Perfect season to show for recruiting efforts
By Scott Taylor,
National Post
Brett McNeil had an opportunity to play in three Grey Cup games, but until Friday night he had never experienced a Vanier Cup.
When McNeil gets fitted for his ring this week, it will be the one event he will never forget.
McNeil was on the sidelines as the University of Manitoba Bisons ripped the underdog St. Mary’s University Huskies 28-14 in Friday’s CIS football championship in Toronto. The Bisons’ offensive line coach, McNeil had every reason to be proud of his kids. Or in this case, his “young adults.”
After playing on the offensive line of three Grey Cup losers in Winnipeg, it was quite a relief for McNeil to be part of a Vanier Cup winner.
“There is no question in my mind that we have the best football team in the country,” he said. “We were favourites and we should have been favourites. We were 11-0 heading in and we dominated teams. And as good as we were on offence, we were even better on defence.”
McNeil was not being cocky, just brutally honest. If there was a juggernaut this season, it was the big, bad, veteran Bisons.
“I think we’re Canada’s Team,” said McNeil. “Canadian university football isn’t what it was 20 years ago. It’s now a national sport and if you intend to be competitive, you have to find the best players from right across the country.”
Head coach Brian Dobie has done just that. The national champions are not just a little regional team from Winnipeg. This team had 25 Manitobans, 17 players from B.C., nine from Ontario, seven from Alberta, five from Saskatchewan, one each from New Brunswick and Quebec, a sensational receiver from Saginaw, Mich. (Randy Simmons), and a talented running back from the island of St. Kitts (Karim Lowen).
“There were guys in our starting lineup who were playing at home,” McNeil said. “Our star running back [Matt Henry, who broke his leg in the big game] is from Toronto, we have an outstanding receiver [Terry Firr] from Windsor, and our quarterback [John Makie] is from Regina. That’s the way you win. You recruit good players to a great program and have a guy like Coach Dobie put it all together.”
After Manitoba struggled through the 1970s and ’80s, Dobie arrived more than a decade ago and turned the Bisons into a model program. After losing the Vanier Cup in 2001, he got close twice more. Then, on Friday night, with
Makie doing an efficient job leading a banged-up offence, the Bisons wrapped up a perfect season.
The victory also erased a 37-year championship drought for the Manitoba’s long-suffering football alumni.
“We’re now a pretty well-known, major program in this country,” Dobie said. “I mean, there were 15 ex-Bisons playing in the CFL this season and three in the Grey Cup. We’re not an unknown program anymore.
“We lose nine fifth-year seniors, but we have as many red-shirting, ready to take their place,” Dobie said. “This is a big, successful program and it’s only going to get better.”
