The Canadian Football League announced today that its command centre will, for the remainder of the 2024 season, focus on what the league is referring to as the “clear and obvious principle.”

“We want to make it clear and obvious we will screw the Saskatchewan Roughriders at every opportunity,” said CFL Commissioner and guy who seems to like scarves a lot, Randy Ambrosie.  “At no point should anyone be left asking themselves:  Are they trying to screw the Saskatchewan Roughriders? We want to make it clear and obvious that, yes, we are clearly and obviously screwing the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Let there be no question.”

Mr. Ambrosie then turned and hi-fived veteran CFL referees Tom Vallesi and Andre Proulx.

“And,” added the smirking Ambrosie, “to be even more clear and obvious, we are also trying to screw the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ fans.  Clearly. And obviously.”

Mr. Ambrosie followed up with some examples of the clear and obvious principle that he referred to as “complete hypotheticals that have never happened and could not, in a million years, ever happen, but we’ll see”:

• “Let’s say, oh, I dunno, the Roughriders have won a game, time runs out, TSN puts up a graphic on the TV screen that says “Final Score”, the fans have left the stadium and the players have already hit the showers, the command centre is directed to continue scanning footage from the game, in slow motion so slow that the human eye cannot actually detect any movement, and find some cheap borderline penalty that even the opposing team did not think to complain about, to effectively overturn the game result.”

• “Here’s another one.  Let’s say the game is coming down to the wire with only a couple of minutes left in the fourth quarter.  Saskatchewan gets called on a bullshit pass interference call, extending a drive.  When Saskatchewan challenges the call, we want our command centre to claim it had already cracked open the Crown Royal and was too wasted to be deciding anything, let alone trying to look over game footage, so there was no way to overturn the call.”

When questioned about whether this “clear and obvious principle” is really a new thing for the CFL, Commissioner Ambrosie laughed and answered, “Nope. We’re just making it official now.”