There aren’t a lot of players on the current edition of the University of Calgary football squad who were around the dressing room in 2011, when an off-field decision awarded the Dinos an 8-0 record. But for Cory Roboch, an asterisked undefeated season was nothing to shout about.

“No, that was more of a get-out-of-jail-free card that year,” the third-year linebacker offered. “If you’re going to go undefeated, you want to win because you went out and competed. That’s what we want to do.”

Back in 2011, only the UBC Thunderbirds stood between the Dinos and their first perfect regular season. The latter went into Vancouver and lost the game, only to have the result reversed later because of the T-Birds’ use of an ineligible player.

On Friday night at McMahon Stadium, UBC, 4-3, once again will be the team that will try to put the only blemish on Calgary’s season. Kickoff is at 6 p.m.

“We were in UBC that last game of the year in 2011 and I remember it being kind of laid back and not too business-y,” recalled Roboch. “This year I feel our whole team wants that undefeated record because at the beginning of the season they were saying how we’d be lucky to be .500, coach would be happy to make the playoffs, stuff like that, the papers were saying, a lot of Canada was saying. Now that we’re 7-0 we’re kind of taking the conference by storm. We just want that 8-0 record just to show that, yeah, we’re a team that just because we lost a bunch of veterans we’re not going to lay down for everyone.”

Head coach Blake Nill recalled that outing and the mixed feelings he had about the result.

“There’s a lot of guys who say that you need to lose a game during the year,” he said. “There’s a lot of coaches that will say that. I’m not sure if I agree with that. It was a game that really did mean a lot to us, so you try to take an objective view; we got out without any injuries, let’s just worry about the games that matter.”

When Nill was at St. Mary’s, twice he led his teams to undefeated regular seasons, in 2000 and 2001, the second one a Vanier Cup-winner.

“For me, personally, there’s no question it’s a goal I’d like to accomplish,” he added. “I’m not going to risk playoffs by trying to accomplish that; by that I mean not doing anything foolish like players who shouldn’t be playing. But it would certainly be nice to accomplish.”

Receivers Chris Dobko and Brett Blaszko are two who are nicked and thus will sit out in order to be primed for the Canada West semifinal next weekend.

Offensive lineman Andrew Driusso came over from the Calgary Colts, who last year also went all the way through the regular schedule without suffering a loss, so for him this is déjà vu.

“I haven’t lost a season game in a long time, which is pretty cool,” laughed Driusso. “Last year, it was different because we went undefeated, expecting almost to win. But then we lost in playoffs. This year is different, the intensity and tempo is so high. It’s pushing us to go further, more than just our conference playoffs, but right to the Vanier. We’re pushing hard.