HOW ARGOS GOT A SLICE OF HAM
Blockbuster deal in 1993 saw 16 players switch teams
Sixteen Canadian Football League players have been traded since May 1.
It seems unlikely 16 more will change hands Wednesday by 3:59 p.m. ET as the CFL hits its trade deadline.
Only one trade in league history has met that threshold for enormity and it was finalized more than 25 years ago. On Jan. 28, 1993, during board of governors meetings in Edmonton, then-Eskimos general manager Hugh Campbell and his Toronto counterpart Mike McCarthy swapped 16 players with quarterback Tracy Ham heading from the Green and Gold to the Boatmen as the centrepiece.
Eight for eight, in theory. “Eight for one, really,” said McCarthy.
“Was it a good trade? No. I wanted to get a quarterback, but it didn’t work out the way it should have. All the other pieces, I had to trust too many other people to do their jobs and they didn’t do their jobs right. It was so irritating.”
McCarthy had been one of the premier bird dogs in the CFL and felt he could replace any player eventually. But in Toronto, he was general manager of a football team and ringmaster of a sideshow, leaving him little time for scouting.
Majority owner Bruce McNall brought on John Candy and Wayne Gretzky in minority roles, signed Raghib “Rocket” Ismail to a multimillion-dollar contract and cracked open a big can of crazy. Crowds surged for home and away games, Sky Sports showed Argos highlights in Europe and Asia and Toronto won the 1991 Grey Cup.
But the euphoria didn’t last. The Argos missed the playoffs in 1992, quarterback Matt Dunigan left as a free agent for Winnipeg and Ismail bolted for the NFL.
Coincidentally, Ham wanted more money and was ready to play out his option in Edmonton in 1993 to get it. Rumours were also floating around in early 1993 that the Hamilton Tiger Cats had essentially run out of money and would need to off-load quarterback Damon Allen’s contract.
Though the fledgling Sacramento franchise was said to be in the mix for Allen’s services, so too were the Eskimos.
Those factors set the stage for the biggest trade in CFL history.
“You can never have too many good quarterbacks, but you can as they get older and they all want to play,” said Campbell, who retired in 2006. “So we were trying to help Toronto and at the same time help ourselves, which we did.”
They would eventually help themselves to many of Toronto’s best players. But it didn’t start out as a mega deal.
McCarthy said the topic of a Ham trade was raised to him first by then-Eskimos football operations manager Bruce Lemmerman in late 1992. It surfaced again in early January 1993 at the American Football Coaches Convention in Dallas, when McCarthy, Lemmerman and Campbell had an afternoon chat in a hotel lobby.
Three weeks later, the protagonists met again at the governors meetings in Edmonton, where the big news was supposed to be the announcement of a new franchise in San Antonio. But prospective owner Larry Benson didn’t have the money, the franchise died a public death and then-commissioner Larry Smith was in dire need of a distraction.
“The trade wasn’t supposed to happen then,” said McCarthy. “This was all about San Antonio. This was to cover the egg on his face, to do this trade.”
At the time, McCarthy wasn’t comfortable going ahead with the deal until he had a better grasp on all of the Eskimos personnel. He knew Ham, Chris Johnstone, Ken Winey, Craig Ellis and Enis Jackson, but had no clue about John Davis, Travis Oliver and Cam Brousseau.
In return, the Eskimos got quarterback Rickie Foggie, receivers D.K. Smith and Eddie Brown, defensive backs Don Wilson and Ed Berry, defensive end Leonard Johnson and special teamers J.P. Izquierdo and Bruce Dickson.
Six weeks later, Edmonton sent four players and cash to Hamilton for Allen and went on to win the 1993 Grey Cup. Toronto went on to miss the playoffs after finishing 3-15.
I wanted to get a (QB), but it didn’t work out the way it should have.