Former EE star defensive back Wilson heading to the hall
Former Edmonton defensive back part of Canadian Football Hall of Fame’s 2021 class
For your typical pro football player, the ride ends all too soon.
But Don Wilson is anything but typical. In fact, as of Tuesday, the former Edmonton Football Team defensive back will count himself among the best there ever was, having been announced to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum's class of 2021.
But it's a Hall of Fame playing career that lasted precisely one week too long, as far as he's concerned.
The veteran of 12 decorated seasons in the CFL has shifted his focus from the gridiron to the silver screen in pursuit of an acting career whose beginnings go back to his high school days in Washington, D.C.
In fact, he was still playing in the CFL when earning his biggest credit for the TV series, Earth: Final Conflict. He has also made appearances on the hit show Grey's Anatomy, as well as a list of films you may or may not have heard of.
But looking back on the bigger picture, there was a much — ahem — bigger picture he had the chance to be involved in.
“It was weird, 1998 was funny because I had started doing movies. So, I had gotten a call to try out for the movie with Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx: Any Given Sunday. Oh, my God,” Wilson said. “And the funny part about it, I was torn – I'm never torn with sports, but I was torn then. It was my last year, right?
“What happened was, if we'd have lost that first playoff game, I would have been able to be in that movie.”
Instead, he traded in the silver screen for the gridiron one final time after his Edmonton team defeated the B.C. Lions 40-33 in the divisional semifinal.
Pacino. Fox. Cameron Diaz. Dennis Quaid … Don Wilson?
Heck, the movie included cameos from former gridiron pros like Johnny Unitas, Emmitt Smith and Terrell Owens.
But so sorry, Mr. Demille. Wilson wasn't ready for his close-up just yet. Not with a date set for the division finals, where Edmonton would go on to lose 33-10 to the eventual Grey Cup champion Calgary Stampeders.
“We won the first playoff game, and then we went to Calgary and lost. I was so mad,” Wilson recalled, albeit through a big smile. “I said, `Really? Oh, y'all wanna lose now?'
“I was mad because I missed that movie and I knew I'd have been in it because of what I'd already done and I know some people that were in the movie. But that's how it is.”
Wilson would wait 23 years before getting to write a happy ending to his would-be script with Tuesday's announcement that his name will be added to the list of credits under the title of The CFL'S All-time Greatest.
Four Grey Cups in four championship appearances.
One-hundred and ninety-seven games played.
Six-hundred and sixty-seven defensive tackles.
Sixty-one interceptions. Eighteen sacks.
Eight defensive touchdowns. Six division all-star nods.
Four league all-star awards. And one memorable invite to the royal wedding of one Wayne Gretzky, on June 16, 1988, alongside quarterback Damon Allen.
He will forever go down in history as one of 16 players involved in the biggest trade in CFL history, ahead of what would be a championship 1993 season, which saw him return to Edmonton for his second of three tours.
But as wild a way as it was for Wilson's career to end, his CFL journey didn't exactly have the smoothest of beginnings, either.
After kicking off his pro career with the NFL'S Buffalo Bills from 1984-86, Wilson signed with a Montreal Alouettes club that folded its tent prior to the 1987 CFL season. Picked up by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the ensuing dispersal draft, the future Hall of Famer was cut in training camp, of all things.
It didn't take long for Edmonton to come calling. He would split most of his time between Edmonton and Toronto, where he won two more Grey Cups on the way to being named to the all-time Argonauts team in 2007.
But it was Edmonton that bookended a pretty incredible career.
“Edmonton, man, I loved Edmonton. It was like the best little, big city in Canada. I just loved Edmonton, the big mall. I had so many memories,” he said of the place he spent half of his dozen seasons, bringing home a Grey Cup in 1987 and 1993. “I started and I ended there, which to me was, like, poetic. I was so happy that they brought me back to play that 1998 season where I could end it there.”
Aaaaand, cut. That's a wrap.
The curtain will rise on this year's Hall of Fame ceremony in November, where Wilson will be officially enshrined alongside six others, including former Hamilton Tiger-cats defensive tackle Mike Walker, who finished out his stellar 10-year CFL career in Edmonton in 1990 and '91.
“Thirty years just went away so fast, it's amazing how time flies, man. When I got the call, I just couldn't believe it, I had kind of given up on it,” said Walker, a three-time CFL all-star who won the 1986 Grey Cup with the Ticats. “And I can't forget Edmonton, too. My last two years were in Edmonton.”