Welcome to the CFL Slant!
Welcome to “The CFL Slant” on the newly-remodeled GoAlsGo.com. I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the new site, offering my take on what’s happening in the CFL and interacting with Alouettes fans like myself. I know it’s going to be a great ride, and I can’t wait for the ball to get really rolling once free agency starts! I’ve been covering the CFL for seven seasons now, and the Alouettes for five years.
As an English Professor down here in south Louisiana, the one question I get asked more than any other (on both sides of the border!) is, “How in the world did you get involved writing about Canadian football?” It’s not a short story, but I guess now’s as good a time as any to share it with those of you who don’t already know it. Down here in the southern United States, football is like a religion. If the game is being played anywhere, we’re queued up to watch. The NFL may be king down here, especially where I am close to New Orleans, but not by much. College games at some of our bigger NCAA schools draw better crowds than pro ball. Even high school games in Louisiana and Texas draw in tens of thousands of fans on Friday nights. Heck, my oldest son’s 8-9 year old team plays in front of three thousand people! I’m certainly no exception to the crazy football culture I was raised in.
As long as I can remember, I’ve loved every kind of football you could imagine. In fact, one of my earliest childhood memories is of slapping the TV screen while Super Bowl III was on. I was two that year! The one thing about my household that was a little different than most, though, was that my dad was always a fan of leagues that weren’t the NFL. He loved Otto Graham and the Cleveland Browns before they joined the NFL. And he cheered when Graham kicked the Eagles butts his first year in the league, showing the NFL teams they weren’t all that.
My dad and older brother were also big-time fans of the Houston Oilers. Before New Orleans was given an NFL team, Houston was the closest pro ball, and the Astrodome was always one of our favorite places to see football games. In our house, we always followed other pro football leagues as closely as possible. Whether it was the World League, the USFL, the XFL, or the CFL, if there was news to be had, we were reading it. In the late 70s and early 80s some of my favorite players made the jump to the CFL instead of playing in the NFL. And that really drew my interest north of the border. When players like Bruce Clark, Billy White Shoes Johnson, Fred Biletnikoff, and Vince Ferragamo went north, so did my heart.
I followed the game as best I could through publications like “Pro Football Weekly,” but my big introduction to Canadian football came in the early 80s when the NFL went on strike, and games were televised on NBC. Once I got my eyes on the game, I was hooked for life. As a kid, I loved everything about the Canadian game. The size of the field, all the passing, the field position strategy—it was all great.
I feel that same way today watching the game. The closest thing to it down here was the Arena League. When New Orleans finally got its own Arena League team, the VooDoo, I fell into the job of beat columnist for ArenaFan.com writing weekly columns about the players and coaches as well as game reports. Since so many of the players had CFL experience, I mentioned the league often while writing about the VooDoo. As fate would have it, somebody in the CFL office took note of how often I mentioned the league in a favorable light in my pieces, and they contacted me about writing a column for the CFL.ca offering an American’s take on the CFL.
For five season’s, I wrote a weekly Insights and Analysis column, “Rouge, White, and Blue,” for CFL.ca until moving on to TheScore.com to handle their “Redzone” blog. After the Grey Cup in Winnipeg, former Als New media guru Noah Sidel asked me to write the “South of 49” column for MontrealAlouettes.com and later the “Head-2-Head” features that run now during the season. Currently, I write the “From the 55” column for the CFLPA on ProPlayers.ca, too, in addition to the work I’ll be doing on GoAlsGo.com and MontrealAlouettes.com.
As weird as it might sound for a guy growing up in south Louisiana to be such a huge fan of Canadian football, that’s my life. Next to my family, and I guess my day job, the bulk of my time is spent following the CFL and CIS, and writing about it. I’ve been lucky enough to be given outlets (like this one!) to share my takes on the game. And you can bet I’ll be showing the proper respect and gratitude in everything you read from me. It’s the only way I can repay some of the joy Canadian football has brought into my life. So, now that the big intro is out of the way, I hope you’ll be coming back to read more of my “CFL Slant.” Please check back next week to get my take on CFL free agency and a few other off-season happenings. The league calendar kicks off February 16, and I can’t wait to tee it up.