By Mike Beamish,
Vancouver Sun
After the B.C. Lions pencilled in safety Tad Crawford’s name with their third pick in the CFL draft, the architecture major with designs on a pro career felt symmetry being achieved.
After all, he’s from Burlington, Ont., the hometown of Lions owner David Braley.
Hint No. 2: Crawford seriously considered UBC’s architecture school as a high school senior and will likely enrol there now to get his master’s degree
Hint No. 3: Crawford played college football at Columbia, the Ivy League school in New York whose fight song “Roar, Lion, Roar” is strikingly similar to the West Coast Lions.
“There are so many parallels,” says Crawford, the 17th overall pick in Wednesday’s draft. “I even made an unofficial visit to UBC to check out the school.”
But that’s where it ends.
A day before the B.C. Lions open training camp June 4, championship rings will be handed out to those who participated in last year’s Grey Cup victory. Crawford hopes to get an invite to the ceremony in Vancouver.
“I’m just looking forward to going somewhere where there’s a winning tradition,” he says.
Tradition and academics? Columbia stands taller than the Empire State. Alumni include Lou Gehrig, two U.S. presidents — Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt — a former university president, Dwight Eisenhower, who became the 34th president of the United States, six Supreme Court justices and 37 Nobel Prize winners, more than any other institution in the world.
Einsteins rule at Columbia. Alas, football drools. The Lions went through a record 44-game losing streak in the 1980s, the program has only three winning seasons since 1961 and last year struggled to finish 5-5, Columbia’s first .500 season since 1996.
Indeed, Lion alums include All-Pro defensive end Marcellus Wiley, an 11-year NFL veteran, and Steve Cargile of the Denver Broncos, the man Crawford replaced as the Lions’ starting safety. Linebacker Zak DeOssie of Brown, another Ivy League school, was selected in the fourth round of Sunday’s NFL draft by the New York Giants.
“Zak and I joked around about who would take the Ivy League tackling title this year,” Crawford says. “It shows you the talent we have in this league.”
Crawford, first team All-Ivy in 2006, finished with 101 tackles last season, the first Ivy Leaguer to record more than 100 tackles in consecutive seasons since 2003-04. He also led the Lions in punt and kick return yardage.
“The import safety has become the way of our league,” says Mike Benevides, B.C.’s director of Canadian scouting. “Tad has the potential to change that.”
Though he had the second fastest 40 time at the CFL combine in March, the 6-3 Crawford weighed in at only 181 pounds. An explanation why he fell to the top of the third round Wednesday could be as simple as his string-bean shape. Since then, gym work has added 10 pounds, and a more muscular Crawford is readying himself for training camp.
