Saskatchewan and Winnipeg have both figured in some of my most nightmarish Grey Cup memories.

Your once-in-a-generation Grey Cup win has been delivered!

The Saskatchewan Roughriders won Grey Cups in 1966, 1989 and ... just now. :)

They beat the Winnipeg Blue bombers 23-19 (CFL quarterback-turned-TSN analyst Danny McManus predicted the score, but got the result wrong).

I said two weeks ago I would cheer for the 'Riders in the playoffs, closing the post with, "May the team with the best fans win!" As it happened, the team with the second-best fans lost.

One thing you can say about 'Riders fans is they have supported the team through every crest and trough of the sometimes stormy seas that flatlands franchise has sailed. I don't know how many Toronto Argonauts fans drive round trips of eight hours or more from the Ontario equivalents of places like Leader and Prince Albert to catch a game. However, I'm willing to make the following guess: Not many.*

* About 1,000 people came out to Regina's airport at 1:30 a.m. to welcome the team back after it beat B.C. in the Western final on Nov. 18. That would be equivalent to almost 13,000 Torontonians showing up to welcome the Argos. Eric Tillman, the 'Riders GM, said recently that about two dozen fans showed up when the Argos returned after winning the 2004 Grey Cup.

I heard one story about a guy flying to T.O. from Vietnam to be there for the 'Riders Cup appearance. One of my old friends from my Saskatchewan days came up from Charlotte, N.C.

I genuinely hope the 'Riders fans enjoy the party tonight and in the coming days.

But mostly, I hope my beloved Edmonton Eskimos climb out of the toilet and start winning again, so the natural order of the universe can be restored.

However, methinks 'Riders fans should make plans to attend the 2020 Grey Cup. I got a feeling about that one ...

You might also want to see Grey Cup traumas past.

From the NYT:

Facebook, the popular social networking site, has become a full-fledged platform for communicating, sharing and advertising. ABC News is betting that it will become a platform for political coverage, as well.

ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership — the site’s first with a news organization — that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “U.S. Politics” category.

To underscore their collaboration, the two organizations will announce today that they are jointly sponsoring Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on Jan. 5, three days before the primary election there.

“Through this partnership, we want to extend the dialogue both before and after the debate,” said Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president for business development.

The announcements are another sign that news organizations are looking to capitalize on the potential power of Facebook, which began as a database of college friendships, and other social networking sites. Media companies like The New York Times and The Washington Post have produced pages for use on Facebook and some newspapers, magazines and television stations have recently invited users to join special pages that are set up to follow reporters’ political coverage. But ABC’s new relationship is intended to be deeper.

Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes, a book about the 1988 race for the White House, stressed the notion of presidential contest as ordeal. It also promoted the formula that great candidate = great president.

Wrong, says Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine.