Words of wisdom once passed along from a grizzled ink-stained wretch covering the Canadian Football League to yours truly in the late 1980s, then a young buck first stepping into the press box:
Write about this crazy ol’ loop long enough and you’ll have some tall tales to tell, from franchise-saving telethons to odd-ball owners, from teams drafting dead guys, to magical moments in epic championship games.
Yet no one — no one — could have been prepared for the CFL’s U.S expansion years, 1993-95, and the absolute lunacy it brought to the three-down league over those three seasons.
And one of the most-memorable events during that zany time happened 30 years ago this week, when the Las Vegas Posse hosted the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Sam Boyd Stadium — in what would be the final home game of their existence — on October 15, 1994.
Final score: Blue Bombers 48 Posse 17
Announced attendance: 2,350 — including an estimated 700 from Winnipeg, who had flown in for the game — in what remains the lowest crowd in CFL history.
“No, no… there weren’t 2,350,” began veteran right tackle Miles Gorrell when I interviewed him post-game. “There were actually 2,317 fans. I counted them. I had plenty of time.
“It’s a sad situation. I just don’t think they realized how far out of town this stadium is and people want to be close to the action. They don’t even come out for UNLV football here.
“It’s just not going to work here.”
Yes, long before the Las Vegas Raiders and the Vegas Golden Knights and the impending move of the Oakland A’s to Sin City, there were the CFL’s Posse, one of the short-lived American franchises that included the Sacramento Gold Miners (who became the San Antonio Texans), Baltimore Stallions, Shreveport Pirates, Memphis Mad Dogs and Birmingham Barracudas.
The Stallions were successful on and off the field averaging just over 37,000 fans in their first year in the league in ’94 and then winning the Grey Cup a year later.
The Posse? Well… that franchise was so poorly operated and such a laughingstock that after that home date with the Blue Bombers and saving the embarrassment of folding a team midseason, the league took over the franchise and opted to move its final home game against Edmonton to the Alberta capital rather than have it play before an even smaller crowd on November 5.
Matt Dunigan returned to the Blue Bombers lineup from injury that Saturday night in October and threw for five touchdowns — two to Gerald Alphin along with strikes to Gerald Wilcox, Tim Daniel and Jamie Holland while running back Blaise Bryant rushed for 153 yards and another score as the club improved to 11-4.
That was all well and good in the moment but, big picture, the American expansion experiment was fizzling out. And the Blue Bombers — the one franchise that had voted against the concept before the Gold Miners became the first U.S. team in 1993 — were not gloating about the demise but instead were concerned about the league’s future.
“I’ve predicted this all along. I’m trying to be as positive as I can about it,” said veteran punter Bob Cameron when yours truly spoke to him in the visitor’s dressing room at Sam Boyd.
“I don’t like what’s happening in Shreveport. I don’t like what’s happening here. And they’ve got to prove to me that Baltimore is hyped for the CFL and not just trying to prove to the NFL that they are a big-league city that deserves the NFL back.
“It was like we were at practice. Some guys here have played in front of bigger crowds in high school.
“The CFL has to take a long look at further expansion and the existing franchises. I know that’s not my business because I’m just a player but if I was in management I’d take a hard look at what’s happened the last couple of weeks.”
It wasn’t just the ‘last couple of weeks’, unfortunately. The CFL’s U.S. expansion years were a rushed, cash-grab by the league at a time when it was on life support.
The Posse were owned by Nick Mileti, who had previously owned the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Barons. A young squad led by former NFL coach Ron Meyer and a rookie quarterback in Anthony Calvillo held their practices on a makeshift 70-yard field in the parking lot at the Riviera Casino.
And in one of the moments that still lives in infamy, at the franchise’s first-ever home game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Dennis K.C. Parks’ (he went by the stage name of Greg Bartholomew at the time) rendition of ‘O Canada’ seemed to morph into something sounding like of ‘O Christmas Tree.’
What didn’t help the Posse — and what everyone in Vegas seemed to understand except ownership — was that Sam Boyd Stadium was too far from The Strip.
The same night the Posse were hosting the Blue Bombers on the outskirts of town, the acts entertaining in Vegas included The Rolling Stones, Sheena Easton, Julio Iglesias, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Siegfried and Roy, Neil Sedaka and, of course, Wayne Newton.
Taxis and public transit would only infrequently venture out to the stadium. After the game I raced to catch the last transit bus, while Pat Doyle, then the columnist at the Winnipeg Sun, ended up hitchhiking back to our hotel.
“The Nevada desert, at half past midnight, is a dark, cold and eerie place,” Doyle wrote in a superb post-game column that captured the experience perfectly. “You hear the coyotes yip. You see a rattler behind every shrub.
“I know this because I stood at the side of a deserted desert highway for the better part of two hours following the Posse/Bombers match the other night, waiting for a cab that never came.”
It was, in retrospect, a fitting metaphor for the franchise. The cab never came for Doyle, and the fans never came for the Posse.
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, you can watch that game in full here: