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Post-Grey Cup musings

> Canadian football culture versus American college football culture

Jillian McMullen
Staff Writer

 

ccording to the CFL website,

he audience for the Grey Cup
championship game between the Toronto
Argonauts and the Calgary Stampeders
peaked during the fourth quarter to 6
million simultaneous viewers. In light of
this, | was speaking with some classmates
and coworkers about my plan to cover
the game for this very article, but, upon
mentioning the Grey Cup, I was more
often than not met with questions of
what exactly that was, rather than with
enthusiasm. However, had I mentioned
the Stanley Cup, I think it’s fair to assume
everyone would know what I was talking
about. This got me thinking about why the
Canadian Football League might not be
part of our national consciousness despite
the league’s television success. Yes, you
could chalk this particular instance up to
personal disinterest in the game. However,
I think there might be something in the
US's influence on football that prevents it
from having the same cultural significance
as something like hockey.

In his book Violence in Southern
Sport and Culture, Eric Bain-Selbo shows
that in 2015, Southeastern Conference
(SEC) schools had an average of 80,000
fans in attendance per game. To put this in
perspective, TD Place Stadium (where the
Grey Cup was held) only sat about 36,000
people for the national championship.
Bain-Selbo also quotes Michael Oriard, a
former Associate Dean at Oregon State,
who claimed that “what college football

Conor McGregor and the Irish mob

> MMA champ has fights and friends with a drug cartel

Greg Waldock
Staff Writer

 

pparently, MMA champion Conor

McGregor is not content to pick
fights with just boxing champions. He has
reportedly directed his attention towards
the Irish drug cartels. More specifically,
according to multiple news outlets,
McGregor allegedly had an incident on
November 27 in a Dublin pub where he
punched a 50-year-old man repeatedly in
the face. The man is allegedly connected
to the Kinahan drug cartel, a large and
wealthy gang with connections across
the Irish underworld. According to the
DailyMail, no charges were filed, and the
Kinahan gang may be investigating to
“intervene before it escalates.”

It has been an aggressive month for
McGregor. On November 10, he leapt
into the ring during a Bellator match
in Dublin after one fighter had been
knocked out. He shoved the referee,
prevented the downed fighter from
getting up, and slapped a commissioner
in the face, causing the fight to end early.
This does not come as a surprise, given

offered fans that professional and high
school football could not was a local team
competing in the national arena.” College
football fans are attracted to particular
teams because their players reflect the
regions they play for, and subsequently
represent that region on a prestigious,
national scale. This helps to establish

the college football team as a source of
regional pride for their fans.

I don’t think I've ever met a Canadian
football fan who had the same amount of
ferocious devotion to a team as what you
see in leagues like the SEC. So why doesn’t
a similar kind of identity-building translate
to the Canadian football scene? Perhaps it’s
because it lacks the same regional referents
as with American football. If you look at
the Argonauts’ active roster, only about 35
per cent of the players are from Canadian
universities, with the Stampeders around
the same figure. There has always been
cross-border athlete drafting amongst
sports. Just under half the players of last
year’s Stanley Cup winner, the Pittsburg
Penguins, are Canadian-born. However,
it is interesting that one might be able
to question the “Canadianness” of what
one could consider an innately Canadian
league. It is difficult to organize that kind
of societal devotion to the sport when the
region receiving the prestige for superior
athleticism is located anywhere other than
the society itself.

Despite the pervasive Hockey-
loving Canadian trope, the Grey Cup’s
large audience is testament to our more
basic motivations for watching sports:
Ultimately, it’s just about the enjoyment of
the game.

McGregor’s off-ring reputation, but no
charges were filed here, either.

Even less surprising than an
overaggressive MMA champion is the
involvement of a mob in martial arts. The
Kinahan gang is reported to have been
active in many sporting competitions
across the Republic of Ireland, and since
2015 have been a part of a large on-going
gang war with other families. Among
those notable killed in the past two years
have been Paul Kavanagh, a brother of
a major Irish boxer and son of a rival to
the Kinahan cartel, and David Byrne, a
gangster with strong ties to the Kinahan
cartel and a close friend of McGregor’s.
McGregor attended both of their funerals.

Given their connections, it appears
unlikely that the Kinahan family plan
to start a feud with McGregor over
the incident, and Dublin police have
apparently insisted that no investigation
is underway due to a lack of charges filed.
McGregor’s alleged connections to this
large cartel has had little visible impact
on his MMA career, though his behaviour
at the Bellator match has caused the
company to drop him from future games
until further notice.

 

 

Photo by Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

Photo of Conor McGregor via extra.ie