Left Coast Sports Babe

And no, the Grey Cup isn’t any game involving Brett Favre.

It’s the Canadian Football League championship.  Sunday, November 28.  (And they don’t play Thanksgiving weekend, because Canadian Thanksgiving was weeks ago.)

Anyway,  for any U.S. fans who were complaining about the weather for games today (and yes, that includes Stanford fans when the weather dipped into the 40s), the Grey Cup will be played in Edmonton, Alberta.  Outdoors. With the predicted weather minus 10 degrees. Plus wind chill

The game will feature the Saskatchewan Roughriders  against the Montreal Alouettes; it will be the eighth Grey Cup championship game for Montreal since 2000.

On the other hand, until 2009, “les Alouettes”had lost the last four Grey Cups they had played in, leading some to wonder whether “Alouettes” translates into English as Buffalo Bills.

(Actually for anyone who cares, Alouettes are little skylarks.)

The Alouettes franchise actually has gone out of business a few times, and was replaced most recently (in 1996) by a team that moved from Baltimore.  Are you listening, Jerry Jones?  This might be a way to put your Cowboys into contention for a championship.

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Back to U.S. sports..

Today probably marked the end of the Rich Rodriguez era in Michigan, although it was only January 2010, when Rodriguez started to pay off $1.5 million of his buyout clause from when he left West Virginia. Sort of like your trophy wife marriage breaking up when you have just begun to pay your first wife alimony.

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Meanwhile, Stanford shut out Oregon State 38-0.  The third shutout of the year for the Cardinal. Out of 12 games. That’s actually a better percentage than the World Champion San Francisco Giants’ pitching staff.

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Not that Stanford fans show up regularly to see their (potentially) #4 ranked team.  Now, admittedly it was Thanksgiving weekend, and cold with the threat of rain. 

Nonetheless, the University may have had more applications for their freshman class than they had fans in the stands today.

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Meanwhile, this year’s BCS games get murkier and murkier.  As Bill Littlejohn said, this week BCS may stand for “Boise Choked, Seriously.”

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The Denver Broncos were fined $100,000 by the NFL for illegally taping a San Francisco practice in London last month. Cheating to try to beat the 49ers? The Broncos may try to avoid the fine by using the insanity defense.

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Nike’s running ads for the new Lebron 8 basketball shoes. Who’d a thunk that 8 would also be the number of Heat losses before the end of November.