Canada West announces 2013 football schedule

EDMONTON – With the 2012-13 season complete the focus now shifts to 2013-14, beginning with release of the Canada West football schedule which opens with a trio of games on Labour Day weekend and concludes with the 77th Hardy Cup game on the weekend of November 9th.

The Canada West champion will host the OUA champion in the Mitchell Bowl, one of two CIS semifinals as teams fight it out for a spot at the 49th Vanier Cup in Quebec City on November 23rd.

Canada West and Shaw Television team up for the seventh straight year to bring live gridiron action to homes across Canada throughout the season on Shaw TV and Shaw Direct (channel 299), with broadcast details to be announced in the coming months and another season of CIS Football on Shaw TV already slated for 2014.

Full Schedule

Each of the conference’s six teams will play eight games for a total of 24 conference season games, followed by a pair of semifinals the following weekend, hosted by the league’s top two finishers. Canada West sees each team in action for the first six weeks of the campaign, with a bye on Thanksgiving weekend as schools gear up for the playoff run and two more weekends of action to conclude the regular season.

After winning an unprecedented fifth consecutive Hardy Cup last fall, the University of Calgary Dinos open defence of their title at the Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver against the UBC Thunderbirds on the afternoon of Saturday, August 31. The Saskatchewan Huskies host provincial rival and 2012 Hardy Cup finalist Regina one day earlier as the Rams begin life without standout QB Marc Mueller and, also on opening night, the Manitoba Bisons play their first home game at the new Investors Group Field versus the Alberta Golden Bears.

Action heats up in Week 2 as the Dinos travel to face Regina on Friday, September 6 in a rematch of the 76th Hardy Cup, this time at Mosaic Stadium. The teams face one another a second time, in Calgary on October 18. In last season’s conference final at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, the host side won handily, 38-14, in a contest that marked Regina’s first appearance in the final since 2007.

Alberta plays its first home game of the year against UBC on September 7, while Calgary is the last to play a home-opener, on September 14 against the Saskatchewan Huskies

An interesting match-up takes place in Week 4 when Manitoba visits Calgary. While the Dinos won all three meetings with the Bisons in 2012, including a semifinal hosted by Calgary, it was the memorable regular season finale that produced seemingly unbeatable records and one of the most incredible games in Canada West history, a wild and crazy record-setting 78-54 thriller before 757 fans on a cold, windy night at McMahon Stadium.

Each school will complete the eight-game conference season schedule on the weekend of October 25-26, and all three games may very well have playoff implications during such a short season.

With starting fifth-year quarterbacks graduating from UBC, Regina and Alberta, 2013 promises to showcase plenty of new stars and future talent in competitive games on the road to the playoffs, where the top four teams advance to the semifinals on November 1-2.

The Hardy Cup classic goes the following weekend, hosted by the highest-seeded team, with the winner hosting the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) champion in the Mitchell Bowl on November 16th as teams battle for a spot in the 49th Vanier Cup game, hosted in Quebec City for the second straight year by Université Laval on November 23rd.

Detailed radio, television and canadawest.TV webcast schedules will be made available in the coming months.

About Canada West Universities Athletic Association
Canada West is consistently the most decorated of the four conferences in Canadian Interuniversity Sport, winning 100 CIS national over the last 10 seasons. Comprised of 16 schools from the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada West produces numerous major award winners and Academic All-Canadian student-athletes each year, with many going on to athletic success around the globe in pro leagues or events such as the Olympics, Paralympics or Universiade Games. @cwuaa on Twitter. #cwfball

A proud member of Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS).