REGINA - Politics and football are both blood sports in the nation's breadbasket.
But you can forgive the Saskatchewan voter for being a little distracted during this provincial election campaign. The vote comes at an exceptionally bad time for politicians looking for a captive audience.
Wednesday's election comes four days before the Saskatchewan Roughriders host a Canadian Football League playoff game against the Calgary Stampeders.
A vote and a football game in the same week might not be an issue in some places. But in Saskatchewan, where there's only one professional sports team and devotion to it is an almost mandatory part of the culture, it's big news that the Roughriders are hosting their first playoff game in nearly 20 years.
It makes provincial elections, which happen about once every four years, look almost commonplace.
When the last block of about 7,000 tickets for the game went on sale last Monday, a line more than 300 fans long formed overnight outside the Roughrider ticket office.
You'd be hard pressed to find a similar line outside a polling station come Wednesday morning.
"There's an election?'' quipped Cory Nachtegaele, who camped out in a trailer overnight with his buddies Jason Valen and Cody Skalicky, and managed to nab 18 seats for the game.
"It's football season, baby -- who cares about the election!'' Skalicky said.
A little bit further back in line, Brad Weiss had no doubt where a true football fan's attention will be this week.
"Not even close. This is the show,'' Weiss said.
It's something the candidates are aware of.
"It's very, very difficult to ignore football right now,'' says Saskatchewan Party Leader Brad Wall, who coaches his son's minor football team in Swift Current.
If you believe the polls, Wall is the favourite to become the next premier of the province and, as his party has pointed out in the past, that might be a good thing for the football team.
While the NDP or its forerunner, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, have been in power in Saskatchewan for 47 of the last 63 years, the Roughriders have never won a Grey Cup under a such a government.
The Roughriders last won the CFL championship in 1989, while Tory premier Grant Devine was in power. The team won it once before that, in 1966 while Liberal Ross Thatcher sat in the premier's chair. The Riders went to the Grey Cup in 1997 under then-NDP premier Roy Romanow, but lost to the Toronto Argonauts.
The current NDP leader, Lorne Calvert, doesn't put much stock in that statistic.
"We all support the Roughriders,'' Calvert says. "We all want the Roughriders to win. We all want the Roughriders to go through the playoffs and we all want the Roughriders to come home with a Grey Cup this year.''
