One day, many years ago, I visited then-Regina Rams head coach Frank McCrystal at his office on the university campus for a story I was working on.
He welcomed me in, then pulled down the blinds.
“I don’t want anybody to see me talking to The StarPhoenix,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or serious, but it was a good line nonetheless.
This little moment happened at a time when the Rams’ rivalry with Saskatoon was a rough-edged thing, occasionally vitriolic, full of heat and fury.
The Rams and University of Saskatchewan Huskies are meeting Saturday in the Canada West football final (1 p.m., Griffiths Stadium), their first championship tilt since 2002, and things are different than they used to be.
This rivalry has changed, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just a different thing. When the Huskies beat the Rams 22-20 last month, each side complimented the other post-game. The spiciest quote came from Regina coach Mark McConkey, who said, “I hate losing to the U of S. I don’t like the U of S, they don’t like us.”
This Highway 11 rivalry is still a good one and a worthy one, but you will not, for example, see the winning quarterback on Saturday fake taking a knee on the last play of the game, then throw a strike to a receiver downfield just to spite his opponent.
Regina quarterback Darryl Leason did just that in the 1995 Prairie Football Conference final against the Saskatoon Hilltops, back when the Rams were still a junior team. With Regina leading 19-8, he started dropping to his knee on the final play, lulled the Hilltops into relaxing, then stood up and threw a 20-yard touchdown strike to Josh Shaw that was — as it turned out — called back on a penalty.
It almost sparked a brawl, and the Hilltops were furious.
“The game’s not over ’til the whistle blows,” Leason told reporters with a shrug.
“That’s just typical Regina Rams. They have no class,” countered Saskatoon quarterback Sheldon Ball.
StarPhoenix reporter Janice Harvie called the two teams the ‘Saskatoon Hatfields and Regina McCoys’ in a column headlined ‘Leason’s uncouth antic vintage Rams.’
A dozen years later, the Rams played the Huskies at Griffiths Stadium, and McCrystal fumed at the uncouth antics of Huskies fans, who loved sitting behind his bench and lambasting both him and the players.
“Their behaviour is unacceptable,” he said after beating the Huskies 34-31. “It absolutely is and it’s been that way for years.”
He added: “It’s ridiculous. Do they think our guy in Regina is a bad person compared to their guy in Saskatoon? Grow up.”
Three years after that, Rams players jumped and danced on the Huskies’ logo at midfield, then taunted U of S players as they ran out before a game. It sparked a scuffle. Making matters worse, Huskie football alumni — there to honour the team’s graduating players — ran onto the field. One charged a Regina player.
“There’s a whole intimidation factor coming from them, with all of the stuff they do,” McCrystal told Global News after the game. “Really, to be quite honest with you, they kind of started it.”
“Let’s face it. It was planned,” countered then-Huskies head coach Brian Towriss.
And there’s no forgetting the shot McCrystal took at the entire city of Saskatoon while talking about the quagmire that was Gordie Howe Bowl back in 1997.
“The field surface is no good, the lighting’s no good, the dressing rooms are no good,” he said — accurately — a few days before travelling there for the PFC final. “You guys in Saskatoon should all throw a buck in and see if they can fix something. They don’t even have spotter’s boxes. It’s a city with 175,000 people and they can’t do a better job than that? It should be embarrassing for them.”
To which Hilltops coach Dave Hardy replied: “You should tell Frank to run for mayor. Maybe he can get some funds to refurbish Gordie Howe Bowl. It’s not an ideal field, but we work with what we’ve got. If Frank didn’t want to play here, he should have won his first two games against us.”
Boom. Roasted.
McCrystal is the common denominator in many of these anecdotes. He relished the rivalry, and wasn’t shy about speaking his mind, which raised the ire of folks in Saskatoon.
But Saskatoon was not averse to the enmity. The Hilltops’ 1984 program cover showed a cartoon Saskatoon player exulting with a football in one hand and a helmet in the other. At his feet were a dead wildcat, husky, colt, and ram — the nicknames of the four other teams in the conference. The Hilltop player’s right foot was placed triumphantly on the ram corpse — a picture of defeat, conquest and humiliation.
“It’s hatred, I think,” Rams receiver Brad Bork told the Leader-Post in 1992 when asked about the rivalry. “Usually when you have respect for the other team, you’ll say ‘Nice play,’ and pat the guy on the butt when he makes a good play. The Hilltops, even when you make a good play, don’t say anything nice.”
The Hilltops were one big reason why the Regina Dales and Regina Bombers merged in 1953. They called themselves the Bomber-Dales that first season, and the Rams after that.
Regina couldn’t beat the Hilltops, and they correctly figured that making one team out of two would eventually flip the scoreboard.
From there, a rivalry was born — “steeped in tradition and folklore,” StarPhoenix columnist Ed Tait once wrote. “It’s right up there, on a much smaller scale, with Auburn-Alabama — minus roughly 80,000 fans.”
The Rams and Hilltops had the two best junior football programs in the country, and built a foundation for their rivalry when they’d meet six times a season in the old Man-Sask League — four times on the regular schedule, and twice more in the playoffs, when teams played a two-game, total-point series.
The rivalry grew and exploded, and in 1999 — after winning 17 national championships over the previous 33 seasons — the Rams moved up to the university ranks and formed a new rivalry with the Huskies.
It’s been up and down the last couple of decades, and big meet-ups have been more a smattering than an annual rite. It’s 12 years since their last playoff meeting. Coaches and players are more cautious about what they say, even if the desire to beat those guys down the highway remains a priority.
And the rivalry is still there. A map is a powerful thing, and the two cities rest inside Saskatchewan’s borders, close enough to throw elbows and shoulders. This season was fun. Regina won their first meeting 33-28, and Saskatchewan the second 22-20.
Now it’s the rubber match, two Saskatchewan teams trying to survive, rekindling a big-game rivalry that stretches back more than 70 years.
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