. It could happen. Now that teams have plenty of film on Mr. Fajardo, he might only be one twisting-blind-scramble-to-the-left away from a massive season-ending or confidence-shattering hit. I kept waiting for teams to figure him out in 2019, but they never did. Until then, let’s hope Mr. Boyko learned a thing or two since his time in Vancouver, and Mr. Fajardo is able to keep slinging it.
On the bright side, with the kind of lousy let’s-clean-house-in-week-eleven season I’m expecting, we can look forward to almost five months of the angriest, most drunken, most belligerent, most sarcastic and pissy, and most entertaining post-game radio call-in shows in Roughriders history, and that’s saying something.
(I was there for the post-game reaction to the Glen Suitor September 30, 1989, Lions-Riders Hail Mary interference call. Incidentally, then-head coach John Gregory called the loss the “toughest loss ever, no question”, to which the Football Gods 20 years later said in 2009: “Hold my beer.”)
So, to summarize my predictions: the Saskatchewan Roughriders will end up in first place, in both divisions. You read it here first.
PS – Please Mr. Andy (Andrew) Harris, don’t kill me.