SLOTBACK SLOG: THE SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS

Yes, the Canadian Football League season kicks off on Friday. To ensure that you don't get flagged for a time-count violation (that's Canadian for "delay of game"), Out of Left Field has slapped together -- and I do mean slapped -- some team capsules for upcoming season. As part of its contribution to the fight to end Eastern bias within our lifetime, we're starting on the West Coast and working our way east amid various hilarious highjinks, much like those crazy kids in National Lampoon's Going The Distance. Presenting: The fightin' Saskatchewan Roughriders.

SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS
2005 record: 9-9, lost East semifinal
Head coach: Danny Barrett
Who looks kind of like: One of the aspiring comedians who appears in Jerry Springer's audience.
Famous alumni: Ronnie Lancaster, George Reed. No more needs be said.
Hey, didn't you used to play for? .... : O-lineman Fred Childress was the Bengals' second-round pick way back in 1989.
No, that's really his name: QB Rocky Butler
Trivial trivia: WR-KR Jason Armstead once had three punt-return touchdowns in one game as a junior-college player.
Guy who's been there forever: FB Chris Szarka
Key off-season pickups: Armstead, QB Kerry Joseph, DB Almondo Curry
CanCon: WR Jason French. He's not Canadian, but his name could fool you.

Canadians' admiration for the people of Saskatchewan is evident throughout Canadian pop culture, as much as Canada can claim to have any pop culture.

There are references in songs by the Tragically Hip (Wheat Kings) and the Rheostatics (Melville), both of whom have decidedly southern Ontario roots. It's not for nothing that when author Will Ferguson needed a titled for a collection of his travellogue, he called it Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw.

Then there's the selection of former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas as the Greatest Canadian a couple years ago, not to mention the popularity of Corner Gas.

Yes, the series is set in Saskatchewan because that's where creator/star Brent Butt is from. Let's face it, though, while the humour draws on the universal theme of small-town isolation, to Canadians, nothing says "small-town isolation" like Saskatchewan.

That's why the Riders, the province's only pro team, have the best fans in the CFL. There's no need for preambles such as "arguably" and "on par." Ask any Riders fan -- if you work and live in any major city in Canada, you're bound to run into a few, thanks to the diaspora spawned by the downturn in agriculture over the past quarter-century -- about "Ronnie Lancaster" or "David Ridgeway, 1989" and the devotion pours out, pure as the driven snow. It's akin to what W.O. Mitchell, the famed Saskatchewan writer, called "playing old tapes."

There's one old tape, though, that it pains Rider Nation to play, and it's involves the name "Ted Provost." For Riders fans, time essentially stopped on November 28, 1976. That was when -- why do you Easterners have to keep bringing this up? -- in the dying seconds of the Grey Cup against the Ottawa Rough Riders, Provost, an all-star defensive back, let Ottawa's Tony Gabriel get open on a deep route to catch the winning touchdown pass, snatching away victory in what should have been the final hurrah for The Great Lancaster.

Sure, there are some who argue that Provost wasn't totally at fault, but like Bill Buckner 10 years later, the blame was all his. Fully completely, always and Forever.

The Curse of Provost was doubly destructive. Ottawa has never won the Grey Cup again after that purloined victory, and lost in the '81 championship after a dubious "double pass interference" call -- which involved, you guessed it, Tony Gabriel -- and has now lost two football teams.

However, that's nothing like the fall from grace Rider Nation has coped with for the past three decades. The team has known a few winning moments -- prevailing in the 1989 Grey Cup, probably the greatest game in the history of the CFL -- but little can make up for what it lost.

The angst even got to a point where the University of Saskatchewan had to put a clause in its student code of conduct that proscribed any student from writing a thesis that attempted to link Provost's mistake with any subsequent crises in the province's economy and the Riders' concomitant struggles throughout much of the 1980s.*

(*OK, so I made that up. But admit it, you believed it for a second.)

However, it's not bleak. This seems like the season the Riders leave lethargy behind, once and for all. The Grey Cup is being held in Winnipeg and there's nothing that would please Rider Nation more than painting the Manitoba capital green in late November.

GM Roy Shivers pulled off a major trade, sacrificing quality to get quality by sending 2005 Outstanding Player nominee Corey Holmes to Hamilton so he could take Ottawa quarterback, Kerry Joseph in the dispersal draft. Another ex-Renegade, Jason Armstead, is expected to replace Holmes as an all-purpose threat, while Joseph, who gained more than 1,000 yards rushing last year, will bolster a Kenton Keith-led rushing attack that averaged a league-best 135 yards per game in '05.

Along with Armstead, Joseph will be throwing to the likes of Matt Dominguez, who will now be the Riders' No. 1 receiver since Elijah Thurmon signed with Calgary. Saskatchewan also got the No. 1 overall draft choice in the Holmes trade and used it on 6-foot-4 Andy Fantuz, who set collegiate receiving records at Western Ontario.

Saskatchewan's defence returns virtually intact from last season, with the exception of one spot in the secondary -- which Curry is expected to fill -- and one spot in the linebacking corps. Yes, the Riders are still dealing with the situation of ex-linebacker Trevis Smith, who was charged with aggravated sexual assault late last season after local authorities disclosed that he was HIV-positive -- and it subsequently came to light that the Riders knew of this, but had not disclosed it, citing privacy concerns. (Smith's case is still before the courts.)

So it would appear that if any CFL team is poised to have a redemptive, healing-power-of-sport season in 2006, it's the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The only element this team has lacked over the past couple seasons has been a consistent quarterback. If Joseph can be The Guy and hasn't been too scarred by his Ottawa experience, the Riders have the potential to win West and turn Winnipeg into an adjunct capital of Saskatchewan come late November.

Bottom line: Yes, the Riders are a darkhorse to win the West, but we love our darkhorses around here.

(Previous capsules: B.C. Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos.)