So the Calgary Stampeders beat the Montreal Alouettes 22-14 in the Grey Cup Sunday night. I wouldn’t have known had I not looked up the score. I’m not a fan of the Canadian Football League. I probably have watched only 30 minutes of it in the past two years, and that includes when the batteries in my remote were dying.

Now, some may gasp in patriotic horror. The CFL is Canada’s game, and, as a Canadian male, you must love these things, in order: Hockey, beer, Tim Hortons and the CFL. Don’t get me started on Tim Hortons. But I couldn’t care less about the CFL anymore.

I say anymore, because growing up in Alberta, I did like the CFL. I remember Warren Moon, Tommy Scott and the great Eskimos teams of the ’80s. I remember Kent Austin before he was a coach and Matt “The Glass Quarterback” Dunigan before he was a TSN commentator. So what happened?

Maybe it’s a Toronto thing. Living in Toronto, there are so many more options available than the pathetic Argos and the CFL. I can see why the league is still so big in the West: because it’s the only game in town. In Toronto, I get the Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays, now even the Buffalo Bills. Notice how the Alouettes’ attendance shot up once the Expos left town?

Maybe it’s because there are no superstars in the CFL. Call it the Tiger Woods Syndrome, but sometimes parity isn’t a good thing. Anthony Calvillo and Henry Burris are decent guys, but they aren’t stars. There’s no Peyton Manning or Terrell Owens in the CFL. And when I told an American friend that Doug Flutie is probably the best player in CFL history, I had to help him back on his chair following an extended laughing fit.

Maybe it’s the rules. I’m a big football fan, but I still struggle with the idea that a team has to punt after one running play and one dropped pass. It’s silly that you get a point for a missed field goal that goes out of the end zone, and those end zones are just too big. The bigger field takes away a lot of the smash-mouth physicality that makes the American game great.

Maybe it’s the CFL itself. There are only eight teams, but six of them make it into the playoffs, and if the third-place team in one conference is worse than the last-place team in the other, that last-place team makes the playoffs. That’s crazy. And it’s laughable how franchises fold, return, and then fold again. Word is, Ottawa is going to have a team again next year. Great, the clock’s already ticking on them folding again.

Truth is, I don’t like the CFL because it is so prototypically Canadian. As Canadians, we have to like the CFL because it’s ours. It’s an icon, a part of our cultural fabric whether we want it or not. We love the underdog, so we respect Canadian football even though most of the players are American and none of them are good enough to make the NFL. The fact that players get paid so little that they have to get real jobs in the off-season only makes them more real, more Canadian. Like igloos, caribou, poutine and maple syrup, regardless of how bad it is, we just have to like it, because anything else would be un-Canadian.

Well, I am a proud Canadian. I just can’t stand lame football. And that’s why I don’t like the CFL.

Thomas Bink, who offers his weekly Ramblings of a Grouchy Old Man, had his passion for sports rekindled when he made the switch to HD, trading in a 27-inch TV for a blessed 52-incher.