Darrell Davis: Sharing the CFL’s Classics 

Move the Labour Day Classics!

For fairness, the CFL should alternate the sites of the Labour Day weekend games. Every second year, the Roughriders should visit Winnipeg, the Tiger-Cats should travel to Toronto and the Stampeders should visit Edmonton. The subsequent rematches can also be alternated.

Riders, Ticats and Stamps fans decry the notion because “it’s tradition” to play those games in Regina, Hamilton and Calgary. Of course the home teams don’t want to give up those games. All three home teams won their respective games this year — before big crowds — and continued their long-standing domination of the Labour Day matchups.

Dave Ritchie, Winnipeg’s former head coach, bemoaned having his Bombers travel every year to Regina during the last party weekend of the summer, when they would get rousted from their hotels by boisterous fans and get their butts kicked at Taylor Field.

Why not, he, surmised, take turns?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s tradition. Nobody wants to mess with tradition, especially in a league that depends on loyalty from its ticket-buying fans. It’s also a league with nine partners, all of whom deserve an equal opportunity to play at home, stoke rivalries and attract big crowds.