MAGIC FLUTIE TO BE HONOURED BY ARGOS
Team sets up special night for star who won two Grey Cups in two years with Toronto
Doug Flutie made the very most of his two years in Toronto Argonauts double blue and now the organization is responding in kind by making him an All-Time Argo.
The team will do it up right Monday night when the Argos play host to the Redblacks with an official ceremony, but Flutie did a conference call Tuesday with members of the media talking about his time in Toronto.
Back-to-back Grey Cups in 1996 and 1997 with Toronto were just two of the three Cups he won in an eight-year career in the CFL that began with two seasons in B.C. with the Lions, four more with the Calgary Stampeders and those final two in Toronto before Flutie headed back to the NFL to attend to some unfinished business.
He was named the league’s most outstanding player both years in Toronto, an honour he had previously received on four other occasions.
But for all the success he enjoyed pretty much wherever he went in the CFL, or the NFL for that matter, nowhere did he have more fun playing football than in Toronto.
“I think some of my fondest memories of playing football are from that Toronto team,” Flutie said Tuesday.
“We had a very talented team in Calgary and we won a Grey Cup out there and I have a close (relationship) with a lot of those guys. The Toronto guys, we seemed to have more fun and that’s just the way it was.
“Out of my career my Boston College days, I mean I lived with those guys. In university you live with them 24-7, you are around each other in the dorms all the time, there is just a closeness there that will never happen in the pros,” Flutie said. “But at the pro level there is no doubt in my mind that (Argonauts) team is the closest team I ever played for and the most enjoyable experience.”
Among the many reasons it was so much fun, besides the obvious fact that the team won, was the presence of two individuals in particular.
The first was Michael “Pinball” Clemons, a man whose involvement with the team continues to this day. Regardless of his role, Clemons has always managed to bring out the best in those around him.
The other was head coach Don Matthews, a true legend in the CFL and a guy whose passing the league mourned very recently.
“One of the major things Don did for me was to instil confidence in me to take over the reins and just be free and play,” Flutie said.
“He had a knack for deflecting the attention off the players and letting the players relax and go have fun. He was such a joy to play for. He won with every team. The league will miss him and I miss him.”
Flutie remembers arriving in Toronto and basically being handed the keys to the offence. That freedom, that ability to try to do anything he wanted, is a big part of the reason Flutie had the success he did in Toronto and certainly the amount of fun he had here.
“Don always had this running joke and he was kidding, but he brought the offensive co-ordinator John Jenkins and I into the office together one day,” Flutie said. “He had supreme confidence in me. He said ‘Doug, this is your team and John stay out of the way and don’t screw it up.’ ”
Flutie never had that kind of freedom again after moving back to the NFL — a move he made because “I needed to answer a couple of more questions” — but he took that confidence with him and it made him a better quarterback.
“I went from calling my own stuff, changing plays whenever I felt like it, taking risks — to having a radio in my helmet and being told what to do and trying to execute and please someone,” Flutie said.
“The one thing that carried over (from his time north of the border) was because of the success I had doing it the other way, I started voicing my own opinion more and trusting my own instincts when I first went back to the NFL, and my success in the CFL really played into that.”
Flutie wasn’t in Toronto for a long time and there will be those that question the honour he is being given because of that.
But few will argue this: In a very short time Flutie was a very big part of one of the most successful teams in the history of the franchise.