Greats honoured under the stars
Geroy Simon doesn’t want to give Hamilton too many tips because he’s the director of Canadian scouting for the B.C. Lions, who play the Ticats in a couple of weeks.
“They haven’t quite turned it around yet,” the Canadian Football League’s all-time leader in reception yards said before he was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame at Tim Hortons Field on Thursday night. “But they look like they’re going in the right direction.”
Simon was referring to Hamilton’s 0-8 start, followed by two straight wins. His Lions opened the 2011 season with five straight losses and were written off everywhere but in the lockerroom. They went 11-2 and won the Grey Cup, one of three Simon would earn in his unparalleled career.
“Your veterans have to take charge of the team,” he said. “They’ve gone through a coaching change here, and we didn’t, but in the end it has to be the players who lead the charge.”
Six deserving football men had their Hall of Fame busts unveiled on the field Thursday night during a dinner and induction ceremony. Simon’s peers in the class of 2017 are former Ticat and Argo linebacker and current Blue Bomber head coach Mike O’Shea; former Las Vegas, Hamilton and Montreal quarterback Anthony Calvillo, pro football’s all-time passing yardage leader; running back Kelvin Anderson, the only CFL player to rush for 1,000 yards eight years in a row, and builders Stan Schwartz, the longtime Calgary Stampeders president and executive; and Brian Towriss, legendary coach of the Saskatchewan Huskies.
Calvillo, whose presence was not guaranteed because he’s just been promoted to offensive co-ordinator of the Montreal Alouettes and they play on the weekend, arrived in time for the ceremony.
After a year with the Las Vegas Posse, Calvillo spent three years with the Tiger-Cats and was the starter after the wretched 2-16 1997 season. He then left for Montreal as a free agent, where he became a backup before eventually taking over the starter’s role and setting CFL records.
“When I left here, I thought I’d only be back as a player and a coach,” Calvillo said. “A lot of younger players didn’t realize that I’d been somewhere else before Montreal … and that it didn’t go very successfully.
“I’m happy to be able to get back for this.”
It was a rare Hall class: two of the six inductees are still in the CFL at field level: Calvillo, and O’Shea, whose Bombers are on a bye week.
O’Shea was drafted by the Eskimos, but was traded immediately to Hamilton where he played three years before trying out for the
NFL’s Detroit Lions.
He didn’t think when he arrived in Hamilton the first time, that he’d be enshrined in the same city a quarter century later.
“You don’t set out in your first training camp thinking about the Hall of Fame,” O’Shea said. “You think: ‘How the hell am I going to make it to the next practice?’
“As a young guy you don’t think of it, and as a veteran you don’t put yourself in position to be distracted by those kinds of things. “This is an exceptional honour.” O’Shea, who grew up in North Bay, is second overall in career tackles to Willie Pless, and played more games on defence than any CFLer in history.
As a Canadian middle linebacker he was a major ratio buster, which is why the Ticats tried hard to get him back after his failed National Football League tryout. Instead he ended up with the Argos, was later traded back to Hamilton, but soon returned to Toronto as a free agent.
“The problem really wasn’t the contract negotiations,” he said, preferring not to expand.
Anderson says he’s surprised that no one has broken his record of consecutive 1,000yard rushing seasons.
“It will be done,” he said. “I wish it would stand forever, but I know someone will do it.
“A credit to my offensive line. Out of the five-or-six-seven offensive linemen I had blocking for me, three were definitely there all the years: Jamie Crysdale, Jay McNeil, Fred Childress. I like to thank Vancouver for the last year of the streak. They got me 1,000 yards also.”
Schwartz coached high school in Calgary for several years and was an assistant coach with the Stamps from 1976 to ’83. He then became an executive with McMahon Stadium through ’94, then moved to the Stampeders in executive roles, including president and vicepresident, until 2016.
Towriss coached University of Saskatchewan Huskies for 36 years, 32 as head coach. The Huskies won three of their nine Vanier Cup appearances, and Towriss coached 71 allCanadians. O’Shea said he was lucky the bye week allowed him to be in Hamilton — the entire class will be introduced at Friday night’s game between the Tiger-Cats and Saskatchewan Roughriders — so a multitude of family and friends from North Bay were able to attend.
“It was very fortunate it worked out this way to allow me and my family to attend,” O’Shea said. “And all my buddies from North Bay. Guys I knew from pre-kindergarten will be here. We have an unbelievable group of guys who have stuck together.
“Without family and friends like that, and their support, you can’t achieve something like this.”