One would think three championships in 100 years would teach a fan base a little humility.

But the concept is completely lost on the Saskatchewan Roughriders and their fan base.

This is a franchise that has spent the bulk of its time as a laughing stock rather than a flagship for the league.

Yet they’re carrying on like they’re Montreal Canadiens.

Wednesday’s online pole on reddeeradvocate.com asked the question “Which CFL team most deserved the title of ‘Canada’s football team?’” and as to be expected the Roughriders lead by a large margin.

The more interesting pole question directed mainly at Roughrider fans would be “How many non-Roughriders in the CFL can you name?” I can guarantee you it wouldn’t be many.

Their bandwagon has turned into a traveling frat party, where the drunker and the more ignorant the better.

I wish I could speak better of the average fan of ’Rider Nation, but I just can’t.

Even TSN has gotten in on the act, joining in with Roughrider fans festivities on more than one occasion, and then still finding a way to look beyond the thrashing the Roughriders took at the hands of the Stampeders for this week’s power rankings.

I’ve seen more bad than good out of this fandom.

I’ve been at Eskimos and Roughrider games at Commonwealth Stadium and watched during one pregame a Roughrider fan walk up to a flag waving Eskimos fan, take the flag pole, break it over his knee and hand it back to him. Needless to say the Eskimos fan needed to be restrained as the Roughriders fan walked off.

This is the same group of fans who thinks its cool to wear a hollowed out watermelon on their head, and then sent threats to kicker Paul McCallum after missing a kick in 2004 and followed up by vandalizing his house and dumping a load of manure on his neighbour’s driveway thinking it was McCallum’s.

Where the pride, the pageantry and sense of entitlement comes from I just don’t know.

I belong to a group of fans that is even more tortured than any Roughrider fan — the Chicago Cubs — and yes they have been accused from time-to-time as being more frat than fan, but at least their is a sense of humility amongst us. We don’t grow in numbers because it is the cool thing to do. Most of us are cursed to follow them because our dad did as did their dad’s before them. And the drinking and carrying on has become a way of dealing with the shame. With the Cubs there is always a sense of impending doom, waiting for that other shoe to drop.

And neither are Cubs fans the classiest group of fans in sport either.

However, they know their role and where they sit in the pantheon of sport.

It is a sense that is completely lost on those who look to the gopher.

I actually understand the long-time ’Riders fan, the ones that have put up with more Reggie Slacks, Nealon Greens and Henry Burris’, than Kent Austins, Ron Lancasters and George Reeds. For them being a Roughriders’ fan isn’t a fashion statement and it’s not about getting ripped on game day. It’s the ones that don’t know a rouge from the double fisted Pilsners in their left and right hands that I can’t stand, and more and more that is becoming the majority of them.

I honestly thought I had left the bulk of this warped fandom behind with Lloydminster in my rearview mirror — at least there they had an excuse living on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.

But go into almost any sporting goods store even in Red Deer and you will find twice as much Roughriders’ apparel than Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders combined.

I’m sure they will tell you that they sell more of the Roughriders stuff, but you can’t sell what you don’t have and I have left those stores more often than not empty handed.

We live in Alberta for crying out loud.

I got to say I’m sick of it.

Between delusional Toronto Maple Leaf fans and the Roughriders, I don’t know which is worse.

At the very least there is finally something fans from Edmonton and Calgary can band together on — our contempt for the Roughriders.

jaldrich@reddeeradvocate.com