This weekend the Saskatchewan Roughriders will host their first Division Final in over 30 years. It was just a few years ago that the drought for a home playoff game ended. It’s truly amazing in an eight team league that these kind of droughts are even possible. The next longest drought is Hamilton, who hasn’t won a division title in 11 years.

The Riders may be the most moribund franchise in sports history. Yet, it also tells you much about those who bleed green. We are a long-suffering sort. In the smallest province to have a franchise, the team is part of the fabric, and largely has long represented appropriately the collective psyche of the province: ‘a have-not province with a have-not team’. A total of three championships in a 100 year span, and that, when most years there were fewer than 10 teams in the entire league.  The closest to a dynasty that the Riders have ever had is that much coveted “Dynasty of Crap”, when between 1977-1987, we didn’t make the playoffs even once. In spite of the repeated heartbreak though, the Rider fans kept coming. In fact, you can go anywhere in the country with a Rider shirt on and before you know it you’ll hear “go Riders” being yelled by some equally maladjusted stranger. Nope, we are not rational folk. Who else in the league carve watermelons into helmets and wear them? Who else would be proud to have a rodent as their mascot?

While it may be true to most that sport is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, to the Rider faithful, the team is something a little more than that. We have seen our team as an extension of ourselves, and have taken comfort knowing that  if the price of grain is in the dumper, it’s at least nice to have a team in the dumper with us. You could say that it has fostered a ‘we can all suck together’ mentality. Yes, one thing that rings true again and again is: community ownership is not just financial but emotional.

Even when the Riders have had glimpses of success in the past, it has been short lived. Any success always seemed to be followed up by a typically ‘Rider’ moment. In 1989 the Riders pulled it off and then star QB Kent Austin wanted out. The Riders win in 2007 and now-Coach Austin wants out again. The Green & White have for decades seemed destined to do nothing more than flirt with mediocrity.

Interestingly though, things have picked up economically and low and behold, so has the team; a province on the upswing, and a team on the upswing. We may actually be in the golden era of Rider football: two championships in the last 20 years, and the team seems ready to realistically compete yearly for the Grey Cup. How do we feel about this new found hope? Its seems that we aren’t completely comfortable with it yet. For example, last year when we started 6-0, my brother said something interesting to me:  “This just doesn’t feel right, it feels too easy”.  Who else but a Rider fan would say that?

Recently some have made a case for the Riders actually being Canada’s team, and there seems to be some truth to it. Even if the Riders aren’t your favourite team there is a good chance they are your second favourite team, and I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s the collective pity of the nation, or just maybe it’s a kind of  respect of the uniqueness of the Rider fan mentioned above. Wherever you go, Saskatchewan expatriates abound, and where we abound, we fearlessly brag of our ineptitude and regale any who will listen of our historical, cataclysmic collapses. That kind of stuff has to make an impression. In the States, America’s team is the Dallas Cowboy’s – one of the most glamorous, successful franchises in the league. In Canada, our team is the Riders! Successful? Glamorous? I think not. The Riders are more like a pet, a friendly little mutt from mixed pedigree that keeps running headlong into glass doors, shakes it off and comes back for more. Frankly though, we seem to be okay with it.

It’s never been more fun to be Rider fan than now. And as we await the beat down they will lay on Burris and the Stamps on Sunday, we can also look forward to the Grey Cup, when the Stamp fans will rise and join Canada’s team in taking down the Beast of the East.

This article is in part dedicated to my poor brother-in-law, a die-hard Bomber fan raising two soon-to-be-Rider fans in the land of the Green and White. Sucks to be you Adam!