Well, life in Saskatchewan could take an unexpected turn for the worse all of a sudden.
That's because the Canadian Football League's collective bargaining agreement has expired, and talks between the CFL owners and the players have gone off the rails. It looks increasingly as if the unthinkable might happen, and the CFL players are going to walk out on strike.
The last time the CFL had a labour dispute was 1974, but there was no impact on the regular season. If this is not solved quickly, we could see the loss of regular season games for the first time in history.
This would be a real blow to the league's image if it came to this. For all the troubles the league has had with fly-by-night owners, its bizarre American expansion in the '90s and so on, the one saving grace has been that the CFL has kept on playing. Unlike major league baseball, the NBA or the NHL, the CFL (a) has never seen any of its teams move from Canada to the United States, and (b) they've never lost any regular-season games to a strike.
They threaten to toss all that positivity away.
I shudder to think what fan reaction to a walkout will be, particularly out East. I remember what happened after the 1994 baseball strike. Fans refused to forgive, or forget, and it was directly responsible for the end of the Montreal Expos in this country a decade later.
This league needs to realize quickly that while Canadians will put up with all kinds of labour nonsense from hockey players because hockey is "our game," they do not feel the same way towards other sports. If CFL players walk, many fans could walk, too, and these players could find themselves without jobs in very short order once the league goes belly-up.
I don't want to start talking about the CFL in the past tense. So guys, smarten up. That is my comment on that.
In the meantime, I notice panic has set in across Saskatchewan. I tuned in to the local talk shows on the radio and all of them were freaking out over the prospect of no CFL football.
That, my friends, is what happens when you have a monopoly situation where the only pro team in your province is the Saskatchewan Roughriders, defending Grey Cup Champions.
Now, Saskatchewan, you know how fans in NHL cities felt during their walkouts.
I have thought about the prospect of a CFL strike pretty seriously and have been considering what my backup plans should be. In 2012, during the big NHL lockout, I had no trouble surviving that dispute. I followed the Battlefords North Stars during that whole time, and also watched any live streams I could find of hockey action from Europe. Plus, there was plenty of football to watch, so I didn't miss the NHL at all.
That is the same strategy I plan to follow during a CFL dispute should it come to that. Trust me, there are plenty of options for you sports fans during the summer:
First and foremost, there is major league baseball and the Toronto Blue Jays. If they play the way they've been playing lately, they could last all the way through October into the World Series. Meaningful baseball this fall will do plenty to get our minds off of the CFL.
There is plenty of soccer to watch. The Major League Soccer season is on, but the biggest event is in Brazil. The World Cup of Soccer begins June 12, lasts for a month and is sure to dominate the sports scene.
I checked the calendar and noticed that the World Cup is on during the whole CFL pre-season plus the first three weeks of any CFL regular season. So if the CFL goes on strike at that time, no problem. I'm already pumped for the World Cup.
Of course, there is also going to be other sports on TV including auto racing, golf tournaments, tennis, Aussie Rules football, you name it. And there's also live sports going on in Saskatchewan.
You may want to catch CPCA Chuckwagon races, WMBL baseball games, horse racing at Marquis Downs or the NASCAR Canadian Tire series auto race in Saskatoon in July. You might even choose this as the year to go on a summer road trip to a major-league stadium to watch baseball, or to an MLS stadium to watch soccer.
That should keep sports fans occupied until August when pre-season football returns in the NFL.
There will be heightened interest in the pre-season from Riders fans. You can watch Kory Sheets attempt to join the Oakland Raiders or Weston Dressler attempt to make the Kansas City Chiefs. If those two players make their squads, circle the dates Nov. 20 at Oakland Coliseum and Dec. 14 at Arrowhead Stadium: that's when the Raiders and Chiefs meet each other head-to-head in AFC West action.
By September, university and high school football will be back in Saskatchewan, and NFL and college football seasons will be on in the United States. Later that month, we'll see the return of the NHL pre-season, as well as junior hockey with the WHL and SJHL.
Basically, all we need to do is survive without the CFL until September, and life will be back to normal.
Oh, who's kidding who, here? Life will not be back to normal.
Not without our weekly Roughriders fix, not without those road trips to Regina to see games, not without the crazy Riders fans ranting about the team every week on radio and on the message boards. Summer and fall with no CFL - we'll be missing something.
Get a deal done, guys, soon.
