Grey Cup

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- How can you tell you're at the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League's human-sized championship, and not at the Super Bowl, the NFL's bloated and almost unbearably self-important championship?You can tell when you're at a player/media interview breakfast and you notice that the players are waiting patiently behind you in the buffet line. (I'm having trouble envisioning Deion Sanders waiting for me while I pick through the kiwi fruit and ladle syrup on my pancakes.

Stop us if you've heard this before, but absent a major change in philosophy at either ESPN's Bristol, Conn., headquarters, or at TCI, the city's cable carrier, Sunday's Canadian Football League Grey Cup, involving the Baltimore Stallions, will not be available to city residents.That's because the game will air live on ESPN2, which is not available on the lineup offered by TCI, the city's cable carrier.The two sides were able to reach a compromise last year that allowed TCI to take the feeds of the Eastern Division semifinal and the Grey Cup to a public access channel, but ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said that won't happen this year.

REGINA, Saskatchewan -- During the post-game hoopla that surrounded Baltimore's 37-20 Grey Cup victory over Calgary yesterday, quarterback Tracy Ham eventually moved from the locker room to a separate interview area to deal with the horde of reporters who wanted to hear from him.Maybe that was fitting, since Ham's appreciation for winning the Grey Cup runs especially deep. The victory, and Ham's resulting Most Outstanding Player award, capped a career that was chock full of accomplishments before yesterday.

REGINA, Saskatchewan -- The Baltimore Stallions who walked on to windy, Taylor Field yesterday were in many ways the same team that lost to the Calgary Stampeders, 29-15, three months ago.Then again, no, they weren't. Baltimore was a tired, banged-up team in August. Tracy Ham could barely walk, having just suffered a sprained ankle four days earlier against Edmonton. Free safety Lester Smith had been lost for the season. Baltimore was playing its third game in nine days.But the most telling difference coming into the Grey Cup could be found on the Stallions' offensive line.

When he was younger and making a splash as one of the Canadian Football League's more dynamic quarterbacks, the losses and the mistakes would eat at Tracy Ham.How much has he grown up over his productive, nine-year career? When he played in his first Grey Cup in 1990 with the Edmonton Eskimos, Ham remembers being crushed by the defeat, a feeling he had trouble shaking long after the final gun sounded.Ham recalled a similar feeling in the aftermath of last year's Grey Cup. He played his worst game of an otherwise fine 1994 season with Baltimore, throwing two interceptions and losing a critical fumble, all of which contributed to British Columbia's last-second 26-23 victory.

On the field, Elfrid Payton loves to accent each sack of the quarterback with a little dance. Off the field, his Stallions teammates cannot stop the superb pass-rusher from cracking jokes or breaking into song.However, that off-the-wall demeanor abruptly disappears when Payton talks about playing the British Columbia Lions, who on Saturday night at Memorial Stadium could become the first team to defeat the Stallions twice in back-to-back CFL seasons."It upsets me," Payton said of the Stallions' losses to British Columbia in last season's Grey Cup and this year's season opener.

They came out of nowhere - a nameless, patchwork expansion team peopled by rookies, free agents and vagabonds roaming the netherworld between college and pro football. The mix proved magical. In their short, two-year fling in the Canadian Football League, the Baltimore Stallions won a championship - five years ago today. In the process, they captured the hearts of a cadre of fans eager to embrace any form of surrogate Colts. The Stallions also aggravated an entire nation of flannel-wearing, ice-fishing, Mountie-loving denizens vexed by the success of these blue-and-silver upstarts from south of their border.

REGINA, Saskatchewan -- They are not sure if they have a place to put it, but the Baltimore Stallions are bringing the Grey Cup back home.The Stallions became the first American team ever to take the Canadian Football League's most coveted prize, and they left no doubts about their supremacy, as they systematically whipped the Calgary Stampeders, 37-20, before 52,564 at Taylor Field.Several players took turns pouring champagne into the Cup, as the Stallions' locker room erupted with hugs and high-fives.

The howls of joy and the accompanying champagne bath that enveloped their locker room told the story.The Stallions, a second-year Canadian Football League franchise that made pro sports history last year by playing for a championship as an expansion team, are headed back to the Grey Cup.The Stallions earned the trip yesterday with a 21-11 victory over San Antonio that sealed the Southern Division crown before an announced crowd of 30,217 at Memorial Stadium.Baltimore...

As an opening act in Baltimore's first Canadian Football League season, Don Matthews was as good as his word.Carve a winner from his first-year roster? Check.Claim a playoff game at Memorial Stadium? Check.Create anticipation of victory? Check.At 14-7 with a berth in the Grey Cup, Matthews did what Ron Meyer, Kay Stephenson and Forrest Gregg -- expansion coaches in Las Vegas, Sacramento and Shreveport -- couldn't.In the process, he broke the stereotype for an expansion team.And last night, when he was named Coach of the Year in the CFL at a banquet in Edmonton, Alberta, Matthews was recognized for the accomplishment.