Hamilton and Tim Horton’s Field – which still has a whiff of that new stadium scent about it – have been named as the host venue for the 2016 and 2017 Vanier Cups.
As a Hamilton native, this is disappointing.
I love the Vanier Cup. I watch it almost every year (especially if my alma mater’s Maroons are in it) and I even managed to get to the game a couple of years ago at Skydome. Like the Grey Cup, the CIS championship rarely disappoints.
But even though it’s good news, and even though I plan to attend both games, there’s also an air of resignation about it.
That’s because it’s a consolation prize. Hamilton will be lucky to see the Grey Cup at home in this decade.
Of course, the CFL doesn’t make decisions for the CIS. We won’t find any paper trail that shows Jeffrey Orridge in cahoots with Canadian universities to scheme against Hamilton.
But Hamilton’s stadium was finished (for real) in 2015. Toronto will get the 2017 Grey Cup, and Ottawa will get one of the next two years. There will be at least one Western Grey Cup between 2017 and 2020, probably two.
So Tim Horton’s field will be lucky to be only five years old before the Grey Cup returns – nearing 25 years since their last hosting job in 1996.
Events have conspired against Hamilton. The new stadium could not have been considered ready before the opening of the 2015 season. The earliest they could get a Grey Cup, then, would be 2017; the league waited until the last possible moment to confirm what all of us had long suspected, that the new Argos home, a revamped soccer stadium, would host that Grey Cup.
The reasoning continues. And the revived franchise in Ottawa – they’ll need a Grey Cup shot in the arm. And Saskatchewan has a new stadium, so they’ll get the next Cup in the west, and we can’t have three years out of four in the east, and we never really liked Hamilton that much anyway. Oh wait, did we say that last part out loud?
This is all ignoring the promises the league made to the Tiger-Cats and to the city itself of a Grey Cup in Hamilton within three years of its opening. It also ignores the great deal of money that owner Bob Young, football’s most wonderful nerd, has poured into the team since yanking it back from the brink of bankruptcy in 2003. The Ticats have built themselves a strong team and an enthusiastic local following.
So the Vanier Cup, yeah, it’ll be nice. But the real prize for a team, and the real reward Hamilton deserves, is a Grey Cup. And it’s not coming any time soon.
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