Doug Brown talks to the Free Press about Jospeh trade
Courtesy Winnipeg Free Press:
If you knew nothing of the vast differences between the CFL and NFL, let this week’s controversy around the trade of the CFL’s reigning MVP to Toronto teach you one big thing. Win a championship in America and you can do no wrong as a general manager for three to five years. Win a Grey Cup in Canada, and you are back on the spit being slow-roasted less than four months after the coup de grace.
To say that Saskatchewan Roughriders GM Eric Tillman is feeling some heat after what can be classified as the first trade of its kind in the history of the CFL — swapping the league MVP before his crown has even been properly fitted — is as much an understatement as me saying I think I have an outside shot at winning my bet with offensive lineman Matt Sheridan, who vows to lose some 50-odd pounds and weigh in for camp at no more than 320 pounds in just over two months.
From the fans to the scribes to the pundits, precious few are trusting in the fact that Eric Tillman has won some three Grey Cups in his tenure in the CFL and may actually know what he is doing. But that’s not to say I don’t have my own reservations about the snowball that started rolling in Regina with the losses or trades of Corey Holmes, Fred Perry and Reggie Hunt — and that became a near-avalanche with the loss of head coach Kent Austin and now the trade of MVP quarterback Kerry Joseph.
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