Rider Practice

Last week, in the midst of a busy spell on the academic calendar in jschool, I go to cover an event I've been waiting to do for years. I'm talking about Roughrider practice and it was more accessible than I imagined.

I had tried emailing the Riders communication guy, after days I received an email back. I had asked to talk to Graham Harrell, after exchanging emails, they set up a time to call. But phone interview was not what I had wanted, told them I wanted to take a picture, and that's when they told me to show up at noon the next day. That way I could speak with Graham in person, following practice.

For a Saskatchewan sports fan, especially one would like to cover sports for a living, Rider practice was a great site.

I showed up at noon, a nice sunny day for the middle of November, according to the score clock there was still 10 minutes left for practice. So in the meantime, I had to check in with the Rider's media person, and got to check out the end of practice as the team prepared for the Western Final.

I knew the cameraman for Global TV, so I talked to him and that helped me get comfortable with the environment, which was filled with the local sports media. There weren't very many people in the stands.

When practice ended I waited around a while, as Graham ran sprints and chatted with other players.

Once Graham made it over, he was a had a grin and proved to be a very media-savvy person. His answers were quick and pretty descriptive, he'd been through a lot of interviews while at Texas Tech.

Overall it was a great interview and I think he enjoyed my questions, which ranged from his Dad to Bobby Knight to Wes Welker to Micheal Crabtree. Afterward, Graham through to Weston Dressler, so that I could have some good action shots of him.

Then, the communication lady for the Riders told me that this was the process to take whenever I wanted to talk to a Rider, and said to come back whenever I wanted - awesome.

So the U of R Rams aren't done after all...

Tuesday morning the University of Regina Rams were cleaning out their lockers, but by late Tuesday afternoon they were back in the film room, getting ready for the U of S Huskies.

The Rams were eliminated from the playoffs last Friday when they lost to those same Huskies 42-17. But received a second life when Canada West Universities Athletic Association stripped the Manitoba Bisons of three victories for using an ineligible player.

The Rams will meet the Huskies in Saskatoon on Saturday (1 p.m., Griffiths Stadium) in one semifinal, while the Calgary Dinos will play host to the Alberta Golden Bears in the other.

In mid-October, the Bisons self-declared to the CIS — the governing body of university sports in Canada — that the had used an ineligible played for the first five games of the season.

After the CIS ruled the player was indeed ineligible, the matter was handed over to Canada West, which stripped the victories.

One of the victories went to Alberta (which improved to 4-4 and took the No. 3 seed in the playoffs) while one went to the UBC Thunderbirds, who finished tied with the Rams at 3-5. Regina earned the fourth and final playoff berth based on its 28-17 win over UBC on Sept. 26.


Here what Kevin Mitchell's Starphoenix article had on the subject today.

With playoffs just four days away, Canada West announced Tuesday that Manitoba -- which used ineligible receiver Julian Hardy for the first five games of the season -- forfeited two wins and had another (against Simon Fraser, which also used an ineligible player) declared no contest. That decision gave the Regina Rams -- whose season supposedly ended with last Friday's 42-17 loss to Saskatchewan -- Manitoba's vacated playoff spot.

The first-place University of Saskatchewan Huskies will now host the Rams, instead of the Alberta Golden Bears, Saturday at 1 p.m. Alberta plays at second-place Calgary.

The timing of the decision, which came a couple of weeks after Manitoba first disclosed the issue, continued to take fire Tuesday.

"This decision should have been made a couple of weeks ago; that's the bottom line," said Huskies' head coach Brian Towriss, who -- unsure which team he should prepare for -- waited in his office Monday night for a decision that didn't come down until Tuesday morning. "Whose fault that was, I don't know, but that's the only thing that should have happened."

From Tim Switzer of the Leaderpost:

The Rams appeared to have been eliminated from post-season contention after a 42-17 loss to the Huskies on Friday that left Regina at 3-5. While Regina’s record did not change with Tuesday’s ruling, the Bisons fell from 5-3 to 2-5. The Golden Bears (now 4-4) and UBC Thunderbirds (3-5) were each handed a win, while the third game was declared a no contest as the Simon Fraser Clan had previously forfeited the win to the Bisons after using an ineligible player.

The Bisons player who was ruled ineligible, receiver Julian Hardy, played at the University of Ottawa in 2001, but at season’s end he received a four-year suspension following a positive doping test. The suspension was to consume the final four years of his eligibility. In 2004, the CIS passed a bylaw that would allow for players to apply to have suspensions reduced when the national penalty changed, but Hardy was not informed.

Bisons head coach Brian Dobie said when Hardy joined the Bisons, the team knew he had been suspended, but did not check to see if the suspension used up eligibility or if he had applied to have the sentence reduced.

“How stupid is that?” Dobie said. “You can call us idiots, but you can’t call us cheaters.”

After discovering the error in mid-October, the U of M athletic department self-disclosed to the CIS which ruled Hardy ineligible. The university also tried to retroactively apply for a reduction of the suspension, but the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports (which administers the drug tests) would not allow it. The Bisons then filed a compassionate appeal with the CIS but it was denied.

After exhausting those options, the Bisons were forced to accept the decision of a board of Canada West non-football schools to take away the victories.