SIMMONS: Argos remain the Toronto team every other should strive to equal
All Toronto really wants is to celebrate great teams. The Leafs struggle. The Blue Jays struggle. The Raptors are lousy. But the Argos win.
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When the Maple Leafs were winning four Stanley Cups in the 1960s — the glory days — the Argos were winning absolutely nothing.
The CFL was a nine-team league and the NHL had six teams at the time.
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SIMMONS: Argos remain the Toronto team every other should strive to equal Back to video
Statistically, in any season, the Leafs had a 16% chance of winning the Cup, the Argos just an 11% chance of taking home the Grey Cup.
The Leafs were the standard for Toronto sport while the Argos once went 31 years between titles.
But, over time, all of that has changed, as has just about everything with the Argos.
They are the defending Grey Cup champions. Their title win last November was the second for head coach Ryan Dinwiddie in just four years on the job, and the fifth Grey Cup win for the Argos since 2004. That’s five championships in the past 20 seasons.
This has been the hottest team in Toronto for a lot of our lives, no matter how old you are, the team we want the Leafs and Raptors and Blue Jays to mirror — but somehow that’s just not possible.
The newest Argos season begins Friday night in Montreal and, if there is any consternation over the season opener, it’s not heard in many places.
The star quarterback, the controversial figure that is Chad Kelly, isn’t healthy enough to start Week 1. The star running back of a year ago, Ka’Deem Carey, the thousand-yard rusher, was let go at the end of camp in a surprising transaction. Two stars from the defensive line, Ralph Holley and Robbie Smith, have gone elsewhere for more money — Holley to try and land a job in Cleveland while Smith went to Edmonton and all but doubled his Toronto salary.
And yet coach Dinwiddie likes the roster he has to begin the season. He figures these Argos are good enough to make the playoffs, could be back in the Grey Cup again, and isn’t ruling anything out. And why should he?
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Dinwiddie isn’t easy to define. He doesn’t have the head football coaching kind of presence that a Don Matthews had. He doesn’t have the folksy way about him that a Marv Levy had in Buffalo. There isn’t anything about him that particularly stands out except his resume.
That alone should make him a legend for all time in Toronto. Leo Cahill never won anything but talked a great game and remains legendary with those old enough to have been around when he mattered as Argos coach. Matthews won two Grey Cups in two seasons in one of his stints coaching the Argos and had Doug Flutie as his quarterback in those years. He’ll always be remembered for that.
Dinwiddie has two Grey Cups — probably should have three — and he won while starting McLeod Bethel-Thompson at quarterback in one game and career backup Nick Arbuckle in the other.
Dinwiddie doesn’t just have two Grey Cup wins. He has two wins over Mike O’Shea, who will wind up in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as a coach and already is there as a player. He has two wins over the almost-dynastic Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
That would be the equivalent to Craig Berube having two Toronto Stanley Cup wins over Paul Maurice or Jon Cooper.
That kind of championship material should make you a legend for life — but just not here, where the CFL doesn’t fully register any longer and the Argos too often seem to be more about yesterday than they are about today.
This Argos team has been special for most of the past 20 seasons — securing five championships won with four different head coaches and four different quarterbacks — and deserves more regard and respect than it is getting from the city and the local media.
Dinwiddie himself takes a certain pride in all that has been accomplished in his four years with the Argonauts.
The Leafs finished first in their division this year — the first time they’d ever finished atop the Atlantic Division.
The Blue Jays finished first in 2015 in the American League East and haven’t been close since and before then. The Raptors have one first-place finish in 30 years.
In between winning his two Grey Cups, Dinwiddie had a record-tying 16-2 season with the Argos and a first-place season in his first year coaching. Who has ever done anything close to that in Toronto?
Answer: Maybe Cito Gaston. Maybe nobody.
“I think more people recognize me now than ever before,” the coach said about his apparent anonymity. “I see more people wearing Argos stuff than ever before. I think that’s a good thing.
“I wish it translated to better attendance at our games. We’ve got to keep working at that.”
Dinwiddie will have Kelly back at quarterback, likely in time for Week 3 as Arbuckle starts the opener. He will have Miyan Williams, the former Ohio State starter, carrying the ball alongside the flashy Deonta McMahon.
He still has the irrepressible Wynton McManis at linebacker — Toronto’s most complete athletic performer — all kinds of depth at wide receiver and a secondary he likes that includes the veterans Tarvarus McFadden and Benjie Franklin.
There is a lot to like about this team, more to like about the bottom-line, little-known coach. What does this sporting city want more than championships, more than first-place finishes, more than affordable and available tickets?
They have all that. It’s more fans they need. It’s always that.
Just win baby, Al Davis used to say.
Dinwiddie has won, baby. The rest around him, forever, needs to grow.
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