Author: Scott Adamson

CFL, XFL met before

No one yet knows if the relationship between the Canadian Football League and XFL 3.0 will be of the casual, friends with benefits, or marriage variety. Meantime, here’s a historical tidbit for you – technically, this isn’t their first dance.

In 1999, the World Wrestling Federation (now known as World Wrestling Entertainment) wanted to buy the CFL. And when I say the WWF wanted to buy the Canadian Football League what I mean is WWF owner Vince McMahon wanted to buy it.

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“The (CFL Board of Directors) decided it wasn’t something we wanted to pursue and we dropped it,” CFL President Jeff Giles told the Toronto Sun on February 1, 2000.

Giles said McMahon wanted to incorporate the existing CFL franchises into a North American league with separate divisions for Canadian and United States teams. The power brokers of the established association weren’t interested, so the rasslin’ mogul teamed up with Dick Ebersol and NBC Sports and started the XFL from scratch.

“We were concerned we would lose control of the Canadian game,” Giles added. “We would lose the CFL as we knew it.”

Jump to September 1, 2000. The Canadian Press reported that the CFL had approached the fledgling spring league about allowing its players to also play for the XFL. Giles said he had contacted XFL director of football operations Mike Keller concerning a possible arrangement.

“The XFL has issued a statement that any players that play with them in the 2001 season would be free after that season to play with another league,” Giles said. “Really, they have thrown it open. Now, it’s up to us to figure out what we’re going to do with that.”

Dan Ferrone, president of the CFL Players’ Association, admitted to CP he had informally discussed such a scenario with Giles. CFL players earned an average of $47,000 in Canadian dollars in 2000, so a side hustle would’ve provided a nice financial boost.

“Without question we would thoroughly enjoy something like that,” Ferrone said. “It’s a situation you have to love if you are a person with a football skill because your places of employment have really increased the last few years.”

As for what Canadian fans thought of a possible alliance between the leagues, a TSN poll found that 45 percent didn’t want it, 33 percent “might give it some thought,” and 22 percent were in favor.

By December of 2000 the “crossover event” had already begun – at least in the coaching ranks. Montreal Alouettes defensive line coach Don Wnek announced he’d be joining the XFL’s Birmingham Thunderbolts as an assistant – with the blessing of Als officials.

“My understanding from talking to (Montreal general manager Jim Popp) and (Montreal head coach Rod Rust) is that’s they’re fine with it,” Wnek told the Montreal Gazette. “It depends on your level of seniority. If you were a head coach or coordinator, it wouldn’t work. But with position coaches it works out.

“This is a wonderful opportunity professionally. I can expand my horizons while doing some scouting (for his CFL team). And I’ll make some extra money.”

However, by the time the XFL season approached in February, 2001, its officials were already looking down on their neighbors up north.

“Our worst team would beat the hell out of a CFL team,” Keller told the Leader-Post newspaper. “And our worst team could beat the best college team.”

Added Las Vegas Outlaws general manager Bobby Ackles – who once held the same post with the British Columbia Lions – “I don’t mean to demean the CFL, but you take the best 38 players here and 38 best there, this team would win.”

Of course, no one will ever know. While the XFL did OK at the gate (the eight teams averaged 23,410 fans per game) it was a ratings disaster on NBC, TNN and UPN, causing McMahon to pull the plug after just one season.

He rebooted the XFL in 2020 but the COVOD-19 global pandemic put that version out of business midway through its only campaign, possibly curing McMahon of his desire to fund a professional football league.

And now Dany Garcia, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and RedBird Capital Partners own the XFL. They made a splash by announcing last month a possible collaboration with the CFL, causing many people to jump to the conclusion that a merger was imminent. Honestly, I thought that was a longshot, figuring it would be more of a resource sharing-type deal.

But the fact that the XFL originally planned to make a third try at spring football starting in 2022 – and then put that time frame on hold pending the outcome of CFL talks – certainly lends credence to the possibility of a combined league. If not a merger, then some sort of shared infrastructure seems to be in the serious discussion stage.

So although the leagues already have a history, past isn’t necessarily prologue. The circumstances have changed dramatically for both over two decades. The question now is whether or not they’ll have a shared history going forward.

Hunting Easter eggs

Last Saturday morning I was walking through our neighborhood and thanks to the summer-like weather, it was buzzing with activity. Aside from the normal sight of people mowing lawns and trimming hedges, there were young children with baskets trundling through their respective yards.

Turns out the yards were covered in colorful plastic eggs, and as I smiled and waved at a neighbor, she informed me that her kids were enjoying an Easter egg hunt.

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So I watched for a minute, and basically what I saw were cute little girls and cute little boys just randomly picking up faux eggs and placing them in their baskets.

The process didn’t take long because – again – the eggs were in plain sight. There’s no way the kids could’ve missed them.

I like to think of myself as a good neighbor and a nice person, so I didn’t say anything. But I’m telling you, this was not a hunt of any kind. This wasn’t even a “fish in a barrel” situation. It was more like, “Hey kids … try not to step on an egg when you’re picking up another egg here in this field of copious eggs.”

According to the dictionary, the first definition of “hunt” is to “pursue or kill for sport or food” and the second is “search determinedly for someone or something.”

OK, maybe in the technical sense these kids were pursuing plastic eggs for sport and searching determinedly for them so they were, in fact “hunting” eggs. But to my mind a real, working definition of “hunt” requires at least a rudimentary level of difficulty.

So let’s return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when I was a small, bespectacled child adorned in a Nehru shirt, polyester shorts and Keds.

We had actual, sure enough Easter egg hunts because the Easter eggs were hidden. And I don’t mean they were placed atop a clump of grass or situated by a column on a front porch – they were carefully tucked away in hard to reach, hard to find spots.

In fact, when it was time to hunt Easter eggs, I was never asked, “Do you want to hunt Easter eggs?” I was told by my mother, “I’m going to hide eggs.” (It was implied that since they were hidden, they should subsequently be hunted).

The entire ritual took place over a 24-hour period. First mother would boil actual eggs (I’m not condoning the use of real eggs, I’m just telling you this was my experience) and once they cooled, she would dye them. I remember other kids would have brightly colored eggs and some even had designs because their parents used coloring kits.

Not mom.

Her eggs were usually what I would call either “crime scene red” or “brutal bleeding blue.” They were also splotchy, so they had a bit of a Jackson Pollock vibe, even though I had no idea who Jackson Pollock was at the time.

As for the hiding, I’m sure much of that job was farmed out to my brother, who was 12 years older than me. He would hide them in trees, under manholes, inside mailboxes – I think he even buried a few with the aid of a trowel.

But mom – who had a bit of a mean streak – wasn’t totally uninvolved with the cloaking of the eggs. I can never prove it, of course, but I’m pretty sure she once flung one into the open window of a moving automobile.

By the end of the day many eggs went unclaimed (the one in the car possibly even wound up in another state), but those I found were like gold to me because I had earned them. And there was nothing quite so satisfying as peeling those little suckers and eating them. A boiled egg that has been unrefrigerated, exposed to the elements for a full day and then devoured tastes like victory.

Now, far be it from me to tell anyone how to raise their children. And if having kids stomp through a yard full of plastic eggs randomly tossed on the ground is your idea of a “hunt,” I won’t argue with you. But the old ways are sometimes the best ways. And if you happen to find an egg in your mailbox this weekend – or notice one in the backseat of your car – then you’ll know a real Easter egg hunt is afoot.

In search of the Birmingham Moonshiners

OK, maybe there’s someone out there who can help me – unless, of course, I’m dealing with a false memory.

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When I was a kid – somewhere between the ages of 7 and 9 – I was watching television before heading out to school. And if you were a kid growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, and watching weekday morning TV in the late 1960s, chances are it was something called “The Tom York Morning Show.” Hosted by (spoiler alert!) Tom York, it had news, sports, weather, talk and a bit of this to go with a little of that. And one daily segment featured human interest-type stories with in-studio guests.

Now, here’s where I need assistance.

I could almost swear that one guest was the coach of a semi-pro football team called the Birmingham Moonshiners. I was wildly excited because football was something I had only recently discovered and I didn’t realize Birmingham even had a team. Also, I didn’t know what moonshine was but I was already a big werewolf fan so I was hoping it had something to do with the moon shining on a man-beast. (Only later did I learn it was an adult beverage you drink that can cause you to think you see werewolves).

Anyway, I remember the coach narrating over some grainy, black and white 8mm film featuring one of the Moonshiners’ games. (I think they wore dark jerseys and dark helmets, although I have no idea what the colors were because, you know, black and white film).

I headed off to school hoping to learn more, and I must’ve talked about the Moonshiners with other kids who had seen the segment.

I guess I got distracted, though, because by the time the weekend came I’d turned my attention to the “Batman/Superman Hour of Adventure” and “Banana Splits.”

Since then, however, I’ll occasionally think about the Moonshiners and once I started getting serious about sports research a few years ago I decided I’d find out all I could about this team.

Only problem is, I’ve found out absolutely nothing.

When I narrow my search down to the 1960s, the only semi-pro teams I come across from the era are the Birmingham Vulcans (not to be confused with the 1975 World Football League franchise) and Birmingham All-Stars. The Continental Football League had a franchise called the Alabama Hawks that played mostly in Huntsville before making a brief stop in Birmingham until folding in 1969, but the COFL was a “major” minor league.

When you look for “Birmingham Moonshiners” in any newspaper during the 1960s you’ll discover a few unrelated stories. For example, a German Shepherd named “King” was used to sniff out moonshine stills in Birmingham in 1961, and in 1968 100 stills around Birmingham were destroyed and 60 moonshiners arrested as part of “Operation Dryup.”

Do a search for “Moonshiners football” and you learn there was a Fall Rivers, Massachusetts, soccer team called the Moonshiners that played in the early 1900s, and that moonshiners in Oregon had turned football lockers into distilleries in 1926.

Interesting, but not the information I needed.

So, was there even a football team called the Birmingham Moonshiners, or is it something I remember because I want it to be true?

According to the American Psychological Association, a false memory is “… a distorted recollection of an event or, most severely, recollection of an event that never actually happened. False memories are errors of commission, because details, facts, or events come to mind, often vividly, but the remembrances fail to correspond to prior events.”

Maybe that’s it.

Or perhaps – and this is my main theory – the Moonshiners were simply a team with so brief a history they never warranted any media coverage other than a plug on “The Tom York Morning Show.” You can’t swing a chinstrap without hitting a semi-pro football team, and that was as true in the 1960s as it is today.

But if you ever coached them, played for them or think you heard of them, please let me know. It doesn’t rank as one of the world’s big mysteries, but it’s still one I’d like to see solved.