Jackson’s CFL near-miss

When you think of the Canadian Football League, it’s a good bet you never associate it with Jackson, Mississippi. But 30 years ago, the capital of the Magnolia State was holding out hope it would be home of the circuit’s 14^th franchise – and holding up the 1995 CFL schedule in the process.

What became something of a wild ride began on April 5, 1995, when the beleaguered Las Vegas Posse franchise called it quits. Several attempts to sell the debt-ridden club had failed, so CFL commissioner Larry Smith announced that it had suspended operations.

A group in Jackson was interested in relocating the franchise there, and Smith set a February 28 deadline for that to happen. But the calendar flipped to March and then April, and Smith was out of options.

“If I had waited another couple of days, it would’ve been too long,” Smith said in a conference call. “The last 24 hours, I started feeling a little pressure from the owners. When you’re doing a deal, you can always sense when it’s going to happen.

“I could sense we weren’t going to get a deal, so I suggested to the parties it was time to get on with life.”

The league had been working on a schedule that included 14 teams, but had to start over once the Posse went under.

So, the plan was to go with a North Division (BC Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ottawa Rough Riders, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Toronto Argonauts and Winnipeg Blue Bombers) and South Division (Baltimore Stallions, Birmingham Barracudas, Memphis Mad Dogs, San Antonio Texans and Shreveport Pirates).

Birmingham and Memphis were the expansion cities for ‘95, while the Texans had relocated from Sacramento, where they were known as the Gold Miners.

End of story, right?

Nope.

On April 11, Orlando multi-millionaire real estate developer Norton Herrick entered the picture. Although he had originally hoped to bring an expansion team to Florida in 1996, he was willing to buy the Posse and take them to Mississippi, where he would team up with Bill Van Devender, a Jackson businessman.

So, the CFL draft was postponed and the scheduling was again put on hold.

“It would nice to get this Las Vegas thing cleared up,” Lions owner Bill Comrie, chair of the CFL Executive Committee, told the Vancouver Sun. “If we can bring in someone like Norton Herrick, it would be another real bonus.”

By April 13, however, a deal still hadn’t been done and owners were getting antsy – and angry. There was no schedule and no assurances about how many teams would be in the CFL fold for ’95.

“I don’t think I was going back on my decision (to suspend the Posse) because we have a unique situation here,” Smith said in an interview with the Canadian Press. “The long-term opportunity of getting a person like Norton Herrick, I think, overrides any awkwardness this transaction might portray.”

Calgary Stampeders owner Larry Ryckman said he didn’t want to publicly criticize the league, but thought the situation was being mishandled.

“If it were my decision, I would not vote in a club to try and start up six to eight weeks prior to training camp,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t want this owner in. It’s that we want to see something work out in Vegas.”

However, things did not work out in Vegas – or Jackson.

Herrick and Van Devender were given until 4 p.m. on April 14 to complete the move, or the Posse would really, truly, honest-to-goodness fold this time, and the players dispersed in a draft.

The deadline came and went, with Herrick pulling out after saying he couldn’t get solid guarantees from Mississippi investors.

“The city and state would probably get $4 million in sales tax revenue because the team would probably bring in about $30 million in spendable dollars,” Herrick said to CP. “Everyone was telling me how great it was to bring a team to Jackson, and I was willing to spend $4 million to start the team there, but no one local was willing to tell me not to worry about the downside.

“If I can’t get anyone local to help out, then what the heck am I doing trying as an outsider? Even my partner wasn’t willing to assume some of the losses.”

Coinciding with news of the deal falling through, Smith released a statement: “The league has shown great patience and flexibility in providing additional groups in order to conclude this deal, but time has run out.”

The dispersal draft was held on April 18, the 1995 schedule finalized on April 28, and 13 teams participated in the final CFL season that featured franchises based in the United States.

As for Jackson, it finally got a play-for-pay club in 1999. The Mississippi Pride competed in the one-and-done Regional Football League, which was a high-level minor league.

The Pride finished 4-4 in the regular season and lost its semi-final playoff game to the Houston Outlaws, 27-3.