By: Justin Boone
jboone@ticats.ca
Two years ago, prior to his first game with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Jason Armstead picked up the phone to call a local car dealership.
“We have your nephew working here,” said the voice on the other line.
Jason, a native of Moss Point, Mississippi, was over 2000 km from home, and to the best of his knowledge had no relatives north of the border.
Jeff Armstead, the computer programmer for the dealership, was the “nephew” in question, and while he didn’t share the same skin colour as Jason, they did share a last name.
“It instantly clicked from the start when I met him,” Jason remarked enthusiastically. “He’s a pretty smart guy and he came up with all these great ideas of stuff I could do to help get my name out there.”
The two hit it off, and discussed creating a website that would focus solely on the playmaking receiver and return man. On his site you can access pictures, interviews, or even download his tracks. And what began with JasonArmstead.com has now evolved into a collection of CFL player sites, including Kerry Joseph, Henry Burris, and Geroy Simon, to name a few.
“Marketing is very important, and that wasn’t where my mind was at coming out of college,” Jason stated. “You need that though. Whatever you can to market yourself, whether you’re talking about football, music, real estate, whatever you do, you have to market yourself or your business.”
The website is a way to get his name out to more fans, but it’s also a way of marketing the CFL game both in Canada and abroad.
“My website has been up for over a year now, and it has over 17,000 hits. I figure about 10,000 of them are me,” said Jason with a huge laugh.
Jeff has been amazed by the response the sites have received and has established his own company, Inthetunnel.com, as a side project on weekends and evenings. While their meeting was a complete coincidence, the friendship that has developed is perhaps even more remarkable.
“You would think the way we hung around with each other that it was really family, except for the difference in skin colour,” joked Jason.
When the Ticat pass catcher recently sent one of his jerseys to Jeff, he assumed his “relative” would be wearing it come gamedays, cheering Jason on. Instead, Jeff framed the jersey, along with a pair of gloves and other memorabilia he had received from him over the last few years.
“It’s just a complete coincidence,” admitted Jason. “I thought it was kind of surprising that I would see someone on the other side of North America with the same last name, but he’s considered family to me now, as well as a friend.”
“We’ll be friends long after he’s doing playing football,” said Jeff.
