RWB podcast #246: That strange part of CFL season

Happy New Year -- or rather, Happy New CFL Season! With preseason games about to start in the Canadian Football League, the Rouge White & Blue returns for another year of podcasting our favorite gridiron game. Co-hosts Joe Pritchard and Os Davis talk a whole lot of offseason football, from Chad Kelly's suspension to the reshuffling of the coaching deck in Saskatchewan to the un(?)-retirement of Shawn Lemon, and all points in0between. The RWB's kicking off the 2024 season, so join us! The Rouge, White and Blue is now part of the Shotgun Sports Network! Watch this episode -- and those of other Shotgun shows on YouTube -- or listen from wherever you get your podcasts!

After the110th Grey Cup, after co-host Joe Pritchard’s return from Cup-hosting Hamilton, after US Thanksgiving Weekend, the Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast has finally reassembled the team of two to wrap the 2023 CFL season, take a tiny peek ahead to 2024, and, oh yes, discuss the actual Grey Cup game itself. Said Grey Cup of course resulted in a stunning victory by RWB co-host Os Davis’s favored Montreal Alouettes over Joe’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers – but Os manages to keep the trashtalk to an absolute minimum as the RWB just generally marvelous over the solid football action that was the 110th Grey Cup championship. And what CFL fan this time of year could resist idly speculating about next year? (After all, it’s what we’ll be doing for a good six months, anyway.) Joe cautions Os about fretting over the semi-offiical “potential CFL free agents list,” and explains with a single word the motivation behind the investigation into the Edmonton Elks’ club management structure. Join the RWB as we take one final look back at the 2023 season – at least as far as Joe and the Bomber backers are concerned… The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Touchdown, Tyson Philpot!  

Usual Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast co-host Joe Pritchard is up in Hamilton this week to enjoy the Grey Cup week festivities, our man across the Pacific, Greg St. James of Gridiron Japan subs in as co-host. Greg joins Os Davis to discuss once again what else but the 110th Grey Cup in which the surprising Montreal Alouettes look to keep the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from winning a third ’Cup in four seasons. Really, though, Greg is aboard to convince Os that (a) his Als have a fighting chance in this game, and (b) that his betting on the game (Monteal now +8, over/under 47 points) isn’t completely bananas. And with two sports history junkies podcasting, the RWB puts the 2023 season in perspective and some time is spent on spring football and all that stuff about a CFL/XFL merger. (Ancient times now, it seems…) Enjoy this last bit of speculation from the RWB and have a great Grey Cup! The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: It’s time.

For the Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast, this Grey Cup feels like the culmination of years’ worth of our tit-for-tat chatting. This edition of what we’re calling the RWB Cup pits co-host Joe Pritchard’s dominating Winnipeg Blue Bombers in their fourth consecutive championship game against Os Davis’s plucky Montreal Alouettes for all the marbles. Like most of CFL fandom, Os is still a bit gobsmacked by the Alouettes’ upset victory over the mighty Toronto Argonauts and he’s trying to find a way to financially justify backing the awesome defense of the Alouettes as 7½-point underdogs in the big game.  Meanwhile, Joe’s feeling some shoe-on-other-foot sentiment, as he harkened back to 2019 back when the Bombers were the unheralded team in the ‘Cup looking for the big upset. Between the two, the RWB recaps the divisional finals, sum up the seasons of the vanquished Argos and BC Lions, and make picks ‘n’ predictions for the 2023 Grey Cup. The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Looking to the brilliant finish for a fascinating 2023 season…

This has got to be some sort of record: On this episode of the Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast co-hosts Joe Pritchard and Os Davis are joined by Greg St. James, co-host of the Gridiron Japan podcast. Could this be the first-ever podcast recorded from three countries – none of which are Canada, and all three on different continents, no less – across 15 time zones. This epic collaboration spans a global breadth of topics: At front and center are epitaphs to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Calgary Stampeders and kudos to the victorious Montral Alouettes and BC Lions led by Superman Vernon Davis. The RWB chases this with a preview of the conference final games in Winnipeg and Toronto, while Os considers the betting options. (The Als are really 11-point underdogs? Really?!?!?) Finally, Greg expounds upon other topics such as the mania of Japanese baseball, the XFL and the X-League, Japan’s own professional league (since 1971 – no joke). It’s epic stuff! The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Spanning the wide world of, uh, Canadian football…

Welcome to the 2023 CFL playoffs! Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast co-hosts Joe Pritchard and Os Davis again experience the paradoxical simultaneous feeling that this Canadian football season started eons again, yet is ending far too quickly. The beginning of the end of said 2023 CFL season kicks off on Saturday with the semifinal round of the playoffs, with the no.2-seeded home teams each favourites: the Montreal Alouettes are giving 3 points versus the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, while the Calgary Stampeders get (a possibly too meager) 6½ points at BC Lions. RWB makes the case for each of the four teams, what will be required for an upset in either game and, for what it’s worth, suggestions on betting the two games. Chalk or ‘dogs? The RWB’s got answers. OK, educated guesses, anyway. The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Playoffs?!?!??!

With one more week to play in the 2023 CFL season, the week 20 results in and shakeups already gone down in Roughriders land, the Rouge White & Blue Podcast assesses some final trends going into the playoffs. For example, the suddenly much clearer path for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to come out of the West, the reasons why BC Lions are ripe for an upset at the hands of the Calgary Stampeders in round one, the Toronto Argonauts on the verge of football history and whether there’s hope for the future of the Ottawa Redblacks. And as piqued as RWB co-hosts Joe Pritchard and Os Davis are for the playoffs, damned if they’re not gonna miss this Canadian football thing in a few weeks… The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: On Canadian football past, present and future

The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast certainly hopes those football fans who love high-scoring wild rides were tuned into the Canadian game in week 19 because the points mostly came in bunches and no lead was safe. With the 2023 CFL playoffs just about concretized into shape, RWB co-hosts Joe Pritchard and Os Davis consider if maybe the season isn’t a tad too long (heresy, we know) but nevertheless find some intrigue remaining in the season. As we all await some potentially dandy matchups in those playoffs, the RWB wonders about what’s happening with those Saskatchewan Roughriders and their baffling 6-game losing streak, in what historical context we should be viewing the Toronto Argonauts and whether the Montreal Alouettes can give the Argos a game in the postseason. RWB then goes on to pick ‘n’ predict the week 20 games and try to provide the waning of attention a few reasons to tune into a lighter slate of games – aside from rubbernecking the Regina trainwreck, that is… The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Drawing a historical season to a close…  

Despite the season winding to a close with most playoff spots settled, the Rouge White & Blue Podcast remains fascinated. RWB co-hosts were knocked out this week by the dominance of the historically (in both sense of the word) mind-blowing Toronto Argonauts, the edge-of-seat thrills in week 18’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers vs. BC Lions game and the surprisingly slick play of both the Montreal Alouettes and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Week 18 may have solidified the CFL playoff picture even further, but the RWB still has lots of enthusiasm and lots of reasons to watch the 2023 season’s three remaining weeks of play – which is not to say we’re not looking forward to what should be some dandy playoff games. The RWB analyzes week 18, looks to the future of a hapless Canadian franchise or two, and picks the week 19 games with an eye on the still-evolving playoff picture. The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Talking playoffs?!?!?!      

The Rouge White & Blue Podcast finds itself, along with the rest of CFL fandom, in a very strange bit of the season indeed. In general, co-hosts Os Davis and Joe Pritchard look back on a week 17 in which the Montreal Alouettes and Hamilton Tiger-Cats clinched playoff spots while the Ottawa Redblacks and Calgary Stampeders juuuuuuuust about got eliminated after losses – thereby leaving us all with five of six spots taken (and the Saskatchewan Roughriders barely able to avoid snagging the last available slot. So where does this leave the league and its fans for four more weeks of football? The RWB takes a look forward at what to look forward to in those remaining games while wondering what we should take from week 17, particularly a somewhat lackluster win for Joe’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers over essentially the Toronto Argonauts second string. What’s left to the 2023 season? The RWB’ll tell ya! The Rouge White & Blue CFL Podcast: Wishing everyone a happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!