Get Set for the 2026 Banjo Bowl!

It may not be the Grey Cup, and it doesn’t carry the league-wide theatre of Labour Day itself. But for these two teams, the competition for this in-season trophy, unofficial though it is, remains fierce. According to Wikipedia, the ‘Banjo Bowl’ name was coined by Blue Bombers board member David Asper in early 2004, inspired by an infamous comment made by Bombers kicker Troy Westwood in the week running up to a 2003 West Division Semi-Final between the two clubs.

The story behind that comment is better than most people realise, and it is worth telling properly. Westwood had picked up the phrase ‘banjo-picking inbreds’ from a Vancouver newspaper columnist years earlier, while having breakfast with fellow Bomber Bob Cameron ahead of a game against the BC Lions. It lodged itself in his head. Years later, in the build-up to the 2003 Labour Day game, with his own mother’s side of the family from Regina and a standing bet with his grandmother riding on the result, Westwood decided the line was too good to keep to himself, despite Cameron apparently begging him not to say it out loud. He aimed the comment squarely at Roughrider fans in a pre-game media session. Cameron’s instincts were, it turned out, entirely correct, and the quote went national within hours.

In a media interview, Westwood had referred to Roughriders fans as “A bunch of Banjo pickin’ inbreds.” Before the two sides met again in a 2003 playoff game, this time in Winnipeg, he ‘apologised’ in the most tongue-in-cheek way imaginable, stating that “the vast majority of the people in Saskatchewan have no idea how to play the banjo.” Saskatchewan defensive lineman Scott Schultz, a Saskatchewan native himself, marked the occasion by celebrating every sack of Winnipeg’s quarterback with an exaggerated air-banjo mime, and the Roughriders went on to win that playoff game 37-21, on the road, which is about as complete a rebuttal as bulletin-board material ever receives.

Westwood himself has always maintained the whole thing was born of affection rather than malice, pointing out repeatedly that he grew up steeped in the rivalry and that his own family roots run straight through Saskatchewan. What, perhaps, gave this whole thing more legs is that the Blue Bombers were in genuine financial difficulty around this period, and the club’s board was actively hunting for ways to sell tickets and generate excitement at Canada Inns Stadium. Asper, a keen student of American college football rivalries, saw an opportunity in the fallout from Westwood’s comments and pitched the idea of branding the Labour Day rematch as its own event. Bombers president Lyle Bauer was reportedly taken aback by the pitch, but the name stuck, the first game in 2004 was even dressed up with a modest charitable donation attached to soften the Roughriders’ objections to it, and the marketing gamble worked far better than anyone at the club could have hoped. The Roughriders organisation, for what it is worth, has never officially embraced the ‘Banjo Bowl’ branding and still refers to the fixture internally as the Labour Day rematch, which only adds to the charm of the whole affair.

You would think that would be all the bulletin-board material the Roughriders would ever need, but the Blue Bombers clearly spotted a genuine opportunity in it, and it has grown into one of the true fixed points of the CFL calendar, sold out every single year since 2005.