Age nothing but a number
Since when did being too old disqualify a sports team?
Romer Bautista, Staff
On their road to the Vanier Cup, much of the talk that surrounded the University of Manitoba Bisons football team focused on their age. Not their dominating playoff run,. or that their defence had allowed only two touchdowns in their previous four games, or that over the past two seasons they had only lost one game.
No, it seemed that everyone across the nation — from the media to other CIS coaches —was instead obsessed with the fact the Bisons were a bit older than their competition. The Bisons sport a roster where 29 players are 25 years of age or older. The reason that there are so many older players on the team is because the majority of them played junior football directly out of high school instead of going to university. Most of them chose this route because university was simply not a viable option, because of financial or personal reasons.
Their head coach, Brian Dobie, who recruits for the team, has taken the brunt of this criticism. Yet at no time did he break any rules.
So, to clarify, people were angry that Dobie had gone out and recruited players who were still eligible to play CIS football and that he gave these young men a chance at an education — one that they would likely not have gotten otherwise.
I think people should be praising Dobie for giving these guys a chance, when no one else would. Many of these players were on the wrong path in life, yet Dobie looked beyond that, and gave them the direction that they need.
Mike Howard, the defensive back that took home Vanier Cup MVP honours and one of the 29 players over the age of 25, credits Dobie for saving his life.
“We all came here, you know, most of us are junior football players. We all came here when we were 22. We didn’t have aspirations of going to university. Coach Dobie basically saved us,” he said after winning the Mitchell Bowl two weeks ago.
“When I recruited [Howard], the recruiting difficulty I had was convincing him that he should come to university. He was going to join the Navy,” said Dobie about Howard.
Now Howard is not only a national champion, he is on his way to earning a bachelor of arts. A much better result than life in the Navy, I would assume.
What I don’t understand is why the football team catches so much flack for recruiting players out of junior football, yet there is nearly no mention of how teams in other varsity sports also recruit older players.
In CIS hockey, for example, nearly all the players have experience playing in the CHL, the hockey equivalent of junior football, before starting their university careers. Heck, the University of Calgary Dinos currently has a player, Jared Aulin, who has played in the NHL.
No one says a peep.
And that’s because there is nothing wrong with someone who is older, now enrolled in university, playing on the university sports team. University is an experience, and anyone who is a student should be able to get that full experience. If someone is skilled enough to play on the university sports team, they should be able to do so, so long as they continue to meet the school’s academic requirements.
The Bisons football team did just that.
It’s time we start celebrating their accomplishments and stop nitpicking at how old they are.
