Courtesy Winnipeg Sun:

First Eric Tillman forced Kerry Joseph take a pay cut. Then he gave him a bonus. He gave him Kent Austin as his head coach.

Tillman cut his dollars and gave him sense.

In there somewhere is the story of the team heavily favoured to win the 95th Grey Cup. And Sunday should be the payoff.

Players on the winning team each receive a Grey Cup ring and $15,000. The MVP gets another $10,000.

Being that Joseph is the only starting quarterback in the Grey Cup game who has ever started an actual CFL tilt before, you’d have to say there’s a reasonable chance he could make $25,000 and win some bling.

It wouldn’t make up for the $125,000 pay cut he took going into this season or the $150,000 pay cut he’s taking next year from his old Glieberguys’ Ottawa Renegades deal which would have paid him $350,000 this year, and $375,000 next, but …

“It’s been worth it to get to this game,” said Joseph here yesterday.

The bottom line is that all of this comes out of the ashes of the Ottawa Renegades where Tillman was GM, Austin the offensive co-ordinator and Joseph a rookie quarterback.

Taking over in Saskatchewan, Tillman had no chance of coming close to the new salary cap without asking Joseph to take a pay cut. And he didn’t have much chance of winning either. Tillman ended up using the money to give Joseph some weapons to work with.

“This is the most talent I’ve ever had to work with in five years in the CFL,” said Joseph who admits at first he took the pay cut proposal personally.

“It was a tough decision to make at the time. I didn’t understand why I’d have to take a pay cut that big. It was disheartening to me to be the only quarterback to have to take a pay cut. I felt I was the only one who did not yet get respect. It said I was not one of the top quarterbacks. I found a way to use it as motivation. Eventually I became at peace with it.

“Everything worked out at the end of the day.”

Tonight he’s up for the CFL award as most outstanding player. Winning that award is the only bonus clause he has in his dramatically reduced contract.

“It’s not that much. You’d need another $100,000 and something to do it,” he said of making up the drop in pay that way.

Tillman suggests it didn’t take a genius to see Joseph had an arm. The question was his head. And when Tillman hired Austin he gave Joseph what he was missing.

“I give Kent a lot of credit. He does an outstanding job of teaching quarterbacks to read defences. He also worked on a couple technical flaws he had, things that affected his accuracy,” is how Tillman puts it.

“Kent’s meant a lot,” says Joseph.

“He really made a difference with the mental aspect. He’s been a big part of my success this year. He showed me a different picture and elevated my game when it came to how to attack defences.”

The GM and QB may give the coach a lot of credit but Austin wouldn’t take much of it.

“He’s as good a person as I’ve ever been around. He’s as athletically gifted as anybody out there. But what separates Kerry is his intangibles because he might be the one guy that I’ve been around that has the most desire to win.

“He is unbelievably competitive. As a matter of fact, there are times that gets him into trouble. He has to learn that he can’t win every play in a football game.

“He’s an unselfish leader. He knows how to build into his teammates. It’s not something that he had to learn, it’s something he has naturally. At times he can just will the offence down the field. Those types of traits have carried the day for him even when he has struggled at times in the passing game.

“First and foremost, any success Kerry has had individually is directly proportional to the success of the people around him. Any individual success Kerry has had is a credit to himself and to his offensive teammates.

“I have a certain way in which I believe a quarterback should approach the game. What they should be looking at, how they prepare how they can limit the numbers of decisions they make. It doesn’t make me right.”

It should make them all Grey Cup champions Sunday night.