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News April 7, 2023

First & 10 | Doug Brown Fighting for SFU Football

Steam billows behind Doug Brown (97) of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers as he runs onto the field before game action in the CFL East Division Final in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Sunday, November 20, 2011. The Canadian Press Images/CFL/Marianne Helm

@EdTaitWFC

The news came earlier this week, just as Doug Brown was on the Trans Canada and making his way back home to Winnipeg from dealings in Brandon in his gig as a medical sales professional.

And the decision this week by his Simon Fraser University, his alma mater, to give up the fight and pull the plug on their football program had the Blue Bomber legend and Canadian Football Hall of Famer angry enough to consider pulling off the highway for a moment to scream at the sky.

“Honestly, I’m totally blindsided by it. This has caught me totally unaware,” Brown said in a chat with bluebombers.com. “And my phone is blowing up right now with messages from family, friends and people – not even SFU graduates – but who attended the university and understood the importance, the history and the heritage of the program.

“I understand there were going to be challenges with what the program was facing with not being able to play in the same conference they’ve been in for a while. But this program has gone through difficult situations before and, if anything, I thought there would be an opportunity for a Canadian university to play in a Canadian conference.

“This just seems like such a knee-jerk decision by a bunch of administrators who have absolutely no idea of the storied history of the program and the players that came through it and their impact on football in Canada. It’s just a very sad day for Canadian football and for a lot of aspiring players in British Columbia and beyond.”

A brief timeline here: SFU had been the only Canadian university football program playing in the United States, most recently as a member of the Lone Star Conference. The team was 1-9 last season – the lone win a 46-14 decision over West Texas A&M in their finale – and aside from a 31-24 overtime loss to Texas Permian Basin, was regularly pummelled by their competitors with an average margin of defeat of 29.5 points. Over the program’s 12 years playing NCAA Division II football the club went just 18-99.

Photo courtesy SFU Athletics

Mentioned in the statement announcing the plug had been pulled on the program is the fact that the team doesn’t have a conference to play in this season. And that’s what rankles so many, including Brown, as the SFU decision makers hadn’t even approached Canada West about rejoining the conference, according to Dan Barnes of Postmedia.

“It sounds me to me like the administrators didn’t have enough respect for the program to even do their due diligence on this and try to salvage this and find a Plan B,” said Brown. “It’s an indictment of the leadership team at Simon Fraser. It’s just so lazy and short-sighted in my mind.

“About a month ago I was joking with Keith Hiscox, who is another graduate who had a short career in the CFL, about where SFU was going to play its football this year. But we had an expectation and assumption it was going to get figured out because this program is too valuable a property to the university and to football in general to let something like this happen. It’s a just terrible and unfortunate end of this chapter.

“It’s forced me to take this walk down memory lane from Lui Passaglia to Glenn Jackson, Sean Millington, Doug Pederson, Angus Reid, Greg Frers… it goes on and on. So many players.

“I don’t think there are many Canadian universities that have had as much impact on the game as that program has at SFU.”
More on the SFU news and other Blue Bomber notes and quotes in our latest edition of 1st & 10…

1. There is a groundswell of support now — led by some SFU alumni and the country’s movers and shakers in the sport– that might rally here to find an immediate solution for the program or, at the very least, find a place for the athletes to play.

Remember, too, that some of these athletes had already lost a season in 2020 due to the pandemic. An online petition to help save the program is here.

“There are some guys I played with that came out of that program who have more money than they know what to do with right now,” said Brown with a chuckle. “I’m not sure how that could work and I’m not sure this decision was financially motivated.

“What a far cry from the university I was so proud to represent. I have all this new gear – it might end up being collector’s items now, I suppose – but I have new SFU football shirts and hoodies. I literally just got them. I didn’t see this coming. Again, what a sad day for the university and amateur football.”

2. One more on SFU as it relates to the Blue Bombers…
Looking back at the club’s draft history only the University of Manitoba, with 65, has had more players selected by the blue and gold than SFU, with 26.

The most-decorated is Brown, who played in the NFL before coming to the Blue Bombers and being enshrined in both the WFC and Canadian Football Halls of Fame. But the list also includes Blue Bombers hall of famers Rick House and Bob Molle along with Lyall Woznesensky, Neil McKinlay and, most recently Matthias Goossen, Derek Jones and Michael Couture.

That’s a tremendous pipeline of talent that has helped feed the club’s Canadian content over the years.

3. Absolutely no clue why so many get so bent out of shape on these or why they generate so much chatter, but they do.

So, discuss amongst yourselves the CFL’s first power rankings of the year, for whatever they’re worth.

4. It was a transaction that didn’t generate any real buzz, but only adds to some of the intrigue building for the opening of training camp next month.

The Blue Bombers signed punter Chris McLean on March 31st and the 23-year-old will make the fight for work amongst the kickers all that more interesting.

MacLean spent last year at the University of Calgary, where he was named a U Sports First Team All-Canadian and a Canada West All-Star. He averaged 46.5 yards per punt, placing 11 kicks inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. MacLean transferred from the University of Toronto, where he played from 2019-21 and was a OUA Second Team All-Star in 2021.

Photo courtesy Chris Lindsey

Incumbent kicker Marc Liegghio will now have challenges for the punting chores from MacLean and American Devin Anctil, the Kansas State all-time leader in punting average; along with placekicker Chandler Staton, the Appalachian State product who had a look from the Green Bay Packers last year after he hit 20 of his 21 field-goal attempts in his final season of college while being a semi-finalist for the Groza Award as the NCAA’s top kicker.

5. A plug here for Brandon Alexander, the Blue Bombers starting safety, one of the most respected men in the locker room and a gifted musician. His new track ‘Passion’ is out this week.

We first did a story on Alexander’s musical interests three years ago before the lost 2020 season and he continues to work feverishly on both crafts – music and football.
Here’s another sample.

6. ICYMI…
We spoke to Erin Craig recently about her upcoming gig with the Blue Bombers as part of the CFL’s Women in Football initiative. That story is here. 

7. FYI: Kudos to Blue Bombers safety Nick Hallett, who was the guest speaker at the University of Toronto football banquet. Hallett was selected by the Blue Bombers in the 7th round, 61st overall, of the 2019 CFL Draft and now has two Grey Cups to his name.

Having a camera follow Willie Jefferson and Simoni Lawrence around for a day – and their workout together – would have been gold. Saw this and it left me wanting more.

And one more, just because it looks good to see Kenny Lawler in Blue Bombers colours again:

8. More good reads here from Cyril Penn, the Blue Bombers U.S. Scout who is writing regularly for bluebombers.com:
-On recently signed receiver Michael Young, Jr.
-On attending NCAA Pro Days
-The NFL Combine
-Recent Blue Bombers signings Jordan Brown and Aaron Sterling.

9. The tributes and salutes for Bud Grant, who passed away last month continue to flow.
Grant is known in these parts for all the winning his club’s did – four Grey Cup championship’s for the franchise’s all-time leader in coaching wins – but he was also an innovator.
This quote from Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, courtesy Peter King of NBC Sports:

“He was fun, he was inventive, he was creative, he was beautifully articulate, he was wise. He was so uniquely Bud. And smart. So smart. Look at how he felt about officiating. It was, what, 30 years ago that he was talking about the importance of full-time officials. That was a loooong time ago, and it’s topical again now.”
Carroll, FYI, began working with the Minnesota Vikings as an assistant coach in 1985 – Grant’s last season as the team’s boss.

10. And, finally, given the weather this week an important message from the Blue Bombers: