MAGIC FLUTIE TO GET ARGO HONOUR

CFL TEAM SETS UP SPECIAL NIGHT FOR FORMER DYNAMIC QUARTERBACK

Din Toronto oug 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 during an eight-year career in the CFL. It began with two seasons in B.C. with the Lions before moving on for four more with the Calgary Stampeders, and then finished with those two in Toronto before Flutie went back to the NFL to attend to some unfinished business.

Both years in Toronto, he was named the league’s most outstanding player, 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, no where 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 247, 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, were the presence of two individuals in particular.

The first was Michael “Pinball” Clemons, a man whose involvement with the team