We’re searching for Canada’s greatest football program. And your vote will help decide the winner. To kick off the second round, Western takes on Queen’s.
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Western
The Western Mustangs know what you think of them.
They’re a bunch of cocky, entitled punks who think they’re better than everyone, right? Nothing but phony trust-fund kids who were given everything and raised with the finer things in life, yeah? All designer clothes and joy rides in expensive cars, never having to toil for a damn thing. Yeah, everyone loves hating on the Mustangs. Everyone loves beating those kids from Western.
Problem is, that doesn’t happen very often.
With 29 Yates Cup conference titles, six Vanier Cups and an all-time winning percentage of .676 in nearly 75 seasons, the Mustangs aren’t particularly accustomed to losing. They set the record for most Vanier Cups in a decade with four in the 1970s, including a one-point win over Alberta in ’71, a four-point triumph over Toronto in ’74, and back-to-back wins over Acadia in ’76 and ’77. Two more Vanier Cup titles came in 1989 and 1994, and along the way the Mustangs have sent six players to the NFL and more than 140 to the CFL.
In a college sports climate rife with turnover, this is a team that’s had only two head coaches since 1984. First the winningest coach in CIS history, Larry Haylor, and now former Hamilton Tiger-Cats coach Greg Marshall, who has been to the Yates Cup five times — winning three of them — in his six seasons since taking over in 2007.
The Mustangs have almost become the Marshall family business (aside from Marshall’s Pasta Mill on Adelaide Street in downtown London, of course). Greg won a Hec Crighton Trophy with the Mustangs in 1980, six years before his brother Blake — who owns the Pasta Mill with his wife — did the same.
Greg’s son Donnie was the Mustangs’ starting quarterback for the past four seasons, while his other sons Brian, a wide receiver, and Tom, a running back, also play on the team. Blake and Greg sit seventh and eighth on the Mustangs’ all-time rushing list, with 1,981 and 1,918 yards, respectively. Both scored 20 touchdowns for the Mustangs and both finished their careers averaging more than seven yards per carry.
This is a pure football program, based in continuity, family and tradition. And with the track record it has, it’s no wonder the team carries itself with a bit of swagger. Hate all you want, the Mustangs don’t mind. All they do is win.
– Arden Zwelling
MUSTANGS BY THE NUMBERS:
Vanier Cup wins: 6
Vanier Cup appearances: 12
Conference titles: 29
CIS MOPs: 6
NFL players produced: 6
CFL players produced: 144 (220 drafted)
All-time winning percentage: .676
Queen’s
When you can say a football team first suited up in 1882, won its first Dominion championship in 1893 and at one point featured stars with names like “Pep” Leadlay and “Chick” Mundell, it’d usually be safe to assume that any argument about its greatness would be washed scalp-to-soles in the sepia tinge of history.
All of these things are true of Queen’s football.
Students at the Kingston, Ont., university were introduced to an early incarnation of the sport by Fred and Jackson Booth in 1882, then became Canadian Rugby Union champions the following decade. Led by Leadlay, the program responded to a few fallow years during and just after the First World War with three straight Grey Cup wins in 1922, ’23 and ’24 (making them one of only two CIS teams to take the CFL’s top prize).
At their peak in ’23, they went undefeated on the season and outscored the Regina Roughriders 54–0 in the final (a Grey Cup record for margin of victory), and in total across all three Cup wins they stomped their opponents 78–4.
So, yes, there’s a good dose of nostalgia in the argument for Queen’s as the greatest program in CIS history. But it’s not like the Gaels faded into irrelevancy after turning their attention away from Earl Grey’s hardware — far from it.
Instead, they won Vanier Cups in 1968, ’78, ’92 and 2009 — the only team on this list to take the Cup in four different decades. Key contributors to the first shaky steps football took in this country, the Gaels’ true greatness resides in the astounding sustained success of the program.
For a sense of the sheer scale of that success, just take a look at the numbers. The Gaels’ .563 winning percentage may not seem overly impressive divorced from context and stacked against Laval’s .752. But Laval’s record stretches back just 17 seasons.
The Gaels have been playing winning football for 131 years, their record established over more than 800 games. In that time, they’ve won 30 conference titles — tops on this list even though it doesn’t include a pair of Ontario Rugby Football Union wins in the 1890s — and produced six players who went on to the NFL and 206 CFLers.
Pick any point in the history of football in Canada and you’ll find Queen’s there, winning games and titles and churning out top-level talent. That’s the mark of a truly great program. Queen’s has one. It’s not sepia — it’s splashed in red, yellow and blue.
– Evan Rosser
GAELS BY THE NUMBERS:
Vanier Cup wins: 4
Vanier Cup appearances: 5
Conference titles: 30 (23 Yates, 7 Dunsmore)
CIS MOPs: 3
NFL players produced: 6
CFL players produced: 206
All-time winning percentage: .563