My football season has begun.

The CFL is back.

For most of you football fans out there, the season begins in August when the NFL and the college football teams begin their preseason workouts, but I operate off a different schedule.

My season began two weeks ago with Montreal and Edmonton, the first official game of the Canadian Football League season that will end in November with the Grey Cup.

I became interested in the CFL back in my high school years, when one of the local television stations in Baton Rouge began carrying the CFL on Sundays in the summer. At the time, the color commentator was Alex Karras, who was an all-pro tackle for the Detroit Lions back when the Lions had a decent football team.

What amazed me was the length and width of the field, three downs to make a first, no fair catches on punts, and the multiple motion in the backfield before the ball was snapped. And there was the rouge — that single point a team can receive if a punt or missed field goal is not returned out of the end zone.

The station in Baton Rouge later stopped carrying the games, I got married and moved away, and the CFL was a memory, punctuated by information about American football players like Doug Flutie, Warren Moon and Joe Kapp playing up north. Flutie won Grey Cups playing for Calgary and Toronto. Moon won Grey Cups playing for Edmonton. Both, like Joe Kapp, returned south of the border to play in the NFL. Kapp played for Minnesota, Flutie for Buffalo and New England, and Moon for the then-Houston Oilers and Seattle.

The CFL lingered in the back of my mind until two years ago. I was channel surfing on our TV in the bedroom when I hit on ESPN and found Saskatchewan and Ottawa playing on the tube. I sat and watched as they battled it out on the screen, got my smart phone, went to my “Watch ESPN” app and found a second game would follow the one I was watching. It was a respite from suffering what at the time was six months of football withdrawal.

When the college season opened, I had the pleasure of watching college football and the CFL simultaneously through television and telephone. One Friday evening my wife found me watching a college game on TV and the CFL on my phone.

“You’re sick,” she told me with a laugh.

I still watch multiple games at one time, with one CFL game on TV and another on my phone or Kindle. I do the same thing with college football, except I add my laptop to the mix. Do you think I’m obsessed?

So when I get home Thursday or Friday after clacking the keys on my computer I’ll eat, sit back, relax and watch the CFL and get my early football fix. You can join me, or suffer for the next few months.

  

John Surratt is a staff writer with The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com.