We look back at the one blockbuster trade that changed history in a good way for the Eskimos — but not so much for the Argonauts
Just 16 Canadian Football League players have been traded since May 1.
And it seems unlikely that 16 more will change hands by 3:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, as the CFL hits its trade deadline. Even less plausible is the prospect of 16 being dealt in one transaction.
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 at the Westin Hotel in Edmonton, then-Eskimos GM 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, now an executive with the spring 2019 startup Major League Football.
“Was it a good trade? No,” he continued. “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.
“I was mad at myself because I wasn’t the every day personnel guy anymore. There were guys I didn’t see.”
McCarthy had been one of the premier bird dogs in the CFL for years 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 multi-million 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, so the Eskimos were looking to trade him before he fled for free. They had Tom Muecke and Dechane Cameron behind Ham, but rumours were already 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 hefty contract.
Though the fledgling Sacramento franchise was said to be in the mix for Allen’s services, so too were the Eskimos.
All 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 and splits his time between residences in California and Idaho. “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 megadeal.
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.
“We sat there and started talking about stuff — two-fortwo, three-for-three — maybe trade for Tracy because everybody I seemed to get got hurt,” said McCarthy. “In 1992, we got pretty beat up. So I said ‘well, we’ll talk about it.’”
McCarthy said he had previously played golf with Ham and former Eskimo Dan Kepley in Kelowna at a CFL Players Association event, and liked the kid.
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 for the assembled media.
“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. He says ‘Mike, can you help me with the trade?’ I said ‘Larry what the (bleep) are you talking about? I said there isn’t any trade now. There is the possibility of a trade.”
Smith, now a member of
the Canadian Senate, did not return an e-mail seeking confirmation of McCarthy’s take on that episode. But more than one Canadian sports writer published similar thoughts on the subject in the immediate aftermath.
At the time, McCarthy wasn’t comfortable going ahead with the deal until he had a better grasp on all of the Eskimo personnel. He knew Ham, Chris Johnstone, Ken Winey, Craig Ellis and Enis Jackson, but had no clue about John Davis, Travis Oliver and draft pick Cam Brousseau.
“So now I’m on the phone all day, all night, trying to find out who these nobodies are that Edmonton wants to trade us.”
That’s not quite exactly how Campbell remembers it.
“He said he wanted to make it look good, so just give me guys. I don’t want to insult anyone. He said I need some guys. I just remember that statement.”
In return for those eight guys, 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.
It had gone from two-fortwo to eight-for-eight in a matter of days. Campbell said the escalation was all on McCarthy.
“As he kept doing that, we felt we kept upgrading our team. I can remember (Eskimo offensive co-ordinator) Adam Rita going ‘if we don’t win this thing, we should be fired.’ Adam had been in Toronto and knew all the players real well. I know particularly Donnie Wilson was the one he wanted.
“There was no guy we got that was worth Tracy Ham, so for us it was the collective group,” continued Campbell. “For them, there was nobody they wouldn’t give up for Tracy Ham. We stopped when we got embarrassed at how many players we got. He would have started winning the trade if we’d gone any further. We took what they had. They got what they wanted.”
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.
Ham struggled in the runand-shoot offence installed by Mouse Davis, who wasn’t on board as offensive co-ordinator when the trade was made. Ham played just 18 games for the Argos, left in 1994 as a free agent and won a Grey Cup with Baltimore in 1995.
Nobody else involved in the deal played more than six games with Toronto. Davis, Oliver, Brousseau and Johnstone didn’t play a single one. Ellis played one, Jackson five and Winey six.
That’s 30, about 250 fewer than the Eskimos got from the players on their side of the lopsided ledger.
Campbell said he thought McCarthy was under orders from McNall headquarters in Los Angeles to do the deal, no matter what. McCarthy said that wasn’t the case.
“We had talked about a quarterback. I said don’t be surprised if this happens. We did it before in 1990 and it worked out really well.”
Indeed. McCarthy traded six players to B.C. for Dunigan in March 1990, laying the foundation for the 1991 Grey Cup winning team. But you can’t win them all.
“You do have to try,” said McCarthy.