By Howie Mooney
Trades take place in sports all the time. They are part of what makes the long season exciting for the fans and though they can cause stress and anxiety for the players involved, they can also be opportunities for some players to show every other player, all the coaches and the fans either what they can actually do or, in some cases, what they can still do.
In January of 2025, the Colorado Avalanche, the Carolina Hurricanes and the Chicago Blackhawks stunned the hockey world when Mikko Rantanen went from Denver to Raleigh. Chicago sent Taylor Hall and Nils Juntorp to the Hurricanes. Carolina delivered a couple of draft picks, Jack Drury and Martin Necas to the Avalanche. The ‘Canes also sent a third-round selection to the Hawks.
The amazing thing about this trade was that everyone around the deal kept it all quiet until it was eventually announced in the media. Coaches and teammates were all left gobsmacked and dejected when they eventually learned of the transaction. Rantanen had no idea that he was going to be dealt. His contract was expiring, and he had wanted to stay in Colorado and stated after the trade that he would have taken a ‘hometown discount’ to stay with the Avs.
Then, in February of 2025, the Dallas Mavericks packaged their star guard Luka Doncic with Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris and sent the trio to the Los Angeles Lakers. Going the other way were centre Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first round draft pick to Dallas. The Lakers also sent Jalen Hood-Schifino and a 2025 second rounder to the Utah Jazz. The Jazz sent cash and a draft pick to Dallas. They also sent cash to the Lakers.
Just like in the Rantanen trade, the general managers and everyone involved in the trades kept this one completely under wraps until the deal was announced. The Mavericks’ coach, Jason Kidd, was kept completely out of the loop and only found out about the deal immediately before he was about to speak to reporters. He was dealing with the shock of the deal at the same time he was being asked about losing Doncic.
The professional football world today on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border is governed by a salary cap. The National Football League has a much larger cap than its Canadian counterpart, but there are rules and regulations that govern rosters and trades and player movement in both leagues. One of the big differences between football and other sports is that the money in most of the contracts is not necessarily guaranteed if a player is released from a team.
Players do move from one league to the other but it’s generally only after a player has been released or his contract has expired and he is, for all intents and purposes, a free agent. Over the years, we have seen former Canadian Football League players move on to great success in the NFL. Great stars like Warren Moon, Joe Theismann, Doug Flutie, Jeff Garcia and Cameron Wake showed such talent in the Canadian league that they were offered contracts in the National league.
And it didn’t hurt that they also performed very well down there.
Over the last fifty years, however, there has never been a trade between clubs from the two leagues. That doesn’t mean that such a deal has never happened. In fact, at least one did. And there are people of a certain vintage who will most certainly remember the players involved in that transaction, as they were players who had rather high profiles. And there was a former CFL quarterback who was moved to an NFL team who played an integral role in getting his new squad into a Super Bowl.
The transaction to which I’m referring took place over the spring and summer of 1967, and it involved players who either were stars in the Canadian Football League or would become very prominent figures in the league. Please take the word ‘prominent’ to mean players who are now members of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. And it all started with a contract negotiation that became a spectacle of almost soap-operatic proportions.
The British Columbia Lions were extremely interested in a player that the Minnesota Vikings had. The Toronto Argonauts owned that player’s rights in the Canadian Football League. And the Vikings had some serious interest in someone who was with the Lions. So, some kind of a deal was, perhaps, inevitably forthcoming.
Joe Kapp was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 19, 1938. His mother was Florence Garcia. His father was Robert Kapp. Young Joe was raised in the San Fernando Valley in California and played quarterback for Hart High School in Santa Clarita. He then played for the University of California at Berkeley, taking the school to first place in the Pacific Coast Conference – or the Pac 8 – with a 6-1 record in their league.
They played in the 1959 Rose Bowl against Iowa. The Hawkeyes were the second-ranked team in the country. The Golden Bears found themselves posted at number 16. The two schools’ rankings were reflected in the final result as Iowa dumped Cal 38-12. But the California quarterback, Kapp, was noticed that year. In 1958, he was chosen to be an All-American and in the NFL Draft, he was selected by the Washington Redskins.
But the Redskins never contacted their pick and Kapp’s only professional offer came from general manager Jim Finks of the Calgary Stampeders, so he went north to play in the Canadian Football League. Kapp’s time in Cow-Town lasted two seasons, but in 1960 he took the Stamps to the postseason for just their second time in the modern era of the Canadian League.
The British Columbia Lions came into existence in 1954 and in their time in the league, they had made it to the postseason once. That was in 1959 when they went 9-7 and finished third in the Western Division. In their two-game, total-point West semi-final against Edmonton, the Eskimos outscored them 61-15. It was not pretty. After they missed the playoffs in 1960, they knew they had to make some changes.
One of the things they did was to trade four players to Calgary to get Joe Kapp. Kapp’s contract had run out in Calgary and negotiations between himself and Finks and the Stamps were going nowhere. Once the trade was consummated, Kapp and the Lions agreed on a contract fairly quickly. Kapp was pretty happy to get out of Calgary and, according to Jim Kearney of the Vancouver Sun, he had some choice words for Finks. But he took it upon himself to put his head down and work hard for his new team.
He didn’t do it by himself, but he was certainly one of the catalysts in a positive change in Vancouver. It took a couple of years, but in 1963, Kapp led the Lions to their first-ever first place finish in the West. The Saskatchewan Roughriders had survived the division semi-final, but they could not vanquish Kapp and his teammates.
The Lions were going to the Grey Cup for the first time in their history. Perhaps more importantly, it was being played at Empire Stadium in Vancouver. But Angelo Mosca and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats had a message for their western opponents, and the message was ‘Beware!’ Hamilton won the game 21-10 and Mosca figured in on one of the game’s key plays.
Late in the second quarter, the Lions’ star running back, Willie Fleming, was running along the left side of the field when he was tackled by a Ti-Cat player. Mosca came through and appeared to dive over the top of the fallen Lion. But his knee and foot also seemed to graze Fleming’s helmet. The hit knocked Fleming out of the game. B.C. had already lost two of their wide receivers and they felt that Mosca was targeting Fleming. That animosity never died.
The following season, the two teams met up in the Grey Cup final again. This time, Kapp led his Lions to a 34-24 victory. He was the toast of the town. In many ways, he was the antithesis of the modern quarterback. Where a lot of signal callers tried to avoid contact, Kapp seemed ever eager to initiate contact on defenders. That toughness made him desirable to a lot of teams.
Unfortunately for the Lions, they missed the playoffs in 1965 and 1966. That was when the gong show began. 1967 was Kapp’s option year with his team. The Leos, of course, held his rights. But new contract talks with B.C. general manager Denny Veitch were careening into the abyss. In fact, Kapp viewed the number he was presented with as an insult. He decided he was going to shop his services around.
He found a good amount of interest from a number of teams in the upstart American Football League. The Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and Houston Oilers were all circling in the water to try to claim the Lions’ pivot. The Oilers offered Kapp a $50,000 signing bonus along with $50,000 a year for two seasons. There was a ‘no-cut’ clause in there as well. Kapp accepted their offer.
But there was one problem. First, when the Oilers submitted the contract to the AFL’s commissioner, Milt Woodward, he ruled that this deal was, in fact, illegal. Also, the Lions still held his CFL rights, and they would absolutely enforce them. But they were stuck in a bit of a pickle as well. They knew that Kapp was a desirable player both inside and outside the Canadian Football League and they now had a tangible dollar value on that desire.
Given that he had signed in Houston instead of wanting to play out his option in Vancouver and also, given the fact that the last couple of seasons after the 1964 Grey Cup victory were both losing ones, the press was portraying Kapp as an ungrateful mercenary who had turned his back on the Lions and their fans. The fans had become disenchanted with Kapp over the previous two campaigns and the press’ disdain for Kapp fueled the anger in the populace.
The team had a couple of choices. They could allow him to play out his option and then leave and, as a result, get nothing for him. Or they could seek out some kind of deal for their tough and proven leader. But if he did leave, they didn’t have another quarterback. Sooooo……
*
Jim Young was born in Hamilton, Ontario on June 6, 1943, and attended Westdale Secondary School in West Hamilton. The school’s motto was always “Each of us will find our own way to the stars.” And when one looks at a list of some of the students that found their way through those hallowed halls, the motto seems to have fit the school quite well.
Hmmm…..let’s see……Second City alumni Eugene Levy and Martin Short both went to Westdale. Brian Williams, the CBC broadcaster, not the American newscaster, went there as well. Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Harry Howell went to Westdale too. Do you remember the band Teenage Head? Their founder, Gord Lewis, went there. Hollywood producer Daniel Goldberg was a Westdale alum. So was former Ottawa Rough Rider quarterback and Canadian Football Hall of Famer, Russ Jackson.
There were some who called the school Celebrity High! It seemed to have earned that moniker.
When Young left Westdale, he headed around Highway 403 and up the 401 to Kingston and Queen’s University. Upon graduation, Young was the first player chosen in the CFL draft. The Toronto Argonauts took him in 1965. But he was also courted by the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, and he eventually signed with them. He made the team out of training camp in 1965 and was given jersey number 48. But in 1965 and 1966, he played in a total of six games and gained four yards on just three carries. He played more on special teams, fielding six punts and nine kickoffs.
By the time the 1966 season ended, Young was 23 years old and, if he was eager for a change of scenery, who would blame him? The Argonauts owned his CFL rights, so if Young was going to play in Canada, it would most likely be in Toronto. Sooooo…….
*
Bill Symons was born in Nucla, Colorado on June 14, 1943. He played three seasons for the University of Colorado Buffaloes from 1962 to 1964. He was a running back, but he also played on special teams, returning punts and kickoffs. He also did some punting. He ended up being selected 157th overall in the AFL draft by the Kansas City Chiefs. But when the Green Bay Packers took him 80th overall, he chose to try out with Vince Lombardi’s Pack in 1965.
The Packers had been the best team in the NFL under Lombardi and with Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung in the backfield, Symons was expected to be a quick cut. But he went through every practice like it was a championship game and he stuck around…and stuck around…and stuck around. He eventually secured a roster spot.
Then, as Craig Wallace wrote in his book, A Slip in The Rain, in the final preseason game against the New York Giants, he suffered a horrific knee injury. In the mid-1960s, knee surgeries weren’t like they are today. Back then, surgeons would have to open the knee up by pulling off the patella and working on the ligaments pretty much by hand. Nothing was done arthroscopically as it’s done today.
Symons rode the injured list in 1965. In 1966, he came back to Packers’ training camp but was a fraction of his 1965 self. Lombardi cut the 23-year-old. Symons headed north to the Canadian Football League and eventually found a spot with the B.C. Lions. He played ten games with the Leos in 1966 as a slot receiver and a defensive back. He saw little to no action as a running back.
*
As the 1967 CFL season was approaching, things were coming to a head in Vancouver, especially given that Joe Kapp’s time with the team appeared to be coming to an end. How could the Lions use Kapp as an asset to get something? Had Bill Symons proven himself enough that he could be useful in the upcoming season? If not, could he be used to bring anything back?
Things were falling into place in different locations that might have helped some dominoes crash in the B.C. Lions’ favour.
Jim Finks had been the general manager when Kapp joined the Calgary Stampeders back in 1959. By 1964, Finks held the same position with the Minnesota Vikings. Norm Van Brocklin had been the coach of the Vikes in 1966. He and his quarterback, Fran Tarkenton, did not get along. In Week 12 of that 1966 season, Minnesota was playing the 1-10 expansion Atlanta Falcons. Van Brocklin pulled Tarkenton in favour of his back-up, Bob Berry. The Vikings lost that game.
At the end of that season, Tarkenton, who had played on the frozen tundra of Metropolitan Stadium since he turned pro in 1961, demanded a trade out of Minnesota. In February of 1967, Van Brocklin resigned as coach of the Vikings. In March, Finks gave his quarterback what he wanted, and he traded Tarkenton to the New York Giants for four draft picks. That left a void at the most important position on the field. Finks had been keeping an eye on what had been happening in Vancouver with Joe Kapp.
Finks knew how Kapp could lead a team, given how he had brought the Stamps to the playoffs in 1960. He also saw Kapp take the Lions to two Grey Cup games, winning the second one. Also, after Norm Van Brocklin resigned from the Vikings’ head coaching job, his replacement was one Bud Grant. The same Bud Grant who had been coaching the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers for a decade. Grant had seen what Kapp could orchestrate on a football field with the rival Lions, and he thought he could work with a guy like him.
Finks wanted Kapp, and Grant wanted Kapp, but he was still under the Lions’ control. They held his option year and could hold him to it if they wanted. But the Vikings had a player that B.C. coveted as well. That was Jim Young. The problem was that Young’s CFL rights had been owned by the Toronto Argonauts. The Lions would have to come up with something to extricate his rights from Toronto.
That was taken care of in January of 1967 when B.C. traded the former all-star defensive end Dick Fouts to Toronto for Young’s CFL rights. Fouts was 33 and was unlikely to be able to make the Lions’ roster in 1967. They had also looked at Symons’ knee and figured it wouldn’t stand up to the rigors of one more season, let alone a career. He was, more or less, a throw-in. That was, perhaps, the last deal that Argos’ coach and general manager Bob Shaw was involved in. He was let go shortly after that transaction and was replaced by the brash and fiery Leo Cahill.
At the end of April, the Lions capitalized on that trade with the Argonauts. With the Canadian rights to the young Canadian running back in hand, they made a deal with the Vikings. In exchange for Young, they gave Minnesota the rights to the aging Willie Fleming. In the event that Fleming did not sign with the Vikings, then the teams would figure out some other kind of consideration. When Lions’ coach Dave Skrien saw film of Young, he said, “He just loves to crack into those 260-pound defensive men.”
But the Vikings had to put Young on waivers in order to make the deal. That was when the whole thing caught a snag. The New Orleans Saints were interested in claiming Young. Finks had to do some tap dancing to get the Saints off the scent. Eventually, he succeeded, and Finks and Veitch shook on a deal. When Fleming decided to retire though, instead of playing for Minnesota, the two teams had to figure out a Plan B.
By mid-June, it had become apparent that Joe Kapp had played his last game with the B.C. Lions. Yes, he had led the team to two straight Grey Cups, but in 1965 and 1966, as the losses piled up, he had become the target of the fans’ ire. And the way the contract negotiations were going dictated that a change would need to be made at quarterback.
On September 1, 1967, a Friday, the Lions put Kapp on recallable waivers. There were nine teams in the Canadian Football League. Every other team was playing on Labour Day Monday, September 4. If they picked Kapp up off the waiver wire, they would be required to release another American player very close to an important upcoming game. That would be close to untenable. So, the Lions figured that Kapp would easily clear waivers.
The Lions plan worked out perfectly. By Sunday, Kapp and Finks had come to terms on a contract. In order to do that though, the Lions requested something back from the Vikings. Finks confirmed to reporters that they would be sending some kind of compensation to B.C. “We’ve made a satisfactory agreement with Vancouver. It would be cash and players, or one of the two.”
Given that the Vikings had traded away Fran Tarkenton earlier in the year, Finks was very happy to have Kapp in the fold. “He’s experienced. He’s a competitor and he has a lot of leadership qualities.”
When Kapp spoke to Jim Taylor of the Vancouver Sun, he tried to paint himself in the best possible light. “I didn’t plan it this way. I was perfectly willing to play out my option and help the Lions this year. But I’m playing football again, and I’m delighted. That’s all that ever mattered – that I play. I’m happy with the deal, but mostly I’m happy to be playing. I just had to play this year. Sitting around was driving me nuts.”
Bud Grant had watched Kapp throw to some receivers on Saturday and liked what he saw. “I’ve been in California, getting every little kid on the block to catch passes for me, and I’m in pretty good shape,” Kapp said. Grant deemed his new quarterback as ready to maybe “see some action” that following Sunday against the Cleveland Browns in Minnesota’s final preseason game. To that, Kapp had a little chuckle. “It’s nice to know Bud has confidence in me, after he licked me so often in Winnipeg. I couldn’t beat him, so I joined him.”
The man who replaced Kapp as the Lions’ quarterback at the beginning of 1967 was the superannuated Bernie Faloney. At 35, Faloney’s best days were in the rear-view mirror, but he looked okay in his first appearance in the black and orange, even if it was a preseason game. Faloney completed seven of his eleven passes for 65 yards. One thing of note, he did complete a pass to the aforementioned Jim Young. Young had spent most of that night blocking for the other running backs.
Young was still, well, young. But he had known Faloney when the latter was playing in Hamilton in the late 1950s and early ‘60’s. According to Eric Whitehead of the Vancouver Province, Young caught Faloney’s notice while he was still playing high school ball. Faloney was somewhat of a mentor to Young then and also when he was at Queens in Kingston. He said that the elder quarterback and the running back enjoyed a special rapport. Whitehead saw, at that early time in Young’s CFL career, that the Canadian would be a special player. He would be proven correct.
Jim Young was six feet tall and weighed 215 pounds. But size isn’t everything, especially if you don’t have heart. Young had that. And he could play anywhere in a team’s offense. He was an everything-back. He could carry the ball out of the backfield, and he could run a fly pattern and beat the defensive backs.
And he could hit. He quickly gained a reputation for his aggressive temperament and earned himself an apt nickname. Young has often told the story of that moniker and how he received it.
“It was after a game in Hamilton in 1967 and a friend of my dad’s came up to me afterwards. He said, ‘Man, you Lions sure played dirty tonight.’ It gave me an idea and I approached Jim Taylor, a writer at the Vancouver Sun on tying it in with my number ‘30’. He did a column on it, and we ended up doing a book called ‘Dirty Thirty’. It was really just something we created for marketing purposes. It was really just an idea.”
Whether the nickname was accurate or not – there are people who insist that Young played hard, but not dirty – he began showing why the Lions had coveted him as intensely as they did. He led the team in receiving in his first season. In fact, he did that in every one of his first nine seasons – from 1967 to 1975. In 1972, he set a Lions’ team record when he accumulated 1,362 yards on receptions.
In 1969, Young was named a Western All-Star. He repeated that feat in 1972. He was named the league’s Most Outstanding Canadian in 1970 and again in 1972. But he has repeated that he felt he was better in a later season but went unrecognized. “That was nice that it happened,” Young told Brian Snelgrove of cfl.ca. “In fact, I probably had a better year in 1975 than either of those years, but the recognition never hurts. But it’s not the same as winning the Grey Cup.”
The Lions never won a Cup in Young’s time on the west coast. In fact, they never even got to a Grey Cup game, at least as a team on the field. Being in the same division as the powerful Calgary Stampeders in the early part of his career and the Edmonton Eskimos later on made it tough for the Lions as it did for every other team in the West.
In 1977, the Lions made it to the Western final against those Esks. The game was in the Alberta capital, and it was cold! Young spoke of that weekend with Snelgrove. “We lost that game as soon as we got off the plane in Edmonton. It was about minus-40 and the wind was howling. We had guys who had never even seen snow before. I think they beat us 38-1.” That was as close to a Grey Cup that Young, and his team, would get.
As time went by, the Lions had difficulty achieving or even maintaining success. That said, Young enjoyed his time in Vancouver. “We had a lot of fun in B.C. Playing at old Empire Stadium, it was a little different. We spent a lot of time in the ‘70’s trying to find a good quarterback. Pete Liske and Rick Cassata were both there late in their careers, but it wasn’t until we got Jerry Tagge and Joe Paopao that we started to get some success.”
Young played 197 CFL games and is enshrined forever in the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in Toronto and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in Hamilton. His jersey number 30 is on permanent display in the ring of honour at B.C. Place Stadium in Vancouver. Only seven other players’ numbers from the team’s history accompany Young’s.
*
Bill Symons was supposed to be a guy whose career was going to be over soon after it began. His knee was allegedly a mess and he’d never be able to run on it after the injury he suffered against the New York Giants in 1965. But the scrappy back proved to be durable and almost as versatile as Young, at least for the seasons he was active.
It almost never happened though. Symons was apparently on the bubble as the Argonauts were getting down to their final preseason game in 1967. The day of their last exhibition match, they traded with Ottawa and obtained running back Jim Dillard. That would have taken any possible spot from Symons. Dillard, though, told coach Leo Cahill that he needed a week to report. The player was immediately put on the suspended list.
Symons showed up for that rainy game at the Autostade in Montreal and carried the ball seven times for 57 yards. He also managed to score a couple of touchdowns in a 26-22 Toronto win. After the game Cahill’s lineup was 13 men over the league-mandated roster size. “It’s going to be very hard,” the coach told reporters after the game. “I changed my mind on at least one man tonight.” That one man may very well have been Symons.
The Argos second game of the regular 1967 season was in Vancouver and Symons was one of five Toronto players who had some tie with the B.C. Lions. The others were defensive end Dick Fouts, running back Bob Swift, offensive tackle Bill Frank and wide receiver Mel Profit. The Argos barely got past the Lions 18-17 for their second victory in two starts. The Lions started the season without winning a game for a while.
This was the Argos’ best point in the season, starting the campaign with two wins. They finished the year at 5-8-1. They made the playoffs for the first time since 1961 but were destroyed in the Eastern semi-final by the Ottawa Rough Riders. Symons worked his way into a starting position by the end of the schedule. The next season would be a better one for the double blue, and for Symons.
The man from Nucla, Colorado established himself in Cahill’s backfield by rushing for 1,107 yards in fourteen games in 1968. He became the first Toronto Argonaut back to break through the 1,000-yard mark. His hard work garnered him the league’s Most Outstanding Player Award. No Toronto player had ever achieved that feat. He was also named as an Eastern All-Star at running back.
The Argonauts went 9-5-0 in 1968 and posted their first winning record since going 7-6-1 seven years previous. Then they knocked off the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Eastern semi-final 33-21 to move on and face the division leading Ottawa Rough Riders in a two-game total point series. The first match was played in Toronto at Canadian National Exhibition Stadium. The Argos won that one 13-11. Cahill was ebullient.
His defense spent the day in a constant blitz. The muddy turf made the day miserable for the offenses as well, but according to Cahill, his team was better prepared for the horrid footing. “Our team adjusted to it and Ottawa didn’t. I hope we get the same thing in Ottawa. That team shouldn’t have anything nice. The more inclement the weather and the field and the more the crowd yells, the better it is for us.”
Cahill continued, “It was great to beat Ottawa. You know, when a team keeps beating you and beating you – it was our first win in eight games with them – they start thinking they’re snake-bit. We’ve dismissed the folklore that Hamilton Tiger-Cats were unbeatable and now we’ve proven it against Ottawa. Now we go into the second game as winners and don’t have to worry about making anything up.”
Symons had carried the ball 19 times for 75 yards and after the game, he talked about the conditions of the field. “It was a long afternoon out there. I can tell you it was darn rough going too.” Ottawa offensive tackle Tom Beynon had the final word on that day warning anyone who would listen that it was still only half-time. “Let’s see how good Argos are in the second half,” he told reporters.
Indeed, the Rough Riders went into the half with a 22-0 lead in the second game and 33-13 aggregate score. The Argos scored a couple of touchdowns in the third quarter – one of them by Symons on a 37-yard pass and run – but this game was all Ottawa. They took the two-game series 47-27 and advanced to play the Calgary Stampeders in the Grey Cup which was back in Toronto. Ottawa won that one 24-21.
In 1969, the Argos made a trade with Winnipeg and acquired running back Dave Raimey. He and Symons would share the ball carrying duties that year. Both men managed to gain 900 yards with their feet, and they led their team to a 10-4 season. But that was only good enough for second place in the East to those dreaded Ottawa Rough Riders who ended up at 11-3.
Just like the previous season, the Argos disposed of the Hamilton Ti-Cats in the semi-final game. And, once again, they would face Ottawa in the two-game total point Eastern final. As in 1968, the Argos took the first match by a score of 22-14. But Cahill was not gloating after this one. Instead, he was upset at the fact that they had two extra points blocked in the win.
“We just couldn’t afford to miss those two points. Two points would have given us a ten-point lead,” Cahill lamented to the press after the game. Argos’ offensive tackle Danny Nykoluk concurred with his coach’s feeling. “If Ottawa hadn’t blocked our two convert attempts, we’d be taking a ten-point lead to Ottawa next Saturday.” Nykoluk was finishing up his 14th year with the Argos and had never been to a Grey Cup.
There are reports that after this game, Cahill had uttered some words that have stuck with him even after his passing. “Only an act of God could stop us from winning this now.” Heavy stuff.
As for Symons, he was Toronto’s best player. He carried the ball thirteen times for an even 100 yards. He didn’t get into the end zone, but he sprinted for a couple of runs of 31 and 40 yards that went on to set up Argo scores. After the sixty minutes were up, the team gave him the game ball. He did all this with a broken big toe. Given the importance of the game, his performance was exactly what his team needed.
When the dust (and the mud) had all settled and the players had had a moment to ruminate over what had taken place, Argos’ quarterback Tom Wilkinson was about to walk back out to the field to hang with a couple of the Rough Riders who were out there. Cahill stopped him and dragged him back to the team’s locker room. “They’re the enemy,” Cahill told his signal caller, “and this is only half-time. We can show what good sports we are next winter.”
Going into the second game, Frank Clair and his assistants, Jack Gotta and Bob Ward, set their goal at keeping Wilkinson in the pocket and not allowing him time and space to scramble around. The team executed that plan expertly. The Riders also set out to contain Symons. They held him to seven yards on six carries. The score in the second game favoured Ottawa 32-3. The Riders were going to the Grey Cup again.
They did have a secret weapon in their arsenal that allowed them a huge advantage.
Going into the game, the weather in Ottawa had been damp and temperatures were below freezing. The field was slick and footing and traction were, at best, questionable. Forty years after that game, Bill Symons had a thought for Rick Matsumoto of cfl.ca. “Until the day I die, I’m going to believe that they (the Rough Riders) watered the field during the night.”
So, what did the home team do to make up for the horrible field conditions? The day of the game, three of the Riders’ players, Joe Poirier, Jay Roberts and Billy Cooper, went up Bank Street to Ritchie’s Sports Shop and quizzed the owner, Herb Gosewich. They figured that their traditional football cleats would not work well on the frozen playing surface the way it was.
The trio looked at shoes with rubber soles, figuring that they might be better than the cleats. Then Cooper picked up a broomball shoe. For the uninitiated, broomball is a game played on ice between teams of players. The object is to get the ball into the other team’s goal using a broom. Not a broom that you’d use to sweep your kitchen floor, but a specially made broom used specifically for this sport. Players ran on the ice and required a special shoe that would allow them to move effectively and efficiently on the frozen surface.
The three men grabbed as many pairs of the broomball shoes as Gosewich had. They were able to find footwear for almost everyone on the team. According to Eddie MacCabe of the Ottawa Journal, there were three players who could not be fit. Running back Ron Stewart ended up wearing rubber soled shoes and he was great. Poirier couldn’t find a pair that fit him. Their kicker and defensive back, Don Sutherin also could not kick in them so wore a cleat on one foot and a rubber soled shoe on the other.
When you look at the statistics on the day, you have to think that the shoes made at least a little difference. Ottawa had 25 first downs to Toronto’s six. The Riders rushed for 177 yards on the day and passed for 260. The Argos rushed for 47 yards and passed for 62. When you factor in the team losses, Toronto’s net offense was just 32 yards. Ottawa’s was 422.
The game, the score and the day left Bill Symons shaking his head even decades later. “Tell me, how do you go out and find forty pairs of broomball shoes on a Saturday morning in Ottawa? Forty pairs that perfectly fit forty players!” The Riders went on to defeat Saskatchewan 29-11 in the Grey Cup. It was their second consecutive Cup win and their third of the decade. By winning this game, they avenged their loss to the Green Giants in the 1966 title game. They had defeated the Edmonton Eskimos in 1960 as well.
In 1970, Symons and Raimey split the rushing duties. The pair did well, and the team did sufficiently well, but after a first-round loss to the Montreal Alouettes in the playoffs, Leo Cahill decided that he needed to make some changes to his roster. In 1971, he went out and added quarterbacks Joe Theismann, and Greg Barton, running back Leon McQuay, Outland Trophy winner Jim Stillwagon, defensive back Tim Anderson and defensive lineman Gene Mack.
Getting McQuay meant that Symons role with the team would change. Instead of being the lead back or co-lead back, he would become a blocker for McQuay. Raimey was moved into the defensive backfield. The infusion of new blood was a positive thing though as the team made it to the Grey Cup for the first time since 1952. Their opponents were the Calgary Stampeders.
We all know the story. Late in the game, the Stampeders were leading 14-11. The Argos were deep in Calgary territory. They were hoping to get a touchdown, but they would have settled for a field goal to tie the game and send it to overtime. All they had to do was move the ball to the centre of the hash marks to make the kick easier. Theismann handed the ball to McQuay who ran to his left to do just that.
Then he thought he saw an opening to the endzone. He tried to cut on the wet Tartan Turf, but the torrential rains made the field as slick as the kitchen floors after our moms had just waxed them. He slipped and in 1971, the ground COULD cause a fumble. He dropped the ball. It was pounced on by Calgary’s Reggie Holmes. The game was essentially over at that point.
Leo Cahill, after the game, said to reporters, “When Leon slipped, I fell.”
Bill Symons lasted two more years with the Argos and the league. He retired to look after his own forest products company. He moved north of Toronto and had a farm up in Caledon, Ontario. In 1997, Symons was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. Eighteen years after that, in 2015, he was enshrined in the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.
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After he left the B.C. Lions, Joe Kapp had a tough time with the Minnesota Vikings in 1967. That season, he played eleven of the team’s fourteen games and compiled a record of three wins, five losses and three ties. There was no overtime then. In the three games he didn’t play, Minnesota failed to win any. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl that year.
The following year, the Vikings finished with a record of eight wins and six losses. It was not stellar, but it was good enough to take first place in the Central Division of the NFL. Of the four division winners – the Dallas Cowboys, Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Colts were the others – Minnesota was the only team that did not amass double digits in victories. Their division win got them into the postseason though.
On the Sunday before Christmas in 1968, The Baltimore Colts took a 7-0 lead into the halftime break. After three quarters, the Vikings trailed 21-0. They churned out a pair of touchdowns in the final period, but a Lou Michaels field goal in between the two majors made the final score 24-14 for Baltimore. Kapp had a good day, completing 26 of 44 passes for 287 yards, but a pair of interceptions and a lost fumble were the difference in the loss.
The Colts then went into Super Bowl III against Joe Namath and the New York Jets. Baltimore went into that game favoured by 18 points. But Colts’ quarterback Earl Morrall threw three interceptions and was eventually replaced by Johnny Unitas as the Jets rolled to a 16-3 landmark upset victory.
In 1969, Kapp found his stride. While he didn’t post huge personal numbers, all he did do was win football games. After Gary Cuozzo started the Vikings’ season opener in a 24-23 loss to the New York Giants, Kapp was named the starter in their second game of the season against those vaunted Baltimore Colts. Kapp’s name was booed when it was called by the team’s public address announcer before the game. The people weren’t booing by the end of the game.
The story of the eventful afternoon of September 28 was trumpeted on the front page of the Minneapolis Tribune the next day. And just so you know, Kapp fired seven touchdown passes in a 52-14 win over the visiting Colts. After the game, a Baltimore reporter asked Kapp if he had been bothered at all by the excellent (and massive at 6’7” and 275 pounds) defensive end, Bubba Smith. Kapp snapped back, “He might have played a fine game, but you didn’t see him on me, did you?”
Besides the fact that he threw for seven scores, he also completed 28 out of 43 passes for 449 yards. To that point, only Sid Luckman, Adrian Burk and Y.A. Tittle had been able to throw seven touchdown passes in a single game. Since then, three other quarterbacks have matched that feat. The former quarterback Burk was a back judge in this momentous game.
After the questions from reporters, he went into the trainer’s room. Anyone who has been in a sports locker room knows that the trainer’s room is off limits for press personnel. Merrill Swanson of the Tribune waited for Kapp to emerge from the inner sanctum to get his thoughts on the game.
“That’s the type of job you have to do to beat these guys,” Kapp told Swanson. “We had a year to get ready. We remembered losing to them in the (Western Conference) playoff game last December. I know I did.” When someone shouted to Kapp, “You’ve got all your fans back, Joe!” He replied, “Ya…until next week.”
Everything was good for Kapp and the Vikings as they rolled to win after win after win in that 1969 season. After that opening week loss to the Giants, they won their next twelve games. They went into their final game in Atlanta having clinched a playoff berth and with nothing to really compete for except the NFL record for consecutive wins which was, at that point, thirteen. Alas, they dropped a 10-3 decision to the lowly Falcons on a cold, rainy and muddy day. Their record for the season ended up at 12-2.
A week after that final regular season game, the Vikings hosted the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the playoffs. After three quarters, the Rams led the game 17-14. A Bruce Gossett field goal lengthened the Los Angeles lead to 20-14 in the fourth quarter. But a Joe Kapp 2-yard plunge for a score tied the game. Fred Cox added the extra point to make it 21-20. The Vikings defense then tackled Roman Gabriel in the end zone for a safety to make the final score 23-20.
That win moved the Vikings into the NFL Championship game against the Eastern Conference winning Cleveland Browns who advanced after knocking off the Dallas Cowboys 38-14. Minnesota controlled this game for the most part, taking a 27-0 lead into the fourth quarter. The Browns managed a touchdown in that final frame, and the final score ended up being 27-7. The Vikings were going to the Super Bowl!
The Kansas City Chiefs were the opposition for Super Bowl IV. Many of the Chiefs’ players were on the team that played in the first Super Bowl, in which Kansas City was beaten by the Green Bay Packers. They had an idea what to expect from the enormity that this game had taken on, especially with the New York Jets’ win over the Colts the year before.
That previous experience surely helped them in this game despite their being 13-point-underdogs.
Neither Kapp nor his team was able to summon up the quality of play they showed throughout the regular season or in the NFL playoffs, and they ended up getting smoked 23-7 by the Chiefs. At halftime, Kansas City led 16-0. The two teams traded touchdowns in the third quarter and that was all for the scoring in the game.
The Chiefs’ quarterback, Lenny Dawson, was named the game’s best player and was given a new car for his fine play. Earlier in the week, he had been implicated in a gambling investigation. He would be told before the big match that he would be exonerated. The call came from the president, Richard Nixon himself. Nixon made the call to Hank Stram directly.
Stram, after talking to Nixon, and after taking his team to a Super Bowl win, spoke to reporters about what his game plan had entailed. “The idea was to keep Joe Kapp in the pocket. Our ends did it. Our ends did a lot of odd spacing and triple stacking. He only got out of containment a few times, and when he did, he paid for it. He was hit hard.”
Kapp did not appear for questions after the game. He was in a New Orleans hospital having his shoulder looked at. Before the game, Stram had told at least one reporter that Kapp was the prototype quarterback of the new decade. A big guy who could hit his receivers with passes and if there was no one open, he could run over, around and through opposing tacklers. But Kapp couldn’t run over any of the Chiefs’ defenders. It would take a few decades before that type of hybrid signal caller would become the standard of the league.
At the end of the season, Kapp was named the Vikings’ Most Valuable Player. He refused the honour, saying, “There is no one most valuable Viking. There are forty most valuable Vikings.” That was from the man whose rallying cry through the 1969 season and playoffs was “40 for 60!” Forty men playing together with a single goal and a single purpose for sixty minutes.
That was his greatest moment as a player. 1969 had been his option year and the Vikings had not offered him a renewal for 1970. The team’s most important player didn’t have a contract for the next season. He was 31 by the end of that Super Bowl game. He would be 32 a couple of months after that. He was a man adrift.
He did get a contract with the New England Patriots after the 1970 season started. The team was not good and Kapp was a shell of the player he had been the season before. He played in eleven games. That was the end of his football career. He did initiate a lawsuit against the league, claiming the standard player contract was “unconstitutional and a restraint of trade”. It took four years, but he won a summary judgement. The court ruled that his ability to work had been restrained. Two years later though, he was awarded no damages.
As the decade rolled from the late 1970s to the early 80s, Kapp moved toward acting. He started by working in television, getting cameos in shows like Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, Adam-12, Emergency, Police Woman and Medical Center. He moved into movies almost immediately following his football career. His most famous flicks included the original iteration of The Longest Yard, Two-Minute Warning and Semi-Tough.
He coached at his alma mater, California from 1982 to 1986. In 1990, he was the general manager of the B.C. Lions. His tenure was marked by things like bringing in ex-NFLers like Mark Gastineau, whose best days were long behind him. He lasted just the one year there. In 1992, Kapp coached the Sacramento Attack of the Arena Football League.
Perhaps one of the most notorious incidents involving Kapp occurred at a Grey Cup luncheon in 2011. It was a traditional alumni function that had taken place on the Friday before the big game. The lunch that year had been organized by former CFLer and alumni president, Leo Ezerins to call attention to post-concussion syndrome among athletes.
The plan was to have both Joe Kapp and Angelo Mosca talk about their 1963 Grey Cup in which Mosca had knocked the Lions’ outstanding running back Willie Fleming out of the game on a questionable hit. But what unfolded that afternoon was something right out of a wrestling match brawl, except, by all accounts, the punches were real.
Canadian comedian Ron James was the host for the event. He appeared on the George Strombolopoulos show on CBC the Monday after it all went down. “I did a twenty-minute set, and it was fun – maybe a little long – everybody was in a great mood. Grey Cup Day. The Princess Patricia’s Pipers playing God Save The Queen. The Grey Cup marching in and through and everything like that. There’s Angelo Mosca sitting at the table in front of me with a Leonidas-sized skull. They don’t make a head that big anymore. It’s massive! It’s like the size of a Macy’s float.”
James continued, “So, unbeknownst to me he had extended his hand a couple of times to Joe Kapp. Now, Angelo Mosca came from the ghetto in Boston and Kapp was a Chicano cat from the barrio in New Mexico. But they were holding a 50-year (actually 48) grudge from this controversial hit that Angelo Mosca had laid on the star running back from B.C. in 1963, George!”
“So, he (Kapp) comes up and he’s got a sprig, he’s got a flower – it looks like a piece of heather – from one of the table settings and I just comically say to Kapp, ‘Ah, it’s a peace offering, is it?’ and he looks at me and he goes ‘Ya’. But he’s got crazy eyes. So, he’s got this sprig, and I’m just standing there like a midget who jumped the fence trying to get into the circus…anyway, there’s Angelo Mosca, this behemoth, but he’s got a cane…so, he’s on the other side of the stage, and Kapp is beside me, so Kapp starts flicking this thing in Mosca’s face. And I remember thinking, just in a split second, jeez, I wouldn’t do that.”
That’s when Strombolopoulos said, “And then this happened…” They played the video of Kapp approaching Mosca and shoving the flower in his face. Mosca first tried to laugh it off but then said “shove it up your ass.” Then, he seemingly realized that Kapp wasn’t kidding around, he swung his cane at the old quarterback. That prompted Kapp to throw a couple of punches at Mosca, downing the ancient defensive star.
James then told what happened next. “Angelo falls and his head goes behind the curtain and the rest of his torso is behind the stage. And Joe goes up and puts two (makes a kicking motion) into his mid-section – just so he’ll stay down. And then, Joe starts making his speech about ‘sportsmanship’. I don’t know who was beaming down the messages from the mothership.”
It was a wild scene, and it caused a lot of people to recoil in horror in the moment. Now, a decade and a half later, people look back on it and at least smile at the thought of two men in their 70s slugging it out at what was meant to be a dignified function almost a half-century after a supposed wrong on the field.
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While Joe Kapp, and Jim Young, to a degree, were somewhat larger than life as people and personalities, Bill Symons was more down to earth and a more even-keeled man. Recently, in an online chat I had with former Ottawa defensive tackle Doug Collins, he spoke of a moment in a game between the Rough Riders and Symons’ Argos.
“We were playing in Toronto and Billy Joe Booth, who plays left defensive end, says to me, ‘Let’s switch positions for a few plays. My groin is killing me.’ I loved playing defensive end – his spot – so we switch. Toronto calls an audible. I look up and there is Mel (Profit) and his ponytail. So, he attempts to block me, so I give him a forearm to the helmet (which was allowed back then), then rip his ponytail to the ground and tackle Billy Symons (a very humourous guy). Billy says, ‘thanks for not breaking my leg.’”
Collins continued, “So they run the same play again, right at me. Same result. Leo (Cahill) runs on to the field screaming at the refs. We just laughed. I told Billy Joe, ‘Any time he wanted to trade spots, I’m good.’ Back then, when you were 260 pounds with bad knees, they didn’t want you playing defensive end. Billy Joe was an awesome player, and it was a fun assignment. Even Billy Symons laughed. Chatting between some players was fun and happened often.”
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Symons is 81 years old as this is written. He lives on his farm up in Caledon, Ontario north of Toronto.
Besides being in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, Jim Young is also a member of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and the B.C. Football Hall of Fame. In November of 2006, he was selected as one of the CFL’s top 50 players of the modern era by TSN.
In February of 2016, the San Jose Mercury News reported that Joe Kapp was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. On May 8, 2023, Kapp passed away as a result of complications from the disease at a care facility in San Jose at the age of 85.
In the end, Young, Symons and Kapp were all inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. Each of them had careers of varying length and each man gave every ounce of their being to succeed in the sport they loved. And they played in an era in which the game belonged, at least figuratively, to the players and to the fans. It was special, especially to us kids who loved the entire spectacle.
Thanks to Joe Kapp, Jim Young and Bill Symons and all the other players who made our dreams come true every summer and fall in Canada.
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Howie’s latest book The Consequences of Chance, seventeen new and incredibly detailed stories of outlandish and wild events that occurred in sports over the last fifty years,is available on Amazon. It’s the follow-up to his first books, Crazy Days & Wild Nights and MORE Crazy Days & Wild Nights! If you love sports and sports history, you need these books!
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