November 2019 - Adamsonmedia.com

Grey Cup means it’s party time for me

Hamilton and Winnipeg will battle for the Grey Cup on Sunday in Calgary./**Johany Jutras/CFL.ca photo**

In the week leading up to the Super Bowl – any Super Bowl – I can walk into my local supermarket and find a wide variety of party items geared toward the big game.

**Scott Adamson writes about alternative pro football leagues because it makes him happy, Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

Super Bowl cakes and Super Bowl cookies are already baked and decorated in team colors, meaning I can grab them and go.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, though – by the time most of you celebrate your Super Sunday, mine will have already come and gone. And any cakes to mark the occasion will have long since been eaten (and special ordered).

When it comes to tackle football, the Grey Cup has become my favorite single event, and this weekend it’ll be played for the 107th time when the Hamilton Tiger-Cats – the team I root for – meet the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium.

I’m quite sure there won’t be any premade goodies to snatch up at the nearest grocer. In fact, I’m guessing many of the people who work there have no idea the Grey Cup is even going on.

But that’s OK. For me, the championship of the Canadian Football League has almost always been a party for one.

It’s especially festive this season because the Ticats haven’t won the league crown since 1999 and are favored to break their 20-year drought.

I won’t bore you with my CFL back story – I’ve shared it more times than I can count and if you care, you already know it. I will say, though, that with each passing year I grow to like it much more than the NFL. I find it – for lack of a better word – cozy.

There are only nine CFL franchises and except for the ill-fated “American experiment” (which peaked at 13 teams in 1995), that’s as large as it’s ever gotten.

By NFL and Power 5 college standards, attendance is modest – and that’s a generous description.

The single game high in 2019 was 40,113 for a clash between Calgary and Edmonton at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium on September 7, and the average per game attendance was 22,917.

Bottom line, if you want a ticket to a CFL regular season game, you won’t have much trouble getting one.

But the fans who do show up show off, and I see them as my kindred spirits even though our relationship is through social media more than social interaction.

I love how they love their teams, and the players on those teams seem to truly appreciate them. The CFL gives off a working class vibe and part of that reason is because guys don’t pull down NFL money.

People relate to that.

I like that Canadian kids can grow up to star in a league that’s very much part of their culture, and American kids can make their pro dreams come true even if those dreams blossom in another country.

There’s plenty of brawn on either side of the line in any given game, but there is also a place for small, fast guys.

As someone who is small (and used to be fast), this makes me very happy.

And while some might scoff at rules that feature three downs to make 10 yards, conceded points and end zones that are 20 yards deep, I fully embrace them.

For me, the Canadian Football League isn’t a novelty – it’s grown into my favorite version of the gridiron game.

So while most of the football fans around me will be watching the end of the Dallas Cowboys-New England Patriots game at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday and gearing up for the upcoming showdown between the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers, I’ll be tuned into ESPN2 for the Grey Cup.

Shoot, I might even order a cake.

I’ll be the only one at the party, but hopefully I can party like it’s 1999.

The NASL’s Team America experiment

Long before there was a fully functioning United States Men’s National Soccer Team – and long before the USMNT fell into dysfunction – there was a professional franchise known as Team America.

**Scott Adamson’s column on soccer appears periodically, usually when he’s feeling especially soccerish.**

Blink and you might’ve missed them, but for those of us who followed the original North American Soccer League during its spectacular rise and equally spectacular fall, this one-and-done club is a unique part of its history.

Formed on January 20, 1983, and disbanded on September 13 of that same year, Team America was an idea much better in theory than in practice.

“The establishment of Team America will serve as a tremendous vehicle to enhance our chances of qualifying for the World Cup, soccer’s greatest spectacle,” United States Soccer Federation President Gene Edwards told United Press International during the launch announcement in New York. “It’s an exciting new endeavor – no country has ever placed its national team in a professional league – and will serve as an important step towards making the United States a viable force in international competition.”

The USMNT hadn’t been relevant since 1950 – the last year it qualified for the World Cup. Thirty-three years later the plan was to test the mettle of an American team against foes in a circuit whose stars were primarily from soccer hotbeds around the world.

The 20-player roster would be formed by taking the top United States players (including naturalized citizens) from the NASL, American Soccer League and Major Indoor Soccer League. To make sure Team America had the best athletes available in an effort to earn a berth in the 1986 World Cup, each NASL team had to nominate 40 players for consideration, with the expansion team allowed to sign away any who wanted to join.

“Team America is a landmark development as the United States prepares for international competition,” NASL President Howard Samuels told UPI. “A total commitment is being made by the United States soccer community, which believes that the U.S. can and will become a force in world soccer.”

I was hopeful that Team America would not only give domestic soccer a boost, but provide a loft to the NASL as well.

After its late 1970s heyday when huge crowds showed up to see players like Pele, George Best and Johan Cruyff, the league was struggling in the early 1980s.

Boasting 24 franchises in 1978, it was down to 12 in 1983 and fan interest was waning. Perhaps Team America would inspire new soccer supporters who were looking for a team to call their own (even though its home games were played in Washington D.C.) and reinvigorate the fan base for the rest of the league.

Nope.

The club averaged just over 13,000 fans for its matches at cavernous RFK Stadium. Plus, the team itself was punchless; some of the better American players such as Rick Davis of the New York Cosmos opted not to join.

“In the final analysis, it came down to a decision to where I could contribute to the development of the game more,” Davis told the Los Angeles Times. “The Cosmos have their own version of Team America. They have a very successful Americanization program that I’ve been an important part of. For many reasons, the best place for me at the moment is with the Cosmos.”

Due in part to the lack of top-tier U.S.-born players, Coach Alkis Panagoulias chose a team that had an abundance of naturalized citizens. He even added those who were in the process of applying for citizenship.

This would’ve been a non-story for any other NASL squad, but it strayed significantly from Team America’s “homegrown” mission.

Aside from finishing with a league-worst record of 10-20, Panagoulias’ charges netted just 33 goals the entire season and were shut out in 11 matches – making them unsuccessful and boring.

Less than eight months after it began, the experiment was over.

“The plan is to put Team America together next year as the U.S. team-in-training for the 1986 World Cup,” Samuels told the Chicago Tribune. “We’ll reassemble right after the indoor season.”

Spoiler alert: they did, but not as a member of the NASL. The franchise model was abandoned.

Team America owner Bob Lifton said he lost $1 million during the season and didn’t have many kind things to say about the experience.

“We were without the offensive strength we needed and that weakness showed up egregiously,” Lifton told the Tribune. “The team was certainly not a role model to the kids in this country.”

The USMNT would go on to reinvent itself and qualify for seven consecutive World Cups beginning in 1990 – including a quarterfinal run in 2002.

The squad missed the cut in 2018, however, and recent performances have done little to inspire confidence among supporters.

But while it’s interesting to look back at the tribulations of Team America, they really don’t have anything to do with the turbulent times the USMNT is going through now.

Then again, you know what they say about those who forget the past…

Hamilton is my CFL ‘home’

**The Tiger-Cats have logged a 15-3 record in 2019, best in the CFL. (Geoff Robins/CFL.ca photo)**

Ever see the episode of The Andy Griffith Show called Stranger In Town?

The plot centered around a character named Ed Sawyer, who arrived in Mayberry on a bus from “up north,” walked into Floyd’s barbershop, and acted as though he was friends with everyone there.

He also knew details about the town and the townsfolk, which creeped everyone out since they had no idea who he was.

Turns out Ed pored over copies of the Mayberry Gazette newspaper, which he borrowed from an Army buddy who hailed from the North Carolina town. Reading about the friendly little city caused Ed to fall in love with it and he saw Mayberry as “his” hometown – even if he’d never before been there.

As was always the case in The Andy Griffith Show there was a happy ending, with the citizens ultimately embracing Ed (even though he was never seen or heard from again in the series).

Regardless, I tell that story to tell this one: I’m basically Ed Sawyer when it comes to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League.

Raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and currently living in Greenville, South Carolina, I’ve never been to Tim Hortons Field, never had a coffee and doughnut from Tim Hortons restaurant, never done the Oskee Wee Wee cheer with fellow fans, never visited the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

Shoot, I’ve never been to Hamilton – or Canada, even though I very much want to visit.

But when the Tiger-Cats suit up from June through November, I might as well be a native because I cheer for the team like I was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital and educated at McMaster University (Go Marauders!).

If you’ve ever read me before you know that I started rooting for the Tiger-Cats back in the 1970s when CFL “games of the week” were rebroadcast on a local station.

My highly scientific reason for picking Hamilton as “my” team was because I liked their logo and black and gold color scheme.

Now in the interest of complete transparency I must confess that I cheated on the Ticats in 1995 when the Birmingham Barracudas were born.

I felt I had a moral obligation to pledge allegiance to a CFL team in the city I grew up in, although Hamilton remained my preferred international club.

And after the Tiger-Cats (almost) hired disgraced coach Art Briles as an assistant in the summer of 2017, they briefly lost me as a fan. To their credit officials almost immediately reversed their decision, admitting they made a “serious mistake” and correcting it.

Hey – family gets mad at family, then you get over it.

I got over it.

So aside from Birmingham’s cup of coffee during the “American experiment” and the Briles blunder, I’ve pulled for the Tiger-Cats in five different decades. And while there were many years where the only way I could keep track of them was to find scores from games buried in my newspaper, now I can watch every game they play thanks to ESPN.

And I do.

I’m not saying that during last Saturday’s 21-18 win over Toronto I was the only person in Greenville wearing a game-used Greg Randall jersey from 2006, but … well, actually I am saying that.

I also have an assortment of caps and T-shirts, and even find myself spreading the Ticats gospel from time to time.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a convenience store when the clerk asked if my Hamilton tee was in support of a high school team that he was unfamiliar with. I had to explain that it represented a Canadian professional squad born of the 1950 merger between the Hamilton Football Club Tigers and Hamilton Wildcats.

All I wanted was a Twix bar, but being able to drop some Tabbies knowledge on the dude was an added bonus.

Of course it’s quite easy to be a fan this year, especially since the team ran away with the East Division with a 15-3 record.

Having an affinity for wideouts (split end and kicker were the positions I played during my elementary school career), I’ve been a big fan of Luke Tasker since he joined the team in 2013.

And Brandon Banks – who has had a breakout year in 2019 – has quickly become my favorite player.

I was bummed when quarterback Jeremiah Masoli suffered a season-ending injury in July, but proud of how backup Dane Evans jumped in and earned his own medals as field general.

And what a debut for Orlondo Steinauer, who tied the CFL record for most wins by a rookie head coach.

Winning their division gives the Ticats a first round playoff bye this weekend, so I’ll be watching the Eastern semi-final between Edmonton and Montreal on Sunday to see who Hamilton gets on November 17.

Hopefully the Tiger-Cats will defeat either the Eskimos or the Alouettes and advance to the Grey Cup on November 24 (where the opponent will be either Saskatchewan, Calgary or Winnipeg). If that happens, my house will become the official CFL Embassy in Greenville as the game – for me – will be just as big as a Super Bowl.

So Tiger-Cats, know that I’m with you all the way and hope you go all the way.

Even though Mayberry wasn’t Ed Sawyer’s home town and Hamilton isn’t mine, it’s where my team plays.

And when you look at it that way, it seems a lot like home.