A Roughride Win

I read a 1979 story in the PFRA's periodical the Coffin Corner recently about an interesting tale from our friends up North of the border in the CFL.  In this edition we cover the story of how the number 13 was both lucky and unlucky at the same time with our podcast and post.

There is a rule in the Canadian Football League that is longstanding and is intended to keep the Canadian reference in their name true to the country the League was founded and is played in.  The rule which is often referred to as the residnecy rule of the CFL has an interesting path. According to awebsite dedicated to the rule and CFL football The 13th Man;

"..the ratio had its origins way back in 1935 when the Winnipeg Football Club won the Grey Cup with seven Americans on its roster. After that, the Canadian Rugby Union (CRU), which ran the game in those days, instituted a residency rule that limited teams to five ‘import’ players.

By 1954 that had been increased to nine and was eventually lifted to 16 by 1956 when teams formed the Canadian Football Council (CFC), which preceded the establishment of the CFL in 1958."

These rules and their revisions are a bit confusing, much like the NFL's rules on rosters, active rosters and the like. That 16 had some complicated contingencies so the real number of 12 Americans to the roster was probably more accurate in the terms of our tale. The rule has since been moved up to a total of 20 Americans with some conditional arrangements, but for the sake of our story in this edition, we are going back to the days of only a dozen US players on the roster.

A couple of the Professional Football Researchers Association founding members, Bob Carroll and Bob Braunwart wrote a piece in 1979 for the PFRA's Coffin Corner that is the inspiration and reference for this story titled The Curious Case of the 13th Import.

The 1959 edition of the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League, really had an exeperince that was true to their nickname of a "rough ride" season. After a couple of descent seasons with former Notre Dame Quarterback Frank Tripuka under center, the Riders decided to trade him away in hopes of winning the Grey Cup for a lesser known QB. This was in response of Tripuka requesting to be traded after the fans somewhat casting negativity about their signal caller, who was now north of 30 running the show.

Frank Tripuka is the father of former basketball star Kelly Tripuka. Frank was a grat athlete himself, and All-American for the Fighting Irish he played in the NFL for both the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Cardinals before heading North to play inthe CFL.

The Roughriders besides casting their QB aside changed coaches a couple of times in the late 1950's as well. In 1953 Frankie Filchock, a former Washington Redskin assistant was at the helm, and he is the one that persuaded Tripuka to come play in Regina. A bad season in 1957 provoked ownership to let Filchock go and they then hired, George Terlep who served on the Notre Dame staff for a bit as their new headman. The 1958 combination of the former Irish, proved to be positive for the club as they finished with a very respectable 7-7-2 record. It wasn't quite good enough, thus the pressure to get rid of the again Tripuka, who served as the scapegoat proceeded and a new QB was brought in to replace him.

Things got worse in 1959 as we eluded to earlier, to put it mildly the Ruughriders were bad and the whipping boys of the CFL. They couldn't seem to win a game, or even be very close to winning one either. The franchise brass decided that maybe the Terlep had lost the team, so as a replacement, they hired none other than Frank Tripuka. Yeah the guy that they chased out of town less than a year earlier. When the team reached its 13th game the rosters were frozen, and the clubs were unable to do any transactions.

Things got worse with a three games to go for the club when all of their QBs went down with injury! The Roughriders already had 12 Americans on the roster and were now locked to those names, so coach Tripuka could not even put in Quarterback Tripuka in the game without consequence. The team was in a tough spot in their final games; they were winless, did not have a healthy QB that could play and had to compete in the final games without forfeit as per League rules and to serve the obligations to their ticket holders.

There was only one choice, Frank would need to put on a helmet and play, thus disqualifying the team in these games on roster technicality. He did so but what happened in thecoming weeks is what makes the story fun. The final two opponents Edmonton and Winnepeg abused the Roughriders at each meeting earleir in the season already. With the announcement of Tripuka being the QB for the final games, the outcomes were already set. The Regina based team was certainly destined to disqualification and a loss.

First up was a home game against the strong team from Edmonton. Tripuka had to shake a little bit of rust off of his arm, but he had The Riders up late against the Eskimos. The 8000 fans were going bonkers with the showing their team had finally presented. But in true fashion of a team on the skids, the veteran QB through an errant pass with less than a minute on the clock that Edmonton turned into a last second field goal and a 20-19 Eskimo victory. It was a tragic loss, but it inspired the Saskatchewan faithful into a frenzy. Better yet the players on the roster had a new found belief that they could win.

This proved true in the final game of the season against Coach Bud Grant's Winnipeg Blue Bombers. A monday evening game saw over 14,000 in attendance as Tripuka stepped in to toss for 208 yards and a 100 yard rushing perfomance by Ferdy Burket to lead the Roughriders to their first and only victory of the season, over the highly favored Bombers  37-30. It was unbleivable because the Riders had not scored more than three TDs in a game all season!

Officially because Tripuka was not a legal player, the game went in to the CFL books as a 2-0 victory for Winnipeg, but the fans of the game know better the Roughriders were the better team that day with an unlikely QB under center.

Of course we also could not have done the above stat research without the assistance of Football-Reference.com and Stathead.com resources.

The Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons from the public domain of members of the Osgoode Hall law school rugby football team, which won the national championship in 1891. Depicted are: W.A. Smith, H.C. Pope, J.R. Blake, W.J. Moran, J.A. Garvin, D.R. Martin, A.W. Ballantyne, W.A.H. Kerr, H.H. Wood, W. Cross, K.H. Cameron, J.F. Farrell, Hume Blake (President), J.H. Senkler (Captain), G.T. Copeland, J.H. Moss, R. Moss, J.G. MacKay, J.S. Johnson, E.C. Senkler, J.F. Smellie, and E.G. Rykert.