Jaime Stein
CFL.ca
Things picked up around town today at the 2008 Grey Cup. The Grey Cup festival site opened this afternoon and by this evening it started to fill up with fans wearing their team colours.
There were several highlights today, including watching Dominique Dorsey and his brother head into the CN Locker Room at the festival site and put on jerseys – Dominique an Argos jersey and his brother a Stamps jersey – and pose like they were back in Pop Warner football.
Earlier in the evening, the media had a chance to meet the 2008 Gibson’s Finest Player Awards nominees. While many of the nominees are familiar faces, Weston Dressler of the Saskatchewan Roughriders drew several looks. It seemed that no one knew what he looked like without his uniform out. First, it was members of the media who didn’t recognize the Outstanding Rookie nominee, then it was his fellow players, and finally, a photographer had to ask Gene Makowsky and Jeremy O’Day who Dressler was while taking a photo of the three of them.
The day began with a press conference feature the two head coaches – Marc Trestman and John Hufnagel. Neither coach is regarded as being a media darling, but both gave decent answers to the questions, especially Trestman who had the line of the day when asked about whether his players should have sexual relations during Grey Cup week.
“I’ve talked to our players specifically about that,” Trestman said. “We always tell our players to have their plan for the week and we’ll allow them to use their discretion in that manner. I’ve told the coaches the same thing.”
Hufnagel, on the other hand, simply said that he was, “too busy”.
Each team hit the practice field on Wednesday. I split my time between shooting photographs and working on interviews for CFL-TV with Marwan Hage. Marwan is providing insight and analysis for us all week long on CFL.ca, and he is quite the character. It is amazing how quickly the players are drawn to him and how at ease they are when answering his questions. We have a nice breakdown of Anthony Calvillo’s quick release up on CFL.ca. Stay tuned for some fun features on Thursday from the Alouettes’ breakfast and the Stampeders’ lunch with the media.
The final interesting point from today took place during Calgary’s practice. The team wanted to simulate the noise of the Montreal crowd in preparation for Sunday’s game. For approximately half an hour, crowd noise was pumped into the stadium at eardrum-shattering levels. The noise left the media groggy on the sideline, while some players sat on the team bench plugging their ears while not on the field.
Thursday night is the CFL player awards, so we will have more coverage from the awards ceremony as well as other events throughout the day.
Jaime Stein is the Canadian Football League’s Manager of Digital Media and the former play-by-play voice of the Toronto Argonauts.
