Big hype, big crowd, big game

With the lower bowl of the Rogers Centre sold out for Friday’s Vanier Cup and tickets in the 500 level now on sale, players, coaches and organizers are starting to think big. Really big. Historically big. “It’s the perfect storm,” says Mac head coach Stefan Ptaszek of having a Hamilton team playing so close to home. “It should be the biggest CIS sporting event there ever has been.” He’s not wrong. The biggest crowd ever to see a Vanier Cup live is 32,847 set back in 1989 when Western beat Saskatchewan at SkyDome. It was the first year in the brand-new dome after 13-straight national championship games at Varsity Stadium. On Tuesday, Marauder after Marauder talked about seeing the lines on campus for tickets earlier in the week and being blown away by them. Many commented on how excited they’re going to be when they come running out of the tunnel onto the field on Friday night into the noise from thousands and thousands of McMaster fans. “Our fans always travel well and we had pretty good support in B.C. (last year),” slotback Brad Fochesato says. “But to know we’re an hour down the road and everyone’s been getting their tickets and hyping it up all week, I think it’s going to be something special to have a lot of maroon and grey here.” Tickets for the 7:30 kickoff are available at ticketmaster.ca and at vaniercup.ca. Upper-deck seats are $40. Helping build the hype has been an unusually high level of interest from the national media thanks to last year’s double-overtime classic game between the same two teams. A documentary on that game that some say is the most exciting ever played will be shown on Thursday night at 7:30 on TSN. With all that helping create buzz, organizers say they expect to match the all-time attendance record. At least. Considering the impact the game could have on exposing Canadian university football to some neophytes — and the impact a big, loud home crowd could have on his team — Ptaszek is hoping for more than that. “Hockey-starved southern Ontario sports fans need to come to the Rogers Centre on Friday night,” Ptaszek says. “There’s no reason why 32,000 needs to be the ceiling. Why not 40,000?”