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Back when he coached the Calgary Stampeders, Wally Buono once stood in the middle of McMahon Stadium the day before a Labour Day Classic and coached a couple of visiting columnists.
"OK, now take a deep breath," he said. "And smell."
Then he made the statement.
"You can smell it, can't you? You can smell football in the air. That's what I love about Labour Day. You can smell football in the air."
IN THE AIR TONIGHT
At about 2:30 this afternoon, a pair of buses, loaded with an abnormally high percentage of Edmonton Eskimos players who haven't smelled it before, will pull into McMahon Stadium with a rookie head coach who can't wait to step off the bus and smell football in the air like he hasn't done here in 22 years.
"You walk into McMahon Stadium and there really is something in the air," said Richie Hall.
"I'm really excited about it because when you come to the ball park there's a buzz. That's sports. That's excitement. It's a different atmosphere. There is only one game in the league like this.
And this one, coming off that great game in Edmonton, is extra special that way with 5,000 more seats installed for the Grey Cup game to bring it up to 40,000 and no tickets left to provide for the requests from the players.
"We tried to get tickets for our players like we usually do, but they said, 'That's it. We're done.' "
It's been a long time since Richie Hall was a Calgary Stampeder and had the Labour Day experience.
Hall first came to this game in 1983 as a rookie defensive back and helped play a part in a rookie Eskimos coach being fired.
Coming to Calgary in first place with four wins in his last five games, he doesn't have to be worried about being fired by the Eskimos like Pete Kettela was the year he replaced Hugh Campbell with the team which had just won five Grey Cups in a row for Edmonton.
"Back then, beating that great Eskimos team was a benchmark," Hall said.
Hall remembers Eskimos great Brian Kelly real well. He had to try cover him. That wasn't much fun. But the whole scene was fun to experience.
"One of the things I was always excited about was that it gives you as close to a college atmosphere as you can get. It's as close to college as I've ever seen since I played in college.
"And I've always loved that college atmosphere" he said.
"It can be like, 'You won the national championship, but lost the big rivalry game,' " he said, banging the wall with his fist as if he was a college president talking to his head coach of those monster matches like Auburn-Alabama and Michigan-Michigan State.
WYOMING
Every school has one. For Hall it was Colorado State vs. Wyoming.
"I love coming in for the game on the bus. That's what we did in Wyoming. That's how it is with all the big traditional rivalry games in college football."
It's the rivalry and the history first and foremost. This will be the 49th Labour Day Classic.
Hall had a taste of the Edmonton-Calgary rivalry not only as a player but as a fan watching the Oilers and Flames have some of the greatest Stanley Cup playoff series ever played.
"Steve Smith," he said and pumped his fist in celebration of the Oilers' own goal which cost the hockey team their own five-in-a-row run.
"I loved Wayne Gretzky but I cheered for Calgary."
But it's more than Edmonton-Calgary.
"It's all the tailgate stuff around this game ... they're out there for hours before the players arrive."
It's also, he said, that smell in the air Buono was talking about, the smell of the end of summer and the arrival of fall combined with the belief that the real football season in the CFL begins on Labour Day.
"It's that everybody is talking about it. It's the whole build-up.
"I like it because you guys really build it up," said Hall of the media. "But I like it at 2 p.m.," he said of this year's 5:30 p.m. start. "Why did they change the game time?"
Indeed. Why do people insist on trying to mess with something that's perfect?
TERRY.JONES@SUNMEDIA.CA