It is folly personified to believe one can make a definitive list of the 10 best moments in U Sport in 2016.

Here, though, is what comes clearly to mind when one tries to recapture moments that exemplified what the spirit of university sport. People who are focused on high performance but also want to keep some space for personal growth that often gets more compromised in the corporatized NCAA. People who know the social value of sport, of representation. It's hard to reduce all of that to 10 bullet points, but at least we know the greatest U Sport moment of the year was not a press conference.

(Yes, really. Someone thinks that.)

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To put it in perspective how long Brian Towriss has graced the Canadian football landscape: he started coaching the Saskatchewan Huskies right around the time that Laurier coach Michael Faulds was born.

Or if you'll indulge a personal note: my brother bought his first home this year. He was born in 1984, Towriss' first year at the reins in the Bridge City. Talk about longevity: 33 seasons, encompassing a record 315 games and 196 wins, with 11 conference titles and three Vanier Cups (1990, '96 and '98) is very self-explanatory. The hometown StarPhoenix mentions that Towriss' postseason record was very spotty over the last 10 seasons, but it certainly was not for any lack of trying. Saskatchewan also had a heartbreaking 39-38 loss to Calgary in the 2009 Hardy, which could have been a last hurrah.

Don't tell me that #USports Football doesn't have a following when the Brian Towriss story trends #2 in Canada. @KrownCountdownU pic.twitter.com/pAnbL3BwSP

— Jim Mullin (@Jim_Mullin) December 19, 2016

.@SKHuskies Towriss coached 154 all-stars, 71 All-Canadians and 47 who played in the @CFL over his 33 seasons. @cwuaa @Usports

— Krown Countdown U (@KrownCountdownU) December 19, 2016

With Saskatchewan bring in a new governance model for sports and athletics director Basil Hughton retiring in June (as noted by CBC), the timing is probably right to start a transition. Hughton's comment that Towriss is the "ultimate team player" alludes to that.

Saskatchewan will likely have a successor in place within the next two months.

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The Bishop's Gaiters football team is moving to another conference, at long last.

Late Wednesday, Sébastien Lajoie of La Presse reported that the Gaiters, who have had only two winning seasons since the turn of the millennium, are leaving the RSEQ league to form a conference with the four Atlantic University Sport teams. It's long been rumoured as a logical step for the Lennoxville, Que., team, and now it's actually happening: a league with five like-minded, like-sized schools ("offrent toutes un programme d'études en « liberal arts », elles sont de même taille, ont la même réalité financière et des budgets similaires accordés à leurs équipes sportives," as Lajoie put it). In other words, the schools that are "primarily undergraduate" are actually going head-to-head, how novel.

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