Edmonton won 10 games in a row to finish the 2015 season with the Grey Cup, a 26-20 win over the Ottawa RedBlacks at Investors Group Field in Winnipeg.
The Esks ended a 10-year drought in appearances and victories at the Grey Cup. In 2005, Edmonton defeated the Montréal Alouettes to win the Grey Cup.
Jordan Lynch plunged over the top for a 1-yard TD run with just over 3 minutes left in the 4th quarter for the winning score. That was the only touchdown of the second half.
For the city of Ottawa, the drought stands at 39 years. This was the first Grey Cup game for the RedBlacks and only the second for the city since 1981.
Ottawa started the game with 13 points before the Edmonton offense took the field. Henry Burris capped off the opening drive with a 3-yard TD pass to Patrick Lavoie. After a fumble off the kickoff, the RedBlacks marched down as Burris ended the drive with a 3-yard TD pass to Ernest Jackson.
Ottawa actually led for longer than Edmonton in the game. The Esks led for the last 12 seconds of the first half, the first 7:57 of the 3rd quarter, and the final 3:22 of the game.
After the first 6:09 of the game, the RedBlacks could only manage 7 points on a pair of field goals and a rouge. Amazingly, that was almost enough to pull out the Grey Cup.
When I saw these two teams live in Ottawa in August 2014, the RedBlacks led for most of the game but the Esks scored late in that game to pull out the win.
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Mike Reilly deservedly won the Grey Cup MVP. Reilly missed quite a bit of the season. Matt Nichols had rather good success but ended up traded to Winnipeg. James Franklin also started at quarterback for the Esks. But Reilly was the impetus for the 10-game winning streak, including the Grey Cup.
Reilly appeared late in the last Esks loss, on Labour Day in Calgary, returning from an injury. He started every single game in the winning streak.
Chris Jones has had a stellar start, going 26-10 as the Edmonton head coach. The team was 4-14 in 2013, the last year before Jones came over from his role as defensive coordinator for the Toronto Argonauts.
Edmonton has 14 Grey Cup titles in 25 games. The Toronto Argonauts are tops in the CFL with 16 Grey Cup titles.
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Investors Group Field was sold out at 36,634. The decision to put the stage where seats could have been sold led to a reduced capacity. The 1998 Grey Cup, also in Winnipeg, drew 34,157, the only attendance smaller than the 2015 Grey Cup since 1975.
Small crowds are in the Grey Cup's near future with the 2016 game at BMO Field in Toronto and the 2017 game likely in TD Place in Ottawa.
When BMO Field became the official home of the Toronto Argonauts, we found out the Grey Cup was coming in 2016. Rogers Centre hosted the 100th Grey Cup in 2012. Toronto has hosted almost half of the Grey Cups; 2016 will be #48 in Canada's largest city of 104 Grey Cups.
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The opening ceremonies and the first minute or so of the game aired in the United States on ESPNews. ESPN2 finished up a college basketball game but the channel did let the audience know to switch over.
ESPN2 stayed around after the game for the presentation of the Grey Cup before fading out for another college basketball game.
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The 2016 Super Bowl is somewhere near San Francisco, though the area hasn't hosted a Super Bowl since 1985. So with that as an excuse, long-time Bay Area sportswriter Ray Ratto has been covering the Grey Cup festivities for CSNBayArea.com.
Ratto definitely has an appreciation for how the Grey Cup is not the Super Bowl without a hint of irony. Ratto is having a good time in Winnipeg.
"The Spirit of Edmonton trumps all Super Bowl parties" was one headline. Ratto also wrote about the Atlantic Schooners and coitus, though not in the same column.
As an American who writes about the CFL, I applaud U.S. sportswriters who write about the CFL (our Peter King/MMQB coverage can be found here and here). Though I am a little jealous that Ratto was in Winnipeg, a Canadian city still on my bucket list.
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Even if you pay a lot of attention to the CFL, you might not have noticed that the CFL had a logo. Or that the logo has been changed … just not everywhere.
The old logo (right) and that logo is what you see at CFL.ca.
The new logo (left) is part of the new branding of the league along with a new slogan "What We’re Made Of," and a new video to explain what all this means.
“Our great fans will be the first to tell you: we need more fans. And in particular, we need to attract the next generation of fans, so this league is strong for years to come," said CFL Commissioner Jeffrey L. Orridge.
This is Orridge's first Grey Cup. Canadian TV ratings are down, attendance is down. And the fans that are there aren't getting any younger.
The Web site and smartphone apps will be updated soon, likely this week. One action that needs to stop right now is automatically playing a commercial with blasting audio when you log onto CFL.ca.
We won't spend much time on the site outside of the next couple of days but nothing will make a lot of us run away faster from a Web site than one playing commercials automatically with audio.
We understand the league has to skew younger, but we don't want to see another Rogers/NHL debacle.
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Edmonton's return to the Grey Cup after 10 years means for the first time in a decade, we are having a conversation about the team's nickname.
We have had Inuit groups talk about changing the nickname of the team. The Ottawa Citizen came out with an editorial this week about changing the name.
Supporters point out that Edmonton doesn't exploit the nickname in terms of a mascot, and are often referred to as the Esks. For the record, CanadianCrossing.com has not and will not use the complete team nickname, though we refer to the team as Esks.
Changing college nicknames has been an much easier ride, especially in the U.S. with Stanford, Marquette, and Miami of Ohio as prominent examples. Changing professional team nicknames is a much more difficult path.
While the Cleveland MLB franchise is a bad example, the Washington NFL franchise is the most egregious. As to where the Edmonton CFL franchise falls within those examples, we will let those offended the term speak louder than us on the subject.
Though it shouldn't be up to the critics to come up with an alternative, having a better option might help ease fans to a name change. We all might agree on a word that begins with E.
The Edmonton Elks did exist and played for the Grey Cup in 1922. Explorers would be a great fit. Energy would tie in to the oil in the region. The Eagles nickname is obvious but worth a mention. Express and Empire are possibilities though Earthquakes aren't relevant.
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With huge holes in CFL coverage later in the season and the East final on ESPNews, we knew the ratings would be bad. This was worse than bad.
The game drew 24,000 viewers on ESPNews. Imagine a full TD Place in Ottawa or Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton and that would be the entire U.S. TV audience.
Last year's West semifinal with Saskatchewan @ Edmonton game drew 68,000 viewers on ESPN2, but last year's contract had more late-season games and more playoff games on TV.
Having the game on ESPNews did bring the numbers down, but 24,000 is a really bad number.
The more obvious presence late in the season, the higher the ratings would be.
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photo credit: Al Charest/Calgary Sun/Postmedia Network
logos and video credit: CFL