CFL Fan Wears Pants for First Time in 18 years After Winnipeg Wins Grey Cup

In Monday’s Hot Clicks: A Canadian football fan makes a bet, another NFL officiating controversy and more

This man is going to wear pants now

Eric Bolte/USA Today Sports

Winnipeg is cold place, right? It seems like the kind of place where you spend five months of the year bundled up in layers. Well not if you’re Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan Chris Matthew.

Matthew, 62, vowed 18 years ago not to wear long pants until the Bombers won another Grey Cup championship. The title drought had already stretched to 10 years at that point and he would spend nearly two decades shivering in shorts in the Winnipeg winters. (He made exceptions for funerals.)

Matthew’s viral fame earned him a trip to Calgary for yesterday’s Grey Cup game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. And wouldn’t you know it, Winnipeg took home the victory. Matthew was on the field for the game and slipped on some Zubaz pants during the ensuing celebration. 

Matthew’s wife, Darla Robinson, has become just as much of a star as he has during Winnipeg’s playoff run.

“We have been walking down the street when it’s cold out, and I have a fur coat, and he’s in shorts, and people stare,” she told the CBC earlier this month. “And I just assure them, yes, he’s an idiot.“ 

After the game, Darla wanted to make it clear that she did not approve of her husband’s particular choice of pant. 

During most of Matthew’s shorts-only run, there were only eight teams in the CFL, six of whom made the playoffs. So Matthew must have never thought the championship drought could have gone on this long.

The streak is over just in time, though. Today’s forecast in Winnipeg calls for snow. 

Hey look, another refereeing controversy

A fun game to play before Sunday’s slate of NFL games is guess which one will have the officiating disaster we’ll all be talking about on Monday. This week it was Patriots-Cowboys. 

The play in question happened as Dallas was attempting to engineer a game-winning drive in the final minutes. Dak Prescott threw to Ezekiel Elliot for a first down, but the play was called back due to a tripping call on Travis Frederick. 

Was it really tripping? Decide for yourself. 

It probably wouldn’t have mattered if Jason Garrett didn’t decide to kick a field goal on Dallas’s previous series. 

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Sell the team, Dan

Buffalo is quite a place

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He made the right choice

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Am I the only one who thinks this guy sounds like ESPN’s Marty Smith?

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Close enough

Really cool moment

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Thanksgiving came early

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Good dog

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Easy mistake to make

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A good song

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