Kevin Sousa/CFL.ca
Last week in the lead up to Touchdown Atlantic I had a chance to interview Toronto Argonauts’ head coach Ryan Dinwiddie.
I asked him if the team was a couple wins away from being the “villain” team of the CFL and his answer was, “I hope so. I hope we get to that.”
I do as well and it has nothing to do with the fact that I can walk to BMO Field in under 45 minutes or get there by car in just over three hours. That last sentence is not entirely true (although it’s not entirely untrue — Ed.), but the bigger picture is all sports leagues benefit from the presence of that one team that the rest of the country is rooting for to lose.
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Unless you’re American, who isn’t rooting for a country to upset the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team at the World Cup? I despised the Yankees growing up but in a strange way I needed them in the post-season to give me that extra level of joy when they would lose. The list of North American teams that fit the profile of sports villain is a long one and the CFL is long overdue for their next one. Let me ask you this question: is there a better team to step up, don the Darth Vader mask and become the wrestling heel of Canadian football than the Argonauts?
The answer is of course no. To be a true villain requires so many different ingredients to make the proper hater/troll stew. You need to be both excellent on the field while also possessing a number of qualities or attributes that make it easy to “sports hate” you.
Properly ascertaining what constitutes proper sports villainy is not easy. It is part Science (I dropped out after grade 10) and part artistry. Let me give you can example. The 2022 BC Lions burst onto the scene blowing out opponents, scoring well over 30 points per game as they raced out to an 8-1 record, finished the year 12-6 and went full pomp and circumstance with flashy owner Amar Doman bringing in massive musical acts like OneRepublic.
It’s easy to root against the young upstart that just blew out your favourite team by 20 and I could see how more traditional fans may have been taken aback by the Lions kicking off the 2022 season in such an ostentatious fashion. (Quick sidebar, I want more Doman in my life. Can we bring back L.L. Cool J?) However, the Lions did not qualify because we were all mesmerized by Nathan Rourke, so BC became everyone’s second-favourite squad to root for.
Looking back over the past two decades, the last true villain team was the Montreal Alouettes of the 2000s. Every year you could put them down for 12-plus wins and they went to seven Grey Cups, winning two of them. However as mentioned above it can’t just be about winning.
What put this team into villain status was that they were led by legendary head coach Don Matthews for the first half of the decade. The colourful, Hall of Fame head coach was both loved and hated and was often around the odd controversy. The one that always comes to mind was the 2004 “scandal” involving a team employee caught videotaping an opposing coaching staff, apparently looking to decipher the team’s sideline signals.
Having Don on the sidelines made it easy to sports-hate Montreal even though the team itself was filled with classy individuals like Anthony Calvillo. Add in how they won the 2009 Grey Cup (look away Saskatchewan!) with the fortuitous too many men on the field penalty that allowed Damon Duval to kick the Cup-winning field goal and you can see how this organization during this time qualifies as the last great villain team.
I thought about adding Calgary from the 2010s or the recent Winnipeg Blue Bombers but it’s difficult for me to muster up the required sports-hate against a John Hufnagel or Mike O’Shea-led team. Even the majority of the stars players on those are difficult to root against.
Yes, Charleston Hughes was an elite trash-talker, but he never felt like a true villain and as for the Bombers, the second act of Zach Collaros will distract most football fans from any underbelly of evil that may be lurking around IG Field. This is why I’m sad Edmonton isn’t a dominant team; I’ve written about it before: a winning Chris Jones is great for the rest of the league from an entertainment standpoint.
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Which brings us back to the Argonauts.
The case for them becoming the New Evil Empire is certainly harder with that no-good general manager Michael ‘Pinball’ Clemons running things.
Do you know how hard it is to cast the Argonauts as the CFL’s answer to the Decepticons when you have Pinball running around inspiring people, doing all of his incredible charity work and is in charge of player personnel? He could have run for mayor of Toronto and he still would have been loved, that’s how nice a person he is. I’m going to need him to grow an evil moustache, the kind that twirls around his lips where he looks like Snidely Whiplash. This would be much easier if his charities sponsored wealthy children getting larger sail boats or if he endorsed orphanages to be torn down for fancy condominiums.
However, the Argonauts could still become the football villain we need because of one major factor: geography. Yes, it is a cliché to say the rest of Canada hates Toronto, but it is a cliché for a reason, because there is plenty of truth to it. I witnessed good natured contempt for Toronto when I was a student at McMaster. I had airport security in the Okanogan getting upset that I was taking their wine back home and had the nicest people in St. John’s offer condolences that I was from Toronto. The CFL rooting against Toronto is like NFL fans doing the same for the Dallas Cowboys; for some reason it is just hardwired into our collective football DNA.
I’ll be honest, I’ve made jokes on the radio that Toronto is the true capital of Canada when discussing Ottawa sports and like any big city there are degrees of snobbery about being in The Big City. Of course, that is going away with skyrocketing rental prices, but we’ll save that topic for another day. The point is that one of the few things this beautiful country can all agree on is that making fun of or rooting against Toronto is not only a great way to spend an afternoon, but it is almost your patriotic duty to do so if you don’t live in the land of a thousand cranes building a thousand condos.
On the field, Toronto is slowly building into what could be a juggernaut of a team. Five of their six wins have been by double digits. Statistically Toronto is in the top third for most of the important categories and their biggest weakness, pass yards allowed, can at least partially be attributed to racing out to big leads and forcing their opponent to throw more than they would want to. Their 31-16 victory over Saskatchewan at Touchdown Atlantic is a perfect example of that.
Toronto has shown it can win with Chad Kelly not having to be a fantasy hero and yet in their closest game in 2023, the first-year full-time starter aired it out for 351 yards. I’m sure everyone in Calgary is thrilled that this last paragraph will definitely jinx the Double Blue on Friday night but at present there are no glaring holes with this team.
Between geography and on-field excellence, Toronto is on its way to becoming the nation’s football antagonist but there is still work to be done. They are three wins away from heading to Hamilton for the Labour Day Classic with a chance of going 10-0. If they can find a way to defeat Calgary twice and top Ottawa in Week 10, you can bet the biggest holiday weekend storyline will be ‘Can the Tiger-Cats end our national nightmare and hand Toronto it’s first loss?’
I think it is fair to say no one saw Toronto getting out of the gate this hot. Even after capturing the 2022 Grey Cup so much of the focus heading into this season was on the Blue Bombers trying to win one more with this veteran core, or Bo Levi Mitchell in Hamilton. The fact that the Argonauts are on top of the Power Rankings would have come as a surprise for many back in May.
But now the best team in the league, in the most polarizing city in the country being led by a (formerly) brash college star quarterback has a chance to don that proverbial black hat and become that classic sports villain team for the rest of the nation to band against. How much fun would that be? Now if we can just find a way to get Pinball to say he doesn’t like puppies and children…
