Eight teams. Eight proud histories. But in the end there can be only one. We’re searching for Canada’s greatest football program. And your vote will help decide the winner.
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Saint Mary’s
Blake Nill knows he sounds like a beaming father boasting that his kid is the smartest and best-looking of them all. But it’s not crazy to say that the Saint Mary’s University Huskies he coached to a Vanier Cup in 2001 were the best college football team ever to grace a field in this country.
“I know I’m biased, but I would put them against anybody,” says Nill between pre-season practices with the University of Calgary Dinos, where he’s now head coach. “It was an amazing football team.”
They outscored their opponents 480–35 in that undefeated season. They didn’t allow a rushing touchdown all year. In the semifinals, they humiliated Laval 48–8, then dismantled a powerhouse University of Manitoba team 42–16 in the championship. But that was only the shiniest highlight in SMU’s long run of CIS dominance: nine Vanier Cup appearances, three wins and 24 conference championships in all (including 10 between 1999 and 2010). And they’ve done all that despite facing strong conference opposition in St. Francis Xavier University and Mount Allison University. SMU is one of the smallest schools in CIS football, but they’ve continually punched above their weight, besting opponents with three or four times their 7,400 students.
Still, as good as the 2001 Huskies were, when mighty Laval rolled in for the semifinals at SMU with two tractor-trailers packed with their own training and practice equipment, everyone in Halifax gulped a little.
“We’re going, ‘Geez, are we in the minor leagues here?’ It was quite intimidating; the players were really freaked out,” Nill says. But in the end, the only points Laval slipped past SMU were on a punt return at the end of the game.
By the time they walked into SkyDome to face Manitoba for the Vanier Cup, Nill suspected his players were motivated by something other than his rousing speeches — and he was just fine with that. Legendary SMU coach Larry Uteck had been at the helm for seven conference championships and taken the Huskies to three national championships; they couldn’t seal the deal before Nill took the reins in 1998. By 2001, ALS had robbed Uteck of his mobility and speech, but there he was in a private box at the Vanier Cup, wearing SMU colours.
When the Huskies won, they brought Uteck down onto the field and the players swarmed him, perching the Vanier Cup right in front of him. In photos of that moment, a crooked grin lights up the coach’s still-youthful face. Uteck died on Christmas Day 2002, a month after SMU took their second consecutive national championship.
Now, that amazing 2001 season is a memory Nill keeps close.
“I look upon it as a real highlight in my career,” he says, “and I try to use that when I need a jump-start to remember what it was like to be the best.”
–Shannon Proudfoot
HUSKIES BY THE NUMBERS
Vanier Cup wins: 3
Vanier Cup appearances: 9
Conference titles: 24
CIS MOPs: 4
NFL players produced: 2
CFL players produced: 31
All-time winning percentage: .659
Calgary
Jon Cornish, the CFL’s reigning Most Outstanding Canadian, is out of the Calgary Stampeders lineup. They’re facing the Grey Cup champions. To say the Stamps need somebody to step up is to put it mildly. Enter Matt Walter, a Calgary native, the leading rusher in the University of Calgary’s storied history and currently one of the CFL’s best backup running backs. He’s got this.
“Jon Cornish who?” jokes his quarterback Kerry Glenn after Walter racks up 56 yards on just 10 carries — including picking up three straight first downs on a dominant fourth-quarter drive that ended any hope of an Argos comeback—to help the Stamps to a 35–14 upset.
OK, so maybe Walter won’t exactly make Stamps fans forget all about Cornish — but he will make them remember just how good their local CIS team is these days.
Any attempt to quantify the greatest anything of all time in sports inevitably tilts toward success in the present day. It’s just the way things work. If it didn’t, the Toronto Maple Leafs would be revered rather than ridiculed and Detroit Lions fans could speak of their team’s four championships with a straight face.
Which brings us to the Calgary Dinos — unquestionably the best CIS football team in the Canada West Universities Athletic Association, but also one of the great Canadian university programs of all time. And yes, part of that is because you can answer the question “What have you done for me lately?” with an authoritative flaunting of the resumé.
The Dinos have a long history of excellence, but not outright domination. They’ve captured the Vanier Cup four times — more than any other Canada West program — and own 14 Hardy trophies as CWUAA champions. It’s a great record, but it does pale a little in comparison to some other monsters of CIS history. But it’s the evolution of the program under head coach Blake Nill that cements the Dinos’ claim to the crown. Under Nill, the team is 38-18 in seven seasons, including trips to the Vanier Cup in 2009 and 2010. Even more impressive is their record in CWUAA playoff games since 2008: 10-0, nailing down five straight conference championships in the process.
The same historical context extends to the Dinos’ alumni success — as evidenced by the emergence of players like Walter. Historically, the 74 CFLers produced by the program rank in the upper echelons of CIS clubs — but not quite at the top. Recently, however, the Dinos’ record is unmatched. When CFL training camps opened in 2013, 20 ex-Dinos were in attendance across the country — and only one of them, defensive back Jamahl Knowles in Montreal, was on a non-contract tryout. The competition? No other program could boast more than 14.
Oh, and those 20 players don’t include the first overall pick in this year’s CFL draft — but that’s only because defensive lineman Linden Gaydosh was too busy at Carolina Panthers organized team activities to make it to Tiger-Cats camp.
And while it’s tough to control for the triumphs of other programs, all you can ask of a college-level squad is year-to-year success on the field and standout professional careers from alumni — no program combines the two the way the Dinos have in the past decade.
–Jordan Heath-Rawlings
DINOS BY THE NUMBERS
Vanier Cup wins: 4
Vanier Cup appearances: 8
Conference titles: 14
CIS MOPs: 3
NFL players produced: 2
CFL players produced: 74