“It is a premier sport:” Golden Bears football’s place in U Sports

As a former U Sports champion out east, the University of Alberta’s football coach, Stevenson Bone, knows exactly what it takes to get to the national level, and what to do once you’re there.

The same can’t be said for the Golden Bears, now 45 years without a national appearance, and seldomly making it to the conference finals that could take them there. They’ve had only two Hardy Cup appearances in the last 15 years, unintentionally creating a roster with no idea how to play out-of-conference teams.

Or their style of game.

“I think the biggest difference between the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) [league] and Canada West is the competitive nature that you can be beat by any team in Canada West. And the reason for that is because every university takes it seriously. They all commit money to it. They also care about it,” Bone commented.

“It’s a sport that you have to really commit money and funding to be good at it, and university football is a premier sport. Coming from Western, [in the OUA] that was certainly the case.”

Perhaps.

If improvement comes down to the university, not just the conference level, then it certainly makes sense.

The OUA “has schools that don’t really put any effort into getting better,” Bone said.

“Coming from the OUA, you would have three or four opponents that you know would be challenging each year. The other three or four would be easy in the sense that you just knew that you were going to win.”

In short, the OUA, largely known as the best conference in U Sports football, can rely on the quantity of teams — 11 to Canada Wests’ six — not the competitive nature that throws little weight into standings and sees barely-there teams win conference titles.

That’s playoff football for you.

The trick for Alberta comes down to getting the Bears out of the close to half-a-century long national drought, and into a team that embodies what Canada West football actually is.

“You saw it this past season with Regina. They were three and five, and they won the whole thing because they got good at the right time of the year,” Bone explained.

“That’s Canada West football. There’s no bad opponents.”

Let’s just “throw everything at them and see what sticks”

Now the Bears’ head coach isn’t making any extraordinary promises of getting to the Vanier Cup this upcoming season or the year after. He simply believes that it can happen, and there’s a plan in place once they do. Or at least an idea of one.

“When you have to play a team multiple times, like we have in Canada West, you get really good at learning how to hide things for later, because ultimately you’ll play teams twice or three times. The OUA is a bit of, throw everything at the team and see what sticks,” Bone stated.

It’s certainly a strategy — not one that would work in the regular season here, but a strategy nonetheless.

Come U Sports playoffs though, every team is new to the Bears — or the team more likely to make to the Vanier Cup — and there’s no risk of playing someone already familiar with your style of game.

“The nice thing is, it’s a one off, so you can do kind of unique things that maybe you wouldn’t do normally throughout the entire year.”

He’s been there, he would know.

“I feel pretty confident being able to go against them, because I played in the league,” Bone added.

It’s a winner mindset, one arguably missing from the Bears for 45 years. But again, it’s not as simple as saying that they’ve forgotten how to win or that there’s a sense of contentment.

This team wants to win, but it starts from the top down.

Maybe that makes the Bears’ new coaching staff with 20+ trophies under their belt, that much more desirable. Or maybe it’s just an air of confidence Bone wants to emulate within the program.

“The theme is getting coaches here who are proven winners. Whether it’s Vanier Cups, Grey Cups, Orange Bowls, Mitchell Bowls, Hardy Cups, or high school. I wanted to retain and have people who have won championships to be around our players. It’s that culture and mindset we want to set with our student-athletes,” Bone told U of A athletics.

That mindset wins cups, in Canada West and U Sports.