A tiny overstatement, maybe, but at least a fair debating point: Be it resolved the game to be played Monday afternoon at Ivor Wynne Stadium, the latest instalment of the great Southern Ontario rivalry, is the most significant for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats since they won their last Grey Cup way back in the 20th century.
Oh, there has been plenty of water under the bridge in the decade following that glorious day for partisans of the black and gold.
The CFL franchise has been up and mostly down, has enjoyed fleeting moments of success and long stretches of failure, has been mired in a period of futility that seems statistically impossible in an eight-team league.
There have been playoff games in the interim - though hardly any - and there will be no silverware for the victor when they meet the hated Toronto Argonauts on Labour Day other than the chance to pull even in the race for the Harold Ballard Trophy.
But at a time when the team seems finally in ascendance, in front of an honest-to-goodness full house that will represent the highest-revenue crowd in Ticats history, with a chance to bury the Argos and greatly enhance the chances of their first postseason berth since 2004, a win means far more than simply two points in the standing.
Plus there is the issue of faith, the belief system that lies at the heart of all sports fandom.
Once upon a time, during the early years of his tenure as owner - or as he prefers it, "caretaker" - of the Tiger-Cats, Bob Young looked out at a big, enthusiastic home crowd and opined that winning wasn't really everything, that the Chicago Cubs were well-supported and beloved despite not having won a World Series since 1908.
Young was wrong about that, at least when it came to selling football in Hamilton.
"I think," team president Scott Mitchell says, with the utmost respect for his boss, "that it's been a great education. Now, it's all about winning with him."
At the beginning, there was a tremendous amount of goodwill for Young, a local boy who did very well for himself, and played saviour for the bankrupt franchise. People came back to the park as an act of community as much as for the sports/entertainment. But a whole lot of those seats weren't paid for, at least in full, and as the team floundered, cynicism grew. When it came time to get rid of the freebies and raise prices to a point where it might theoretically be possible to turn a profit, the fans began to rebel.
That's why it was so important this year they had to get it right - not by signing washed-up free agents and building a dysfunctional football operation, but by starting from the ground up with a group who are actually compatible: Mitchell, head coach Marcel Bellefeuille and general manager Bob O'Billovich, who is largely responsible for the influx of CFL-ready talent so obvious in 2009.
The Ticats are only a .500 team, but anyone who has watched a very different looking group this season understands that just about every one of their indicators is pointing up.
This weekend, for the first time in a long time, ticket-buyers have decided to take a chance en masse, to give the team back their hearts. And if they keep on doing that, Young might actually be able to make a bit of money one of these days (though it's not likely he'll ever get back all that he's lost).
A new stadium that would be a big part of that may be coming thanks to the 2015 Pan American Games bid that will be decided in November. "I think you can build a strong, viable business here that isn't philanthropy," Mitchell says.
But that will be considerably more difficult if all of the early season promise comes to naught, if the Ticats stink the joint out against the Argos, if they fail to make the playoffs, if in any way this starts to look like a very bad rerun.
So it's just another midseason game, another Labour Day Classic.
The stakes this time, though, are more than bragging rights, more than the usual, more than a chance to whip the big-city guys from down the road.