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Rules are rules, the league responded.

The rule is that the Western Conference champion gets to spend the week in the home locker room while the Eastern representative resides in the visiting dressing room. The only way the Eskimos can make the playoffs and get into the Grey Cup now would be as the Eastern representative.

While the organization continues to plan to play host to the Grey Cup festival, they’re not giving up hope and have formulated a plan to keep their players in their own dressing room in the event the fascinating and quirky situation should happen.

“Let’s put it this way. If we were to have the opportunity to be in that scenario, I would want to see if there is a written guideline or rule in place that speaks to that,” said president and CEO Len Rhodes.

“If there is such an existing rule, our club would want to see it. If it exists, we would respect it. However, we would still be willing to make a contribution to the visiting team’s charity of choice to keep our dressing room for our team, making something good out of it for everyone.”

If it doesn’t happen, and hands up anyone who still believes there’s a chance, it would not be the first time a Grey Cup host city did not make the playoffs, although being 5-2 after seven games and ranked the No. 2 team in the league through to Labour Day, and finishing fifth with the other four teams in the league would be tough to find a match.

The fact is that if the Eskimos miss the playoffs three of the last four Grey Cup hosts will have missed them.