How big was Sam "The Rifle" Etcheverry in Montreal? He was maybe the only athlete in a sport other than hockey to rival or come close to the #1 idol of the day, Maurice "The Rocket" Richard.
Now, that's saying something.
There was Jackie (Parker), and that famous twin backfield Johnny (Bright) and Normie (Kwong) from the Edmonton Eskimos.
We had Kenny (Ploen) and Bernie (Faloney) along with Dick (Shatto) and of course Russ (Jackson), but the first of that gang was Slinging Sam.
When you said Sam you were talking about one of the few guys that everyone knew in the Canadian Football League.
Sam was my first sports idol, and then in quick order came Le Gros Bill as in Jean Beliveau, Mickey Mantle, and a year or so after that big three was Johnny U. (Unitas).
It's after watching Sam as a nine year old that I decided I was going to be a quarterback. It's after watching Sam that I went out in the backyard and started throwing at a tire in my days growing up in Quebec City. And, I wasn't the only one.
Sam Etcheverry may have been the first football TV superstar in this country. He certainly was one in La Belle Province of Quebec. Prior to Sam and while the CFL had many stars, they were unknown as our country didn't have TV. Really, Sam coincided with the birth of TV.
It's much the same in the NFL where they say Otto Graham was one of the top QB's ever but the NFL did not enjoy the popularity that it did when it became a regular Sunday afternoon TV event.
In the mid 50's, Sam took his team, the Alouettes to the Grey Cup for three straight years. (1954-55-56) Yes, he lost to Edmonton on all three occasions, including one in the great Chuck Hunsinger fumble saga in 1954. With minutes left, and the ball on the Edmonton 10-yard line, the Als were ahead and then came the famous fumble that put Jackie Parker on the CFL map. Hunsinger fumbled and Parker returned it 90 yards to win.
But, in those days Montreal had its superstars in The Rocket, Beliveau, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Doug Harvey, Jacques Plante and many more from the teams that in those days was winning Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup. They took five in a row from 1956-1960, a feat never duplicated.
To be in the same stratosphere as the Rocket in Montreal was saying something in those days and I can't think of another athlete that comes close. In fact while Montreal has had terrific hockey success one can argue their best times were from '54 through '60 with three straight Grey Cup appearances and five consecutive Stanley Cup appearances and wins.
You often hear that today's athletes are bigger and stronger.
Maybe, but not many can throw as hard and as far as "The Rifle" did. The only one who may match him was Dieter Brock who some say could fire it 90-95 yards.
In a TV competition a few years ago the audience saw Brett Favre fire three throws for distance. They all were over 70 yards and his best was 74.
On the last play closing the first half on TSN two years ago we got a chance to see Jarious Jackson of the B.C. Lions wing it 74 yards, and get a "did you see that?" from the colour commentator.
I've seen Sam fire a few in the 80-yard range and those who were around him say he could hit 90.
In the grainy black and white video shown on TSN as a result of his passing at age 79, you could see him simply flick his wrist and the ball went 40-45 yards.
My knowledge of this athlete came via television and French TV at that.
From 1957 to 1959 there was no English TV in Quebec City. We had CFCM TV and that was it.
Yep just one, single, solitary channel.
Sam Etcheverry was on, it seemed, every Saturday afternoon.
Saturday was the big day for football in that time. In fact, the Grey Cup game, usually held in either Toronto or Vancouver, was always held on that day.
The first time I recall a football Grey Cup not played on Saturday was in 1962 when they had to play the infamous Fog Bowl between Hamilton and Winnipeg. The last nine minutes of that game were played on Sunday. Winnipeg won 28-27.
Sam was the star of Big Four football. That's what it was called then. Not the Eastern Conference of the CFL but as the French announcer said, "Le football du Big 4". Talk about bilingualism prior to Pierre Trudeau.
The Big Four of course were the Als, Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto. And talk about a name for what is now the Western Conference. They called it the Western Interprovincial Football Union. What a handful.
In addition to Sam the quarterbacks of the day were Bernie Faloney (Hamilton), Ronnie Knox and then Tobin Rote (from the NFL) for Toronto and many in Ottawa leading to a job for Russ Jackson.
But, just as the world of golf focuses on Tiger Woods, the media and fans - regardless of the team - focused on Etcheverry.
So, on Saturday afternoon, I plunked myself down with my good friend Donald Dawson and watched Sam and right after the game, Don and I would go out on the street and do our "Sam to Hal" (Patterson) routine, or as well as a bunch of 11-13 year olds can get those routines.
It's amazing what one remembers and in following sports for decades I remember numbers.
Prior to Reggie White arriving in Green Bay, the #92 stood for Sam and no one else.
In fact, QB's and running back wore very high numbers in those days.
Sam had 92, so did Bernie Faloney, Jackie Parker had 91; his running backs had numbers in the 90's (Kwong 95 and Bright 93). That system changed in 1960.
Sam had three great weapons. His fullback was Pat Abbruzi who wore #83 and was appropriately nicknamed the Bruiser.
#73 was one of the two main receivers (there were no five or six receiver set packages in those days) in Red O'Quinn who caught a lot of short to medium passes and one of the greatest deep threats ever was Sam's favourite target in Hal (the Prince) Patterson.
There are many duos or combinations in sports from Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay, Y.A. Title and Del Shofner to Tom Brady and Randy Moss. But, Sam and Hal were something else.
How good was the Sam to Hal combo? Hal once caught for 338 yards in a single game. And, for many years he led for receptions in a single season with 88. That was in a 12-14 game season! Even today in an 18-game season catching nearly 90 passes is a major achievement.
In 1954 Sam was the CFL MVP and two years later it was Hal.
If one looks up the top receivers in CFL history, Hal Patterson is still in the top 10 of all time in several categories.
Sam became the first ever to throw over 4,000 yards in a season and he never enjoyed a 16-18 game season.
In one Grey Cup game he threw for over 500 yards!
"They talk about the arm strength of many in the NFL and others but Etcheverry was either the first real gun or could hold his own against them," Jim Trimble, the head coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats once told me when I covered the Tiger-Cats for my home-based station in nearby Woodstock, Ontario.
There are many great Sam moments that come to mind from those black and white days in the late 50's but my best is when the Als, with some 50 seconds left on the clock, needed a TD to win.
As any football coach knows, in order to fire a real deep pass there are only two ways. One is to have a scrambling QB who has a strong arm. Those are rare as most QB's don't have that much mobility and those who can scramble have to have a cannon. That leaves very few over the decades such as Favre, Elway and Michael Vick.
The other way is maximum protection.
The Als on that play kept everyone in to block, except for one receiver, Ivan (Butterfingers) Livingstone who wore #91.
Since half the defence was on the other side they were not a factor.
Livingstone took off and simply outraced his coverage and Etcheverry let it go. I have watched at least a thousand football games in my life and it's still today (because how many really can throw that far and get that kind of time?) the longest pass I have ever seen thrown by a human.
Etcheverry threw from his 20 and it hit Livingstone at the 10. That's an 80-plus yard throw.
Livingstone lived up to his reputation (remember Butterfingers) and dropped the pass.
These days, CFL fans get about every single game on TSN but back in my black and white world we only got the teams of the Big Four, and it was always the Als and Sam.
Sam Etcheverry was involved in one of the biggest trades that never materialized when in the early months of 1960 he was dealt to the Tiger-Cats for several players including Hamilton's QB Bernie Faloney.
The trade was never completed as Sam said he wasn't going to Hamilton and I don't know what the contract language was in those days, but he ended up in the NFL with the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Cards weren't a good team and Etcheverry, then 30, remembers it well.
"I wish I had tried the NFL earlier," he once told me at a news conference at Digby, NS, where he attended a big golf event. "For the first time in my career I had arm problems and I could have done much better."
Being all of 13 years old and now following both the NFL and CFL, Sam was the first "big name" in my time to jump to the NFL from our Canadian game.
In a recent story former CFL Star Peter Della Riva summed it up best when he said, "Sam put football on the map in Montreal and started what is the CFL's modern era."
That from a former Als all-star sums it up.
For TSN.ca I'm Alex J. Walling
Alex J can be reached via email at: ajw@eastlink.ca