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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WESTERN
The Western Mustangs know what you think of them.
They’re a bunch of cocky, entitled punks who think they’re better than everyone, right? Nothing but phony trust-fund kids who were given everything and raised with the finer things in life, yeah? All designer clothes and joy rides in expensive cars, never having to toil for a damn thing. Yeah, everyone loves hating on the Mustangs. Everyone loves beating those kids from Western.
Problem is, that doesn’t happen very often.
With 29 Yates Cup conference titles, six Vanier Cups and an all-time winning percentage of .676 in nearly 75 seasons, the Mustangs aren’t particularly accustomed to losing. They set the record for most Vanier Cups in a decade with four in the 1970s, including a one-point win over Alberta in ’71, a four-point triumph over Toronto in ’74, and back-to-back wins over Acadia in ’76 and ’77. Two more Vanier Cup titles came in 1989 and 1994, and along the way the Mustangs have sent six players to the NFL and more than 140 to the CFL.
In a college sports climate rife with turnover, this is a team that’s had only two head coaches since 1984. First the winningest coach in CIS history, Larry Haylor, and now former Hamilton Tiger-Cats coach Greg Marshall, who has been to the Yates Cup five times—winning three of them—in his six seasons since taking over in 2007.
The Mustangs have almost become the Marshall family business (aside from Marshall’s Pasta Mill on Adelaide Street in downtown London, of course). Greg won a Hec Crighton Trophy with the Mustangs in 1980, six years before his brother Blake—who owns the Pasta Mill with his wife—did the same.
Greg’s son Donnie was the Mustangs’ starting quarterback for the past four seasons, while his other sons Brian, a wide receiver, and Tom, a running back, also play on the team. Blake and Greg sit seventh and eighth on the Mustangs’ all-time rushing list, with 1,981 and 1,918 yards, respectively. Both scored 20 touchdowns for the Mustangs and both finished their careers averaging more than seven yards per carry.
This is a pure football program, based in continuity, family and tradition. And with the track record it has, it’s no wonder the team carries itself with a bit of swagger. Hate all you want, the Mustangs don’t mind. All they do is win.
– Arden Zwelling
MUSTANGS BY THE NUMBERS:
Vanier Cup wins: 6
Vanier Cup appearances: 12
Conference titles: 29
CIS MOPs: 6
NFL players produced: 6
CFL players produced: 144 (220 drafted)
All-time winning percentage: .676
SASKATCHEWAN
You probably didn’t expect to see the University of Saskatchewan on this list.
That’s fine, they don’t expect you—the rest of Canada—to recognize how good they are. It’s not that they don’t deserve it—their nine Vanier Cup appearances is tied for second-best in CIS history—it’s just that the pride of the Prairies is used to being forgotten.
“I think there’s sort of a Saskatchewan thing of being overlooked or underrated a lot of the time,” says Ewan Currie, lead singer of the Sheepdogs and a Huskies defensive end from 2002–04. “There’s teams like Laval and teams in Ontario that have a lot more money, (but) I always took pride in knowing we had this strong team.”
Strong is an understatement, since Saskatchewan was enjoying a dynasty when Currie was growing up in Saskatoon, claiming Vanier Cup titles in 1990, ’96 and ’98. “The Huskies were the team of the ’90s,” Currie says. It was enough to keep him in town for university. “There’s no better sell than ‘We win.’”
And the team kept on winning through the new millennium.
Currie is quick to downplay his own role—“I don’t want to brag off the bench,” he says—but the Huskies of his era reached Vanier Cup finals in 2002 and 2004. Some tight losses in the Cup notwithstanding—including three in a row last decade by a total of 12 points—they’re the team you don’t want to see in the playoffs, undefeated in four Mitchell Bowls and four Uteck Bowls.
Tying all that success together is the alpha Husky himself, head coach Brian Towriss. An institution at the U of S, Towriss has led his pack for 30 years, amassing a 177-101-1 record, seven Canada West coach of the year nods and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. The man from Moose Jaw has done it by looking local to build a team that’s as pure as a ruler-flat skyline.
This season, 86 players from the Huskies’ 92-man roster are Prairie-born, including 55 Saskatchewanians. Each hopes to follow in the footsteps of the 54 former Huskies drafted to the CFL since 1985, players like Kelly Brooks, a Humboldt, Sask., native who graduated from Towriss’s team to two Grey Cup titles as a guard with the B.C. Lions.
Looking inward for talent has also earned the Huskies the kind of loyalty unseen elsewhere in CIS.
“It’s just like a Saskatchewan tradition,” Currie says. “The absence of pro sports going on in Saskatoon means the Huskies get a lot more love.”
So it’s fine by the U of S that they don’t get the credit they deserve. If those other guys aren’t paying attention, it’s just gonna hurt all the more when the Huskies clobber them.
– Jamie Doyle
HUSKIES BY THE NUMBERS:
Vanier Cup wins: 3
Vanier Cup appearances: 9
Conference titles: 19
CIS MOPs: 1
NFL players produced: 0
CFL players produced: 54
All-time winning percentage: .492