Only one BC Lion finalist for CFL's year-end individual awards

Befitting what became a mediocre regular season by their standards, the BC Lions have just one finalist among the nominees for the six year-end Canadian Football League individual awards that will be presented later this month in Montreal. Defensive lineman Cameron Wake will easily win his second straight Top Defensive Player honour as he’s up against Winnipeg’s Doug Brown in that category. Other than that, however, the rest of Wake’s teammates were shutout when the finalists were announced by the league Tuesday morning.

The Lions placed 13 players on the CFL West Division All-Star team Monday, but it’ll be interesting to see how many of those make the grade when the overall league All-Stars are announced next week.

The Lions can’t worry about things like individual honours. Their focus should be solely on the Saskatchewan Roughriders and how to beat them when the teams meet in Regina to kickoff the CFL playoffs on Saturday afternoon. With TSN in its first year as the league’s official broadcaster, the first two weeks of the playoffs have been switched to Saturdays to avoid conflict with National Football League games on Sundays. It’s breaking with long-standing tradition and is a bit of a gamble considering Saturdays at this time of the year in this country are associated with hockey. We’ll have to wait to see the television ratings to see if Saturday playoffs are the right thing for the CFL.

The Grey Cup—as always—will be played on a Sunday. This year's game is on November 23 in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.