CFL.ca
All week long the Calgary Stampeders have heard and read about how good they are.
The Las Vegas oddsmakers have made Calgary 7.5-point favourites heading into Sunday’s Grey Cup game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. There’s speculation the game could be a blowout, that the Stampeders will easily trample the Ticats.
The talk is out there but the Stampeder players know better than to listen.
“I think Vegas is good at making odds,” quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell said Saturday after the Stampeders completed their final walk-through at BC Place Stadium. “I don’t think they are right all the time. That’s why people make money off them.”
“You can’t listen to odds. It’s funny, as a player, seeing odds and knowing the intricacies of the game, knowing what it takes to win a game, how one play, one call, one drop, one catch can change the game from a seven or six-point game to a 15 or 16-point game. To me you never listen to odds. You never let it think you are favourite or you are the better team.”
CFL history is littered with underdogs who have found their teeth in the championship game. 
In 2001 an 8-10 Calgary team upset the 14-4 Winnipeg Blue Bombers. In 1986 a 9-8-1 Hamilton team sipped champagne out of the Grey Cup after beating a 13-4-1 Edmonton team. In 1966 the 9-6 Saskatchewan Roughriders ignored the odds to defeat the 11-3 Ottawa Rough Riders.
The Stampeders led the CFL with a 15-3 record this season. They scored more points than any other team (511) and allowed the second least (347).
Hamilton started the season 1-6, then rallied to finish 9-9. The Tiger-Cats spent 17 of 18 weeks with a record under .500.
Calgary linebacker Deron Mayo said what has happened in the past won’t decide the final game.
“For us it’s another game,” said Mayo, who finished the year with 67 tackles and a pair of sacks. “We plan on getting better every game this year. This is the last one we need to get better on.”
“For us it’s a matter of just playing to the best of our ability, playing our game. We don’t listen to being the favourites or being underdogs. Really that doesn’t matter to us. We’re just out here to win.”
The Stampeder offence, led by Mitchell and bruising running back Jon Cornish, authored much of Calgary’s success this season. But a rock-solid defence also wrote several chapters of achievement.
The Stampeders led the league with 20 interceptions. They were second with 43 forced turnovers and in redzone defence.
Defensive end Shawn Lemon led the CFL with eight forced fumbles and managed 13 quarterback sacks. Lemon played against Hamilton quarterback Zach Collaros in college and would love to sack him again in the Grey Cup.
“I think it would be huge,” said the six-foot-two, 251-pound Lemon.
“If I can have a chance to get the quarterback to turn over the ball or force a fumble, anything to help us win.”
Cornish, who was raised in Vancouver, received a lot of media attention during the week after rushing for a league-leading 1,082 yards and being named Most Outstanding Canadian for the third consecutive year.
Defensive tackle Corey Mace, another Vancouver native, has watched the swarm around Cornish with amusement.
“If I was a fan here in B.C., and I remembered Cornish coming up, I would be excited to come and see him play and win a Grey Cup,” said Mace. “At the end of the day if it’s that man that’s going to help us raise that trophy, then I’m just as excited as everybody else.”
Mace will have eight family members in the stands, plus other family and friends watching on television around the city.
“I can tell you this,” he grinned. “My family is looking at me like I’m that man. He is second fiddle to me in my family.”
Just being in the game is a testament to Mace’s perseverance and dedication.
In 2011, the last time the Grey Cup was hosted in Vancouver, he tore his Achilles tendon and missed most of the season. In 2013 Mace played just one game before suffering a torn labrum in his left shoulder that sidelined him for the rest of the year.
“To come back and have that happen was extremely rough for me,” said the 24-year-old. “Just because I had been there before I didn’t get so hard on myself.”
Mace returned this year to play 11 games, registering 11 tackles and one quarterback sack. He said he was motivated by his “love of the game” and the frustration of losing in the 2012 Grey Cup.
“We went in 2012 (and) cut it short, lost an opportunity,” Mace said.
“I knew the team we had (this year) felt like we are Grey Cup champions. I’m hoping this is the year. I know we are preparing ourselves to win the game.”
For Mace, winning the Grey Cup at home would be extra chocolate sauce on a huge dish of ice cream.
“Any Grey Cup would be sweet,” he said. “But just over the past few years this would be an emotional time for me personally.”
Each player will carry his own personal motivation into the game. Some are excited about the possibility of winning their first title. Other’s know it might be their last chance.
Mitchell wants to avoid the hollow feeling of losing in the last game of the season.
“To me, the biggest thing is I think about the other team holding up the trophy,” he said. “I think about the other guys winning the awards, graffiti falling in their colours, their fans being happy. That wakes me up and it motivates me.”
“From the moment I wake up, it says ‘we don’t have it yet because it’s not in our hands’. To make sure that dream doesn’t come I have to make sure I put in all the work that I can.”
