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111th Grey Cup Uniform Matchup Preview

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Good morning, Uni Watchers. It’s Friday — we made it!

As you’re all no doubt aware, the NBA released the motherlode of City Edition uniforms yesterday, and I’ve been trying to get up articles on all of them (I hope to have them all done by today, but it may take a bit longer). But for the early lede, we’re going back to the gridiron — specifically, the 110-yard gridiron in the Great White North, as UW pal/contributor and SMUW Canadian University Uniform Watcher Wade Heidt will be giving us a preview of the uniforms to be worn during Sunday’s Grey Cup. Earlier this week, another UW stalwart, Leo Strawn, Jr. took a dive into past Grey Cup uniforms. Leo jokingly referred to the Grey Cup as “Canada’s Super Bowl,” (with a strikethru no less!), but the Grey Cup, as well as professional football, have been around a LOT longer that America’s Big Game. If anyone took offense, please accept our humble apologies. Maybe we should call the Super Bowl “America’s Grey Cup.” Nah. Both are yuge games.

I want to turn this portion of the post over to Wade now, while he gives us his preview of the 111th Grey Cup. Here’s Wade. Enjoy!

• • • • •

111th Grey Cup Uniform Matchup Preview
by Wade Heidt

Wow! Feels like just yesterday that we ran the 2024 CFL Uniform Preview on Uni Watch. Time flies when you have an exciting, eventful, and fun season. We are down to one game left to capture the storied chalice of Canadian football.

The 111th Grey Cup will take place on Sunday, November 17. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Toronto Argonauts have advanced through the playoffs and earned the right to play in the big game.

BC Place Stadium in Vancouver is hosting the game for the first time since 2014. We don’t know who will win the game yet but one thing is certain. The retractable roof will be closed! This year, it is the standard fare for logos on the field. Just like we have seen in many recent Grey Cups. The Grey Cup logo painted at midfield. Each team has their logo painted in an end zone.

The Grey Cup Festival is already rocking around the waterfront Vancouver Convention Centre location. It is customary during Grey Cup Week for the festivities to get going on Wednesday and it intensifies from then. The Grey Cup arrived early on Monday using various forms of transportation. I feel a little jealous that it gets to ride in a helicopter and a boat.

The uniform matchup is set. Since the game is being hosted in a West Division city, the Western champs are the home team. A dark uniform is the usual home look in the CFL. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will wear blue over blue as the home team.

I mentioned this in the CFL season preview. The interesting part about observing CFL uniforms is that the unexpected can happen. Prior to the playoffs starting, it would have been unexpected that we would see the Blue Bombers in blue over blue in the big game. The blue pants were first introduced solely to be worn with the new alternate uniform unveiled in 2022. The Bombers started to incorporate the blue pants infrequently with their primary blue and white jerseys in 2023.

Winnipeg regularly wears gold pants with the primary blue jerseys. They only wore the blue pants with the blue primary jerseys for two regular season games this year. Then, unexpectedly, they trotted onto the field for the Western Final in Winnipeg wearing blue over blue. Since they won the West wearing the combo, that is the look in the Grey Cup.

It is no secret that this uniform decision by Winnipeg irritates me. The Bombers look so much better in their usual blue over gold home uniform. They should be wearing their fantastic, primary uniform for this historic game rather than this forced combo. The striping on the blue pants matches with the alternate jerseys and not the striping on sleeves of the primary blue jerseys. I wish they would have channeled the memories of the 1990 Grey Cup. They wore blue over gold for a convincing Grey Cup win at BC Place in 1990.

The Toronto Argonauts will be wearing white over white. They wore white over white for the Eastern Final win in Montreal.

There was no official mention of sock colour, but it appears it will be the Cambridge blue socks from what we have seen in Vancouver. The Argos wore the darker Oxford blue socks in the Eastern Final.

I prefer the Oxford pants with the white jerseys for the Boatmen, but I am fine with the uniform decision from Toronto for their Grey Cup look.

We are lucky to get a good idea of what the uniform matchup will look like. It happened this season. When Toronto visited Winnipeg on October 11, both teams wore the exact same combos. Here is a look.

These two teams played in the Grey Cup in Regina two years ago with Winnipeg designated as the home team, but the uniform matchup was vastly different compared to this year. Back in 2022, the two-time defending Grey Cup champion Blue Bombers wore white as the home team (with gold pants) as they had won the previous two Grey Cups wearing white. The Argonauts wore a different uniform design then. It was back when the darker Oxford blue was treated as the primary colour for the Double Blue.

Personally, this has been an enjoyable CFL season for me. I had the chance to attend home games for both the BC Lions and Saskatchewan Roughriders this year. I will be perched in my seat in the second row of the upper deck in an end zone at BC Place this Sunday with a crowd of 50,000 plus in attendance. There will be millions of fans watching on TV. Really excited! Looking forward to seeing some plays that will end up etched in the history of this beautiful game.

• • • • •
Thanks, Wade!

As noted above, this year’s Grey Cup takes this place this Sunday at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia, with kickoff slated for 6:00 pm (ET). For us Americans, the game will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network. The championship game will mark the eighth time in the history of Canadian Football that the modern-day incarnations of the two clubs have played for the iconic trophy (1937-38, 1945-47, 1950 and 2022). I’ll definitely try to watch some of this game before I head to my Curling League.

If you’ve never watched a CFL game — or haven’t in a while — I would definitely recommend it! The game is (obviously) similar to that played in the States, but there are several major rules that are different (12 men, 3 downs, rouge, etc.) that really make it a very fun game to watch.

 

 
  
 

Guess the Game from the Uniform

Guess The Game…

…From The Scoreboard

Today’s scoreboard comes from ojai67.

The premise of the game (GTGFTS) is simple: I’ll post a scoreboard and you guys simply identify the game depicted. In the past, I don’t know if I’ve ever completely stumped you (some are easier than others).

Here’s the Scoreboard. In the comments below, try to identify the game (date and location, as well as final score). If anything noteworthy occurred during the game, please add that in (and if you were AT the game, well bonus points for you!):

Please continue sending these in! You’re welcome to send me any scoreboard photos (with answers please), and I’ll keep running them.

 

 

Guess the Game from the Uniform


Based on the suggestion of long-time reader/contributor Jimmy Corcoran, we’ve introduced a new “game” on Uni Watch, which is similar to the popular “Guess the Game from the Scoreboard” (GTGFTS), only this one asked readers to identify the game based on the uniforms worn by teams.

Like GTGFTS, readers will be asked to guess the date, location and final score of the game from the clues provided in the photo. Sometimes the game should be somewhat easy to ascertain, while in other instances, it might be quite difficult. There will usually be a visual clue (something odd or unique to one or both of the uniforms) that will make a positive identification of one and only one game possible. Other times, there may be something significant about the game in question, like the last time a particular uniform was ever worn (one of Jimmy’s original suggestions). It’s up to YOU to figure out the game and date.

Today’s GTGFTU comes from Jimmy Corcoran himself!

Good luck and please post your guess/answer in the comments below.

 

 

USC Throwbacks -- A bit more on those from Jimmy Corcoran

A couple days ago, I wrote an article about the throwback uniforms the USC Trojans will wear this Saturday against Wisconsin.

Jimmy Corcoran enjoyed the article, but wanted to add some context, since he is infinitely more familiar with those uniforms than I.

__________

Hey Phil, nice piece (Wednesday) about the USC uniforms. Most people consider the jerseys from the ’70s to the ’80s the same, but they were not. I’m surprised USC did such poor research when recreating the 1972 jerseys; it was easy to see these number fonts. Even the white jerseys had the same fonts. You can see from the shine they are heat pressed and not screened on, I believe these were made by Goodman and Sons.

You can see the #2 font is much different than the two they did for the throwbacks; they have so many angles cut into the inside of the eights, it almost looks like a circle. Also, number 61 in the 1972 photo is Hollywood stunt man and former Portland Storm player Allan Graff, remember him from the WFL piece? He was the guy Russell Crowe beats up in LA Confidential!

And one more.

Thanks for the follow-up, Jimmy!

 

 

And finally...

…that’s all for the early lede. Big thanks to Wade for the preview of this Sunday’s uni matchup. Wade will actually be attending the Grey Cup — and it’s possible he’ll be giving us a first-hand account of the game next week! Enjoy the game buddy!!!

Aside from Anthony’s Ticker, I’ll have many more articles today on the various NBA City Edition uniforms (and hopefully some other uniform news as well). I don’t know if I’ll have an NFL Sunday uniform matchup preview for this weekend, but if you’ve looked ahead at the announced uniforms, other than the Bengals debuting a new combo Sunday Night, there don’t appear to be any alternates or throwbacks on tap. The Pats will wear their silver/gray pants with their blue jerseys (YES!) and a few teams still haven’t revealed what pants/socks they’ll wear, but we probably won’t be seeing any new combos or anything too garish or exciting.

Everyone have a great Friday and a better weekend. Jimmer Vilk will take you through until Monday, and I’ll catch you back here with MMUW.

Peace,

PH

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Comments (0)

    White Sox vs Detroit, at South Side Park – before Comiskey and after the West Side grounds. And apparently before the practice of placing the home team under the visitors became a thing. The other AL games are inverted also. “Cleveland” is missing and hosting St. Louis. Philadelphia was scheduled to play in New York the next day, but not the day of the photo. And Boston was hosting Washington, although the Nationals score was hidden by the “gang plank!”
    I wonder how they managed to reach the top of the scoreboard. There seems to be something lying on the “plank.” I hope it’s batter than the pathetic ladder they climbed up on. And what are they using to draw the numbers? I don’t think it’s chalk.

    If you look closely, you can see two wires (strings?) going across each row. I assume those are pieces of wood with the city names and numbers painted onto them and then slid in behind the wires (or strings?) to hold them in position.

    Wade you have delivered all year! I’m a bigger fan of our Great Neighbor to the North’s 110 yard pastime because of your efforts. I’m fortunate enough to be able to watch at least a game a week. CFL has to get a team in the Atlantics! Thanks again and looking forward to an exciting game Sunday!

    Thanks Rick! There may be no Atlantic team officially. However, the Atlantic Schooners have a team party at the Grey Cup like the other actual teams.

    link

    The ongoing history of the Atlantic Schooners’ “existence” is a unique and unusual story. Still undefeated since 1984!

    My furst priority in watching a game of any kind is sufficient contrast. I’m happy this Grey Cup will provide that.

    I can’t describe how disappointed I am that our Blue Bombers aren’t going to wear their gold pants. Their regular blue over gold home unis are the best in all of football, imo. Grrr…

    Should be an exciting Grey Cup, two high-powered squads with lots of skill (even though i loathe both teams – go Riders!).

    Glad the Argos ditched those dark unis, the proper double blue looks awesome when combined correctly, as it will be this weekend.

    Re: the USC throwbacks, didn’t they just use their current number font on the throwback jersey? Seems like more of a rush job, or cost-savings? Nike sure is tooled up to put stripes on shoulder caps (sleeves) this season… I’m not complaining; much better than the other crap the makers have been putting on jerseys recently

    Yes, that’s what I said, they did not use the 1972 fonts. I have seen publicity photos of Anthony Davis from 1970’s with the current style 2 they wear now, but overall, the team wore those thick numbers with the different font in 72.

    I can’t complain – I think their current font is pretty sharp – solid uniform overall, we can just call it a fauxback ;)

    I agree, I think these uniforms look great, but they are more similar to the Charles White era, than they are to 1972.

Comments are closed.