L'efficacité ennuyante de Laval | 'Nightmare tie' scenarios in FBS | GRUFF, Vol. 5
The Vanier Cup was there for the taking, and the Laval Rouge et Or did just that, without even scoring a touchdown. Does American college football care about ties in the standings anymore?
The decisive moment came from Xavier Thibaudeau of Laval, when Laurier had its last good chance to take a late lead.
Only Laval can win a Vanier Cup with field goals. So, the critical misfire for the Laurier Golden Hawks in a 22-17 Vanier Cup verdict was settling for three.
On the playsheet, it was second-and-9 at the Laval 19-yard line, with a five-point spread, and a little more than nine minutes left in the championship game. To shore up the pass protection around Hec Crighton Trophy-winning quarterback Taylor Elgersma, Laurier had shifted into a double-tight end look, essentially coming out with a seven-lineman look, sending out only three receivers.
Football observers might wonder whether reducing the options for the QB is not self-limiting. Observers are not coaches, but anyone watching via CBC Sports or in person at Kingston’s Richardson Stadium saw it. Even with the extra blocking, Thibaudeau, a second-year d-back, was left unblocked, and he blitzed to sack Elgersma for a big loss. So Laurier had to take three instead 6 to 8 points from a touchdown.
Laval smothered any further spark from Laurier until the clock ran out at Richardson Stadium in Kingston. Their pass rushers got home, and enforced the “cold realities” one cautioned about in this matchup.
Nothing about what Laval does is meant to be flashy or appeal to a general audience. It is just boring-from-the-outside efficiency — l’efficacité ennuyante; it is meant complimentarily. It’s meant to win a championship that has steadily declined in media profile over the last two decades. Hey, correlation is not causation.
This autumn in Canadian university football, the Rouge et Or machine won out, just barely, in the final stages. Their combined margin against Montréal (22-17) in the Québec final, Regina (17-14) on the road in the national semifinal, and Laurier (22-17) on Saturday was just 11 points. Their defence was not all-time dominant to the magnitude of the 2023 Montréal Carabins, who did not allow a touchdown in four playoff games. Still, holding well-coached teams to under 20 points is no mean feat.
When they needed a defensive disruption, or a vital second-down pickup offensively, they got it. All-Canadian d-back Ndéki Garant-Doumambila, and edge rushers Loïc Brodeur and Natan Charron all downed Elgersma in the closing minutes. Bad news for everyone else: those three have a few seasons of eligibility.
I won’t hide that the outcome was a downer since it confirmed bad arguments about how Laval spends too much on football or should be in U.S. college football. No, have a few other Québec universities play football so all that extra-seasoned talent from CEGEP is better shared. Create an Ontario-Québec interlocking regular-season schedule so OUA teams know what they’re up against before November.
That probably is not happening.
It is an indictment of something in Canada that one team has won the Vanier Cup 12 times in the last 25 seasons of competition. It seems all an OUA team such as the Golden Hawks can do is play a perfect game when they earn a great opportunity.
The Golden Hawks, in their first Vanier Cup under head coach Michael Faulds, fell short of that summit. Their defence battled against the Laval offensive line of Jean-Antoine Dean-Rios, Samuel Quevillon, Étienne Cloutier, Alexendre Masri-Fliss, and Maxime-Olivier Cabana, who average 6-foot-4, 304 pounds, and 23 years old. That crew opened rushing lanes at 4.9 yards per pop, did not have a holding penalty — neither did Laurier’s, which is cold comfort — and allowed QB Arnaud Desjardins to be sacked only once on 43 dropbacks.
Laurier allowed five sacks on Saturday. There was a harbinger of a harried quarterback when they allowed four against Bishop’s during the national semifinal. It was hint that leveling up from competition from the Ontario (OUA) and Atlantic (AUS) leagues to Laval might be more than they could chew.
This space is more interested in optimistic realism than the ‘local sports team loses heartbreaker’ narrative. There is media for that, I think?
In the long view, Laurier persevered to earn a chance to win. They were bent back significantly in the first quarter and a half, and rallied. The
Almost 90 percent of Laurier’s total offence came via all-Canadian receiver Ethan Jordan (11 receptions for 179 yards) and running back Tayshaun Jackson (seven rushes for 87). The passing line for Elgersma, 23-of-34 for 246 with 2 TDs and no interceptions, doesn’t show the sacks or that only one other player gained more than 20 yards. Remember how wide receiver Ryan Hughes had more than 200 yards a week earlier against Bishop’s? He accounted for 16 against Laval.
One main in-game storyline was pregame pushing and shoving between the quarterback and Laval players at the stadium. There’s no point in a non-player auditing competitors’ behavior. One aggravating factor that CBC Sports play-by-play commentator Mark Lee reported was that Laval running back Mathieu Roy walked out of the room while Elgersma delivered his Hec Crighton acceptance speech on Thursday. The Laval QB, Desjardins, was one of the other nominees.
Call that a wash. Laval got the Vanier Cup, as the more complete team. Elgersma would appear to have more tools and arm talent, and it is not the place of this space to question the toolbox. Everyone else will do that.
Closing out this section, it does get old when powerhouses win over and over. I dislike it since it feels like one more reason why these university sports I love are out of the mainstream, although that is clearly not why that is the case. The conglomerates would not be interested — eww, spend money on something ‘unproven’?! — even if eight teams had won the Vanier Cup in the last 10 seasons.
The 2025 Vanier Cup is in Regina, with Atlantic-Québec and Canada West-Ontario semifinal matchups. There is a chance of two eastern teams slugging it out in Saskatchewan this time next year. Prove that wrong, Canada West.
Trivia!
Well, this is special. Laval is the second school to win national titles in men’s basketball and football in the same calendar year.
Saint Mary’s Huskies teams did so in 1973.
The Halifax school got halfway there in 1999, with a hoops championship. That fall, the football Huskies lost against the Rouge et Or in the Vanier Cup, and that pretty much takes up to now, and the foreseeable future.
The convolutions of college football
Part of the seeming magic of college football is all those Saturday slates of chaos somehow end up in a clear, clean-ish outcome. This team earned this ranking over a team with an identical record, and so forth.
One first principle is the five highest-ranked conference champs make the 12-team College Football Playoff field. Four of them will be the Nos. 1 to 4 seeds that go to the Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 bowl games/quarterfinals.
One should probably root for upsets that create four-way ties for first, and three-way ties for second, in as many conferences as possible. Understandably, the conferences have tiebreaker contingencies for that, but as Shutdown Fullcast terms it, “nightmare tie” scenarios affirm that, like life, there is an utter arbitrariness.
Let’s have some mutual funs running through that. Apparently, it doesn’t matter if two teams finish in a dead heat in the conference standings after missing each other in the schedule.
ACC (17 teams)
Well, at least Dallas has one functional football team. The No. 9 SMU Mustangs have “clinched a spot in the ACC title game and (have) a stronger schedule than Indiana,” which is ranked No. 10.1 They are in the Top 10 for the first time since the infamous “death penalty” back in 1987. Is it illusory? Probably.
But one of No. 8 Miami or No. 12 Clemson will not be in that title game. Miami is fun and maddeningly inconsistent with freelancing quarterback Cam Ward, and Clemson assumes the humorless-scold personality of their head coach Dabo Swinney. It is more fun to imagine a Miami-SMU matchup, because Everything ’80s. Fortunately, the math works out that Miami is in a win-and-in at Syracuse this week.
SEC (16 teams)
A win by No. 20 Texas A&M against No. 3 Texas would likely create a four-way tie. But it is known that No. 6 Georgia (they beat Texas and Tennessee) is awaiting its opponent.
So, the weird outcome is Tennessee cannot play in their conference championship, but could still win the national title.
And no Alabama, after their third loss of the season.
Big Ten (16 teams)
Odds are, No. 1 Oregon — and lefty quarterback Dillon Gabriel — have the only 12-0, 9-0 record. No. 2 Ohio State, No. 4 Penn State, and No. 10 Indiana are each likely to end up with (11-1, 8-1) beside their name. Only Ohio State beat the latter two.
The tidiest outcome is that the form holds. Ohio State still has to defeat Michigan and, well, you know. Indiana and QB Kurtis Rourke of Oakville, Ont., are in the playoff bubble. If they end up semi-relegated to a mere bowl game, hopefully they play it out
Big 12 (16 teams) + Boise State + Tulane
The CFP has to take the Big 12 champion, and one other conference champion, who could be either the Boise State Broncos or Tulane Green Wave.
Nine teams are theoretically alive to make the Big 12 title game. Its highest-ranked team in the non-binding AP Poll is No. 14 Arizona State, followed by Brigham Young (17), Iowa State (19), and Colorado (23). Three of those four teams play in snowy regions, and there is a chance that is the unspoken factor in the Big 12 champion getting an on-campus first-round home playoff date on Dec. 20 or 21. Snow football plays great on television, dare to dream.
Grey Cup post-mortem
Say something nice about the Toronto Argonauts winning 2-of-3 Grey Cup titles? Ahh, this is always death.
Does it leave a bad taste that their galvanization might have been rallying around an injury to a quarterback who is a bad actor? Definitely.
May one please talk ball? Toronto won, on the day, since they knew something about building a CFL roster that can stand up playoff exposure. They did nitty-gritty nuts-and-bolts football plays, and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were stuck with quarterback Zach Collaros trying to pass with a torn-apart finger on his passing hand.
The Argonauts just pounced. That describes pass defender Benjie Franklin taking down two interceptions and returning one for a touchdown, or Canadian receiver Kevin Mital scoring an important touchdown. Canadian special teamers such as Fraser Sopik also caused a turnover.
The 2025 Grey Cup is in Winnipeg. If there is any consolation for the Blue Bombrers faithful after three big-game losses in a row, well, the the host team never makes it. So their faithful would be perfectly happy if the Saskatchewan Roughriders are there next season, right?
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe and be kind, especially to yourself.
Nov. 23-24, 2024
Hamilton, Ont. : upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.