How Premier Brad Wall JINXED The Saskatchewan Roughriders
"A sports-related curse or jinx is a superstitious belief in the effective action of some power or evil, that is used to explain the failures or misfortunes of specific sports teams, players, or even cities. Teams, players, and cities often cite a "curse" for many negative things, such as their inability to win a sports championship, or unexpected injuries."
The Nature of Sports 'Jinxes'
Okay ... here's MY personal superstitious belief:
Everyone knows that you shouldn't mix politics & religion but most avid sports fans also know that you must always avoid mixing politics and sports.
Too late now!
One of the strategies of the Saskatchewan Party was to try and co-opt the Saskatchewan Roughriders as their very own. Wall is a fan of the team, no doubt, but so are legions of New Democrats as well as the Greens and the last few Liberals that still exist in the province.
The Roughriders are a 'community owned team' - (sounds socialist!!). You would think that Brad Wall and his Sask Party would want to privatize them. If such a thing were ever proposed by Saskatchewan's angry Right, it would spell the end of the Sask Party in about a week.
So, back to the title of my post. For years the Saskatchewan Party have been playing political games with the Roughriders. A favorite slogan of Brad's was 'the Riders have never won a Grey Cup under an NDP government'. Trust me, the gods of football rolled their eyes at that early attempt by the Sask Party to claim ownership of the team.
It is true that the Saskatchewan Roughriders did win a Grey Cup a few days after Mr. Wall was elected in 2007. What he doesn't advertise is that the Riders have LOST two further Grey Cups under a Sask Party government ... (by a combined total of only 4 points in both 2009 and 2010) !
Going into this election, Brad Wall worked hard to get a playing Roughrider to stand for election as a Saskatchewan Party MLA. Enter Gene Makowsky. He is running against Regina Dewdney NDP MLA, Kevin Yates .... (who by the way once before defeated a Roughrider who was running for the Saskatchwan Party).
Go Kevin Go!
But here's the kicker ... the biggest thing that ticked off the Football gods and jinxed the team is the Sask Party sponsorship of the CKRM 620 Roughrider Pre-Game radio show.
I love the show but I hate hearing ads for Brad Wall every 5 minutes. This mixture of politics and sports is what has angered the dieties of the game of football and jinxed the team the most. It is why (in my humble opinion) the Saskatchewan Roughriders have fallen from Western Conference Champions for the last two years to the basement of the Western CFL Conference at 4 wins and 11 loses.
I blame Brad Wall
;)
Postscript:
The last time I spoke to Brad Wall was at the Allan Blakeney Memorial earlier this year. He reminded me that he reads my blog.
