It's an argument that's as old as the Super Bowl itself: Which is better? The Grey Cup or the Super Bowl?
That one question divides Canadian football fans more than just about any other.
The Super Bowl is the championship of the biggest professional football league on the planet.
There are 32 teams that make up the NFL, while eight - not counting Ottawa - make up the CFL. The NFL stadiums, franchises and wages are astronomical compared to what one finds north of the border.
And the staggering scale of the Super Bowl doesn't end there either. The biggest acts in the world - Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones, among many others - have all played the big day's half-time show, while those corporations willing to advertise have to be prepared to dish out close to $4 million for 30 seconds of on-air presence.
By comparison, Canada's own Grey Cup is positively quirky.
But it's in its quirkiness that the plucky little league claims it's place as the best football tournament in the world, claim its supporters.
It's the fact that the Grey Cup brings with it century-old traditions, green-wearing fans with watermelons for hats, and the fact that you can find a horse from Calgary drinking at a local pub the days leading up to the big game - which is always held in the dead of the Canadian winter - that sets the governor general's contest above the marketing machine masquerading as a football game south of the border.
If the Super Bowl is a Las Vegas show in excess and flash, the Grey Cup is a kitchen party in Cape Breton. Sure the Vegas show will drop jaws and singe your hair but that little kitchen party that kicked you in the liver and left you singing until the sun came up is what you will still be talking about when you get your third replacement hearing aid.
So, for those, and the many reasons below, is why the Grey Cup is better than the Super Bowl.
