Surprised receiver thought he was headed west
By Eric Koreen,
National Post, with files from CanWest News Service
TORONTO – Before yesterday, Chris Bauman’s clearest memory about the Canadian Football League involved selling food in the stands of Winnipeg’s Canad Inns Stadium.
“In high school, our whole team would go to a Bombers game and do a promotional thing, selling beef jerky,” said Bauman, who was selected first overall in the CFL Canadian Draft yesterday by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. “I think that was the best experience I had out there: walking around the stadium with beef jerky.”
While most observers expected Hamilton to choose a defensive lineman with the first overall pick, the Tiger-Cats instead opted for Bauman, a 6-foot-4 receiver from Brandon, Man., who played at the University of Regina. Despite leading all Canadian university players last season in receiving yards (952) and receiving touchdowns (10), Bauman was surprised to get the call Tuesday afternoon informing him of the pick and requesting his presence in Toronto for yesterday’s news conference.
“It was a shock. None of us saw it coming,” Bauman said yesterday at the league’s office in Toronto. “We all thought I was heading out West, either to Edmonton or Calgary. I was just excited.”
Most of the pre-draft talk centred on Hamilton taking a Canadian defensive lineman — either Toledo’s J.P. Bekasiak or Wyoming’s Corey Mace — to start alongside recent free-agent pickup, Nautyn MacKay-Loescher.
Fortunately for the Tiger-Cats, Edmonton went off the board with the second pick, selecting Concordia kicker Warren Kean, and Calgary selected the draft’s best prospect, offensive lineman Mike Gyetvai, who still has another year to play at Michigan State and has NFL aspirations.
“He’s everything you look for in a left tackle. He may be too good; he may be a first-day guy [in the 2008 NFL draft],” Calgary general manager Jim Barker said. “But we’re in a position to do that. If you have a chance with three picks in the first round, that’s the guy you take. We had him graded the top guy in the draft by quite a ways.”
That left the door open for Hamilton to take Bekasiak with the fourth pick, something Hamilton general manager Marcel Desjardins thought was unlikely.
“No, we didn’t think it was possible,” Desjardins said. “We were considering trading up to get either the second or third pick, and we just weren’t able to do it.”
“Bekasiak, Mace and Bauman were almost peas in a pod on our board,” said Greg Mohns, Toronto’s assistant general manager and director of player personnel. “The word had been Edmonton was looking at [Bauman] hard at two, and Calgary definitely would have taken him at three. If you are Hamilton, you had to take him with the first pick. He wouldn’t have been there at fourth.”
While Bauman does lament that he can’t play closer to his home, for his parents’ sake, he did note that there are direct flights from Winnipeg to Hamilton. And being the first overall pick in the CFL draft is an opportunity very few football players get.”It’s overwhelming right now. Maybe it will sink in in the next couple days, but right now I’m just trying to take this all in. I’ll remember this forever.”
With its other two picks in the first round, Calgary selected Wilfrid Laurier linebacker Justin Phillips at No. 5 and Akron wide receiver Jabari Arthur at No. 6.
