THE MONDAY MORNING GOALIE

It looks like a television evangelist but no, that’s NFL great Joe Theismann speaking at the 48th annual U of R Rams fundraising dinner Saturday night at Queensbury Centre.  In this photo the Redskins Hall of Famer, Pro Bowl’er, Super Bowl champion and celebrated television commentator recounts an NFL record he set in the early 1980’s.  I’ll recap his speech lower down in today’s column but let me just say Joe was one of the best after-dinner speakers I’ve ever seen.  He was equal parts comedian, motivator and story-teller.  Well done Rams!

More on the punt … whoops! … I may have let that story out of the bag….

Global Regina’s Derek Meyers was the emcee for the event and did a fantastic job.  Here’s a photo for your collection Duke.  “Right click” on it and save!

A portrait of an NFL legend…

Rams greats Frank McCrystal and Marc Mueller.  Marc leaves Monday for his new posting with the Calgary Stampeders…

Steve Ryan, brother of Seahawks punter Jon Ryan, and another Rams alum.  He got a chuckle out of posing for a photo while holding a plate of cake.

Our buddy Jarrod Livingstone with Joe…

Uh-oh!  Provide the caption.   It looks like something’s going on here?

NO! No it wasn’t.  It was just a funny awkward shot.  I took this one right afterwards with Theismann and one of his many fans.

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NOTES & QUOTES FROM THEISMANN’S SPEECH:

– “This will be a brief speech.  My car is frozen out front and I need to go thaw it out!” (It was around minus-51 outside during the dinner)

– “I commend you on coming out on the coldest night in a half century.  The fact you’d leave your house to come here speaks about the support you give the Rams”

– On why he signed with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts coming out of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish program: “I fought with the Miami Dolphins over having to pay back my signing bonus of $35,000 if I went to fight in the Vietnam war.  I’d been assigned a draft number.”

– His initial contract with Toronto was for three years at $50,000 per season, which was more than the Dolphins were offering.  Joe played in Toronto for the 1970, 1971 and 1972 seasons, appearing in the 1971 Grey Cup.

– Dolphins coach Don Shula flew to South Bend, Indiana to meet with him regarding signing with Toronto.  However his mind was made up, and he came to Canada.

– “I’m like Matt Dunigan.  I remember a lot of things but I don’t remember a lot of things too!  I know we played Saskatchewan in Toronto in 1971.  I had to look it up!”

– A squabble with new Argonauts GM John Barrow in 1973 led to Theismann leaving Toronto for the NFL’s Washington Redskins.  However he didn’t want to leave Toronto.

– Theismann was a punt returner for his first two seasons with the Redskins.  “One against 11 on punt returns seemed like a fair fight to me!”  He returned punts at Notre Dame so it wasn’t new to him.

– “The fact they didn’t change the date of this dinner to a night with more reasonable temperatures is a shock to me!”

– “I’m actually not Joe Theismann.  I’m Joe ‘THEEZE-MAN’.  I’m from South River, New Jersey and my high school team was known as the Rams.  In my senior year at Notre Dame the school’s information officer convinced me to change the pronunciation of my name to ‘THIZE-MAN’ in order to rhyme with Heisman, the trophy for college football’s MVP.”

– “Five years later my Dad changed the pronunciation of his name too!”

– “In the NFL I was a star!  I was in every newspaper and on every TV channel.  If you don’t believe it, just ask me.  I’ll tell you how great I was!”

– “The truth is I was self-centred and egotistical.  In 1985 it all changed on Monday Night Football.  Before the game I told myself ‘your life is going to change tonight’.  It did.  Coach Gibbs called a flea-flicker and when fullback John Riggins tossed the ball back to me, the Giants’ Lawrence Taylor ripped me down by the shoulder and my right leg snapped in half.  It was a compound fracture.  Coach Gibbs came onto the field and said ‘Joe, you’ve put me in a helluva spot here’.   I said, ‘Sorry!'”

– “You never know how your life is going to change.  I thought I was bigger than life but I was blessed by God to take my skills and do something good with them.”

– “I had to start my life ove.  I wasn’t a nice person but I learned how to compete as a player and be part of a championship team.  Football is a microcosm of society and at the age of 35, I had to start my life over.  My five-year, $1-million per season contract was over.”

– “Don’t think about tomorrows.  Think about todays.  Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone.  Take a chance!”

– “You’re looking at an NFL record-holder.  It’s for the shortest net punt.  One yard!”

– “What’s with this weather?  C’MON!!”

– “Understand why you’re here tonight.  It’s about giving back and this is all about the Regina Rams.”

– “To the Rams players: your opportunity to play football at this level is very rare.  You need to create a bond and a family as soon as your meetings and practices begin.  Respect your teammates, your coaches and your university.  It’s more than just about you.  No excuses, no apologies.  I expect to hear next year at this time that you’ve won the championship!”

– “In closing, the 13th man shouldn’t just be about the Roughriders.  It should also be the 13th man for the University of Regina Rams.”

** And that’s about it.  As you can tell, it was very entertaining.  Theismann spoke for about 40 minutes and then did another 20 minutes of a Q & A with Derek Meyers but once they hit an hour, Joe shut it down.

It was the highest-attended event in Rams history and you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one.   I was only able to chat with Theismann for a few moments but I seemed extremely down-to-earth and engaging.

It was a great night!

***

Looking back, it truly was a fabulous weekend.  It began Friday afternoon with a live remote SportsCage broadcast from the University of Regina and the CIS Womens National Volleyball Championship.  Lo and behold, Roughrider offensive coordinator George Cortez stopped by and joined us live on air in the gym.

Because he was nice enough to put the headset on, I didn’t want to grill George too heavily on questions related to the team but we did discuss the Riders’ losses in free agency this off-season.

“We would all like to play with the same guys we had last year but that just doesn’t happen,” George explained.  “There’s a lot of, at some positions, a lot of options out there but you have to keep looking.  Some positions are easier to find players than others.

“But if you’re not losing your quarterback, you’ve got a leg up.  Everybody knows it’s unlikely to play with the same team the next year and this is the ‘un-said’ thing; every team is up against the cap every year.  Every contract goes up each year.  If you brought the same team back every year you’d be over the cap and that’s true for everybody.  So anybody that’s signing a free agent, they’re getting rid of somebody at an equivalent salary.”

Cortez believes it won’t be overly-difficult to find a fresh crop of players to replace those who’ve left.  It’s just going to take a lot of work.

“The spot that people sometimes lose sight of is guys that come out in the draft or as free agents out of US colleges and make NFL teams, they have practice rosters also.  But they have a limit,” Cortez continued.  “You can only be on the practice roster a certain amount of time or you either have to make the team or you can’t be on the practice roster.  There are a lot of really good players in that situation right now.  Chad Simpson with Winnipeg was one of those guys, Bell with the B.C. Lions, there are a lot of good players in that situation.  It’s the luck of the draw sometimes where or when you get to play.”

George said the entire Rider football operations staff is pitching in help find players.

“We all get calls about players and I had an NFL scout who’s a friend of mine call me during the holidays about a player and I passed it on up the trail.  We all get calls and I we also make calls and I always ask if there’s players in their league that may be a fit.  For instance, if there’s junior college players because there’s a lot of good players in our league who came out of junior colleges.

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Here’s a photo from our auctioneer friend Rob “Sharky” Jamont from Saturday’s Optimist Dinner in Moose Jaw.  Craig Hemmingway (middle) hosted the event with football notables such as Chris Getzlaf and Henry Burris (stage right).  Interestingly enough, Burris noted that he wears jersey #1 because of a fan poll taken in 2000 in which Rider fans selected that number for him to wear in his first season in Saskatchewan.  He’s kept it ever since.  How ironic.

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Registration opens Monday for the annual Kelly Bates Football Camp in Humboldt, Saskatchewan May 3 and 4.  The camp is open to football players from across the province in grades 9, 10 and 11.  They offer over 12 hours of instruction from coaches from all levels of Canadian football.  There’s individual position instruction as well as team-oriented coaching.  There’s also professional strength and conditioning instruction from Ignite Conditioning.  Players from 6-, 9- and 12-man programs are welcome and there’s also billeting for out-of-town players.  The registration fee is $165.00.    For more information, email Kelly at kbates59@hotmail.com or visit www.kellybates.ca.