Kamau Peterson
CFL.ca
I’ve spent time in all of the major professional football leagues of my day. NFL, CFL and the now defunct Arena league and one dynamic that stands out in my mind as uniquely CFLish is the fixation that CFL fans seem to have with the backup quarterback.
It wasn’t until I had played year-round for a couple of years and seen all three leagues that I really noticed it, while playing for Winnipeg. Khari Jones was the incumbent at that time and coming off of some very successful years. He was backed up by Kevin Glenn and from what seemed like the first errant throw of the pre-season, the boos and chants began.
Shortly into the first half of the season those chants became regular home game roars and sure enough management made a change. By the end of that season, the fans were chanting for Spurgeon Wynn or Russ Michna or Tee Martin or whoever it was. Winnipeg seems to be going through some measure of this fixation to this day and they certainly aren’t the only team.
Hamilton fans called for QBs that weren’t even on the roster while I was there. And the Ticats, in the midst of their own controversy as we speak, are attempting to develop the young upstart Quinton Porter, while still using Kevin Glenn’s experience to buy some time and wins. But that’s different to me. That’s two very different quarterbacks finding their place within a rising team, and that’s a wonderful thing.
To hear some Toronto fans tell it, Kerry Joseph should be looking over his shoulder, not at backup Cody Pickett but to Casey Printers who is training in Houston, which to me sounds crazy. This of course is not uncharted water for Kerry. Even en route to a Grey cup Championship and league MOP award with Saskatchewan in 2007, he had to brave the slings and arrows of fans calling for Marcus Crandell to be the Riders number one throughout the entire season.
Call me outdated, old fashioned or what have you, but to me if a quarterback leads his team to a Grey cup he should have some form of exemption from the boo brigade for a minimum of two years.
Watching Henry Burris get the monkey off of his back last November surely afforded him some time to get the ball rolling right? It’s one thing if its two quarterbacks with similar history in the league, or similar experience to draw upon as professionals that come in and battle for the job. One is named starter and takes the reins, with a similar athlete waiting in the wings that simply becomes a ‘what have you done for me lately’ situation which in actuality is what football is about.
It’s a completely different situation to have quarterbacks like Ricky Ray, Anthony Calvillo, and Henry Burris hearing it from fans. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Anthony get booed at home – at least not in a great many years – which makes sense given his place in history and his record over the past six years or so. Somehow though, I have the feeling if he were to ever falter, even a bit, some fans would be calling for McPherson in spite of all that AC has accomplished.
How do I know this?
I know this because I hear it in relation to Henry and Ricky more often than I would expect it. I don’t often compare athletes across leagues, but if I look south of the border and search for the equivalents to Ray, Calvillo, and Burris in terms of what they mean to their team, their success relative to time on that team and league status I’d equate them to Manning, Brady and Favre.
For some reason, I don’t think our southern counterparts get booed at home nearly as often. I labor to think of who was backing up Favre when I was in Green Bay, and it honestly doesn’t matter, because I know that I’d never hear a ‘we want Doug Pederson’ regardless of how Brett was playing.
Brady’s backup got to shine in his absence last year and even through it parlayed it into a starting gig elsewhere I doubt it was ever considered to replace Tom with Matt Cassel. And I would have to actually Google who is backing up Peyton Manning in Indy; it wouldn’t surprise me if one-in-three of the Colts’ fan base didn’t know either.
When I sit back and look at what a good quarterback really means to an organization, especially in this league, I have to wonder if some people don’t suffer from an ideology that simply won’t allow them to feel at ease with any measure of success. The grass isn’t always greener in this world, and if you can’t take the time to enjoy and celebrate what is before you, you’ll miss some truly great things.
Kp8
