Ticats starting to roar

The Saskatchewan Roughriders won the Grey Cup last season. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats finished dead-last in the CFL.

And yet, when the two teams clash at Hamilton’s Ivor Wynne Stadium on Saturday, the Ticats will be favoured by oddsmakers to win.

How the heck does this happen?

Well, first of all, it’s the CFL. Things happen in this league that just don’t in other leagues.

Second, the Riders likely will be without their first-string quarterback, Marcus Crandell, who has a hamstring injury.

Third, the Tiger-Cats are a considerably better team than they were the last few seasons.

Granted, they couldn’t be any worse. But, hey, these Ticats truly seem to be for real.

“I don’t pay too much attention to who’s favoured in games,” Ticats president Scott Mitchell was telling me in a telephone interview Thursday, “but we do feel as though we’re headed in the right direction.”

That’s understandable, considering the team’s 32-13 rout of the Argonauts in Toronto last week.

“We just feel like we have all the right people in the right places now,” Mitchell added.

And that’s understandable, too.

In the off-season, Mitchell hired Bob O’Billovich to serve as Hamilton’s general manager, and he’s been around the CFL as a player, coach and front-office executive since the 1960s. He knows the league inside out. As the B.C. Lions’ personnel director the past few seasons, Obie recruited a bevy of no-name players who became CFL superstars. Defensive lineman Cameron Wake, both the rookie of the year and the defensive player of the year in the CFL last season, is one example.

Obie chose to retain Charlie Taaffe as the Cats’ head coach but two co-ordinators with plenty of CFL experience were added to coach under Taaffe, and they appear to be making differences. Both have been head-coaching candidates in the CFL and will be again relatively soon.

Denny Creehan is in charge of the Hamilton defence. Marcel Bellefeuille runs the offence.

Bellefeuille’s quarterback is Casey Printers, who took some heat for his antics both on and off the field after joining the Ticats for relatively big bucks in midseason last year. However, last week ho looked like he did with the Lions in 2004, when he was voted as the CFL’s premier player.

Last season, Printers struggled and couldn’t come close to reviving the Ticats. He also was criticized for taking a few shots ...[next page]