Coe a pest of many colours
‘ HE IS A NUISANCE’ Outspoken Stampeder drives offences insane from linebacker spot
HAMILTON • Yesterday, Scott Coe was a blond. Next week, he could be a redhead, or something slightly more eccentric. He tried pink before, and it seemed to get a reaction out of people, and that’s where he really has his fun.
“It changes, week to week,” the Calgary Stampeders linebacker said. “I have my hair stylist back home … she takes care of me. I’m sure it will have to be cut sometime soon, because it’s getting ridiculously long. I was going to go with a little black in there, some Hamilton colours, for the memories. But my roots are growing in dark anyway, so I figure I’d just let ’ em go.”
Letting go, on the field against opponents and off the field with reporters, has earned Coe a devoted following of both boosters and bashers over his four years in the Canadian Football League.
He has been characterized as a pest and a media hound, someone who never met a camera he didn’t like. But he has also been praised for his rise from a special teams specialist to a starting linebacker with the speed to chase down quarterbacks, running backs and receivers with equal parts chaos and skill.
Coe finished 10th in the league with 71 defensive tackles last year and is in the top 15 again this season. The Stampeders are allowing fewer than 23 points per-game and, heading into tonight’s game against the Hamilton Tiger- Cats, they have a chance to mount an attack on Edmonton for second place in the West Division.
“ Coe is a nuisance,” B. C. Lions slotback Jason Clermont wrote in The Vancouver Sun earlier this season. “ He is the guy who finds your last nerve and then tap dances on it. He has no regard for his body and flies around the field hurling himself at anyone in another coloured jersey and giving offensive players headaches.”
The 25-year-old Winnipegger drew more criticism earlier in the season when he suggested his hometown Blue Bombers were in for a year filled with struggle. It turned out he was right, but it wasn’t received kindly at the time.
“The guy is a media whore,” Winnipeg defensive tackle Doug Brown told the Calgary Herald. “I just want to know what makes him think he’s an authority or somewhat qualified to comment on this team.”
Coe’s qualifications as a football player got him picked in the fifth round of the 2002 Canadian college draft. Hamilton took him 43rd overall from the University of Manitoba and were prepared to give him a starting role in his sophomore year, before he got injured and lost in the shuffle of a miserable season during which the Ticats fall into bankruptcy while compiling a 1- 17 record.
Hamilton wanted him to stay, but an offer from Calgary proved too attractive. The Stampeders use a four-linebacker scheme — compared to the three used by the Ticats — which allows Coe to use his speed and skill attacking from the outside, instead of having to fight inside.
“He’s the kind of guy that’s good for a team,” said Ron Lancaster, Hamilton’s senior director of football operations. “ He’s just so fun-loving. He fits in with players well, he’s good in the locker room, he’s good on the sidelines, he’s a hustler on the field. And he likes to play the game, and he will hit you. He just has fun with the game of football, and those kind of guys, you can’t have enough of them.”
But if Coe’s sense of humour made Hamilton’s dressing room a little more comfortable in 2003, his sense of duty should make him an annoying presence tonight.
“If I can get under a guy’s skin and take him off his game, or get a few extra shots here and there, that’s what I love doing,” he said, smiling. “I love playing this game, and whatever I’ve got to do to keep playing, that’s what I’ll do.”