Canadian Football: Canada's Vanier Cup - the Most Underrated Game

Even older than the SuperBowl, the 52nd Vanier cup proved to be yet another close affair as represented by two of Canada's most prolific football programs - University of Calgary and Universite Laval.

Thanks to Canadians' apathy to our own cultural and sporting institutions, I managed to PVR the event on SportsNet (who covers the event in a commendable way every year) and watch Canada's university game the following weekend - with no spoilers. Hats off to Tim Micallef who is the only Anglophone sportscaster in Canada that makes an effort on the French-Canadian accent when pronouncing last names. 

Lacking the cache of US style marching bands, big time scholarships and million dollar coaches at the "college"level, the Vanier Cup has managed to demonstrate some incredible finishes and suspenseful games over the last seven years at least, with just our own home-grown boys.  It has survived as its own independent event and also tucked in with the Grey Cup weekend (the McMaster-Laval match in 2011 was an insane Vanier Cup final - the most memorable football game I have ever attended). 

Although, the interest ebbs and flows in various regions of the country (highest in the Prairies and La Belle Province), the outpouring of interest and importance is none better than the die-hard regional following in Quebec City where Canadian University Football (now referred to as U Sports) is "Big League", in a city devoid of all professional sports and the size of an NHL market.