The day has finally come for CFL fans with the release of the 2017 schedule.
In Saskatchewan, the day is a day that bosses across the province dread because of the flood of vacation requests that are sure to follow in the coming days. Fans in Rider Nation often wait for the schedule to be released before planning vacations around bye-weeks or road games. Some even try to squeak in last-minute wedding dates in hopes of avoiding having their big day on the same day the team plays.
As for the schedule itself, the Riders ended up with a pretty balanced one.
The league actually got it right for a change by opening the season with the Riders playing the Alouettes in Montreal. That match-up gives the league a juicy storyline that should generate plenty of buzz to open the new season as Darian Durant will face his former team for the first time. Some thought the game should have been played in Saskatchewan to open the new stadium, and there would have been nothing wrong with that, but this scenario works better. The league still gets the big buzz game while the Riders get to bring in a traditional rival in Winnipeg, on Canada Day no less, to open the new barn. Unfortunately, we have to wait for the second last week of the season for Durant to possibly make his return to Saskatchewan. It’s a long wait, but it should help boost interest in a game that could potentially not mean a whole lot in the standings.
Across the league, there’s plenty of horror stories about teams playing too many games in too few days. Montreal plays two games in five days twice, and three in 12 days twice. For some reason, Ottawa’s bye weeks are week 18 and 20. The Riders are looking pretty good in comparison. They have a couple of Sunday to Friday turnarounds, but that’s it. Last season, the schedule was home heavy in the first half, then road heavy on the back half. This year, they have five home games in the first nine and four in the final nine.
As for those bye weeks, expect lots of people in Saskatchewan out of the province the weeks of July 10 and and August 14.
The Riders full schedule is as follows:
