loading...
Canwest News Service
CALGARY – It was supposed to be a coronation.
The Calgary Stampeders had put together the best record in the Canadian Football League over the 2000 regular season, and their quarterback, Dave Dickenson, had been named the CFL's most outstanding player in the final year of his contract, and had plans to parlay his splendid seasons with the Stampeders into a National Football League tryout following the Grey Cup, which was to take place on his home field at McMahon Stadium.
The B.C. Lions had other plans.
A ragtag bunch who'd lost their coach mid-season when Greg Mohns bailed on the franchise to move to the XFL, the Lions squeaked into the playoffs with an 8-10 record, beat the Edmonton Eskimos in the West semi, and then upset the apple-cart and filled the Monday classifieds with tickets-for-sale ads by shocking the Stamps 37-23 in the West final.
So early on in Grey Cup week, there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm in Calgary surrounding the West Division representatives, and that may have been a reason why only a handful of media types showed up early in the week for a media conference featuring outspoken Lions defensive end Daved Benefield.
He entered the lifeless room, and immediately injected some energy into the Grey Cup by first taking a seat among the scribes, borrowing a notebook and addressing a question to teammates Robert Drummond and Herman Smith, identifying himself as Wolf Blitzer of CNN.
"We're totally not supposed to be there," remembers Benefield, who still lives in Vancouver. "And there were maybe 10 guys in there. I was like, `Oh my God, this sucks!' It was like a post-New Year's Day bowl game.
"They don't even like us that much not to show up and ask how we feel?!? C'mon. So I started asking the questions. I was like, well, you're probably only going to be here once and you have to live in the moment. So I did it. Not to be a badass or anything. You know what? Let's just have fun with it."
A few days later, the team nobody loved, the team nobody gave even a puncher's chance to land a fluky knockout punch in the Grey Cup, became the first team in CFL history to win a championship with a sub-.500 record, beating the Montreal Alouettes 28-26.
"There was no doubt in our mind that we were going to win," said Damon Allen, the Lions' quarterback that day.
"When you're in that kind of zone, you're really difficult to beat, and I felt going into the ball game, we were playing with that type of confidence.
"When teams are on a roll, you don't talk about winning or losing. We go into a ball game thinking, `How many points are we going to score today?' I think it was one of those days where even God is having a difficult time controlling the B.C. Lions in 2000."
The Lions scored on their first two possessions – 46-year-old kicker Lui Passaglia, in his final game, missed a field goal for a single and a Mike Fletcher interception of an Anthony Calvillo pass led to a one-yard Allen touchdown run – and never trailed in the game.
For Passaglia, the miss was a sign of things to come: after missing just four of 44 field-goal attempts in the regular season, he would shank three of five attempts in his last game.
"I mean, I missed, but I didn't miss by much," says Passaglia.
"But it was one of those games that I think everything just caught up to me. One game, all those things that you try to hold back, the emotion, the nerves, all that stuff, I think it got into the blood a little bit. It wasn't my best game of the year, but you know what? It's always a team effort. And thank God the team played great that day."
Based on the regular season, there was no way to predict the Lions would save their best for last. When Mohns departed, the Lions were sputtering along at 3-4 after a splendid 13-5 season the year before, and it was left to Steve Buratto to salvage something out of the season.
"When the season started, I was selling urethane coatings for my brother," recalls Buratto, now an assistant in Toronto. "He ran into some difficulties in the business and had to lay me off, so I called Adam (Lions general manager Adam Rita) and said, `Hey, look, do you have anything I can do?' He was going to send me off scouting, and about two hours later, he asked me to be the receivers coach because the guy they had was leaving to go to the XFL. So I said sure. Three weeks later, Greg decided that he was going to the XFL, so Adam asked me to take it over. I kind of laughed and said, `only because you're asking.' The worst job in the world is being the head coach of a bad football team. Somehow we managed to turn it around."
"It was a complete lark, really," says Benefield. "We were crapping the bed left, right and centre. We were bringing people in, it was a revolving door, we had people fighting, ripping stuff up. And Buratto, he's an odd guy. He would talk about painting and stuff like that, at the oddest of times, swinging his invisible Bob Hope golf club. And I'm, dude, this is just crazy."
Buratto figures a late-season 45-38 loss in Calgary was a turning point in the Lions' push to the playoffs.
"We didn't play too well defensively, but offensively, we started to hit a bit of a flow," he said. "More than that, I think there was an attitude on the team. I think they embraced the fact that, hey, wait a minute, maybe we can do something if we just put in a little more effort and have a little more belief in our ability to do it, and that we can rise above some of the trials and tribulations they faced during the year."
Offensively, it was the 3-D backfield of Damon Allen, Robert Drummond and Sean (the Diesel) Millington that carried the load, and on Grey Cup Sunday, Drummond earned Grey Cup MVP honours after rushing for 122 yards on 10 carries, while Millington was top Canadian with 99 yards.
The Lions were able to knock star Alouettes running back Mike Pringle out of the game early (he would return to score a late touchdown), and then withstood a second-half comeback by the Als after the Guess Who's halftime show to nail down a win that wasn't secure until receiver Alfred Jackson leaped skyward to haul in a Montreal onside kick – Buratto has a picture of that play stored among his personal memorabilia.
"It was such a ride that you just tried to curtail all your emotions and try to make it through the game. And it was a great game," says Passaglia. "(The regular season) was frustrating, but I think probably with about three games to go in the season, we saw ourselves coming together as a team in all facets. We thought that we could prove to the rest of Canada that, you know what? We're a pretty good football team."
Regardless of how many media show up to their news conferences.
Calgary Herald
acameron@theherald.canwest.com
