If you’re a sports fan, you’ve stayed up at night fantasizing about scoring the winning goal in the Stanley Cup finals or hitting the World Series walk-off shot. If you’re a football fan, thoughts inevitably gravitate towards becoming a speedy wide receiver or a star quarterback.

I guess I’m unpatriotic. Though, born and raised in Canada-and a lifelong fan of the gridiron game-I have never made a secret of my disdain for this country’s knock-off brand of football or its ramshackle convening body, the Canadian Football League. What mystifies me most about the CFL isn’t its poor management, weak talent pool, inferiority complex or laughable quality of play.

The CIS University Cup tournament is no place for the faint of heart. Two games can catapult a team to the doorstep of national glory, or just as easily dash their dreams of a historic season. The Redmen discovered this painful truth last week at Nationals, after losing 4-2 to the Atlantic University Sport Champion St.

Sports teams are notoriously tight lipped and cautious when making preseason predictions about success. Such is the case with the Martlets soccer team. While they didn’t engage in any interviews touting dominance over the rest of the field, the Martlets soccer team clearly has only one target for the season: a national championship.

There can really be no doubt about Terrell Owens’ dominance, because while other players may put up bigger numbers, no other receiver is tougher to defend. Get the ball anywhere near Owens and he will make a play. I doubt anyone can honestly question Owens’ value on the field after he has racked up over 1,000 yards a year six times and over 100 career touchdowns.

There’s an old cliché in sports: “You have to play 60 minutes to win.” McGill found out the hard way on Saturday that there’s still a lot of truth in that expression. Despite going into halftime with an 11 point lead, the Redmen failed to pull off what would have been a huge upset against the top ranked team in the country, losing to the Laval Rouge et Or 43-27 in front of 1,749 spectators at Molson Stadium.

National Football Conference North Chicago Bears (10-6): If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Last year’s division champion will return all its starters from last season. While that’s good news for the defence-finished second in total yards and first in points allowed-it’s less so for the offence.

The third ranked Martlets got off to a slow start in Friday night’s season opener at Molson Stadium. But a much stronger second half allowed them to escape with a 2-0 victory over the visiting Sherbrooke Vert et Or. Neither side had been able to find any rhythm or assert itself during the first frame.

Sports are a transcendent element in today’s turbulent society. To use a cliché, any team can win on any given day. It is not always the supremely skilled squads that capture championships; rather, spirited, passionate and hard-working often trump the talented.

Coming off what can only be described as the worst year in the football program’s history, there’s really nowhere for the Redmen to go but up. On the field the team finished a dismal 1-7, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Instead it was the black eye the franchise suffered as a result of the team’s hazing scandal which will be remembered as the legacy of the ’05 edition of Redmen Football.