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Grantland:
On Monday, presuming he throws for at least 258 yards, this man you've probably never heard of will become the leading passer in the history of professional football. He has accumulated more yards than Peyton Manning, more yards than Dan Marino, more yards than John Elway and Jim Kelly and Fran Tarkenton and Joe Montana and Brett Favre, and he has done it all without ever being even marginally famous in the United States. This in itself is a remarkable accomplishment. That he is 39 years old and still considered one of the two or three best players in his adopted country is another. That he has continued to play football even after both he and his wife fought cancer is still another. Not only is Anthony Calvillo the most prolific anonymous quarterback who ever lived, his is one of those great American stories, an epic tale of failure and adversity and redemption. It just happened to take place in Canada.
A confession: Until midsummer, I had no idea who Anthony Calvillo was, either. But I've long harbored a fascination with the Canadian Football League, with its colorful nicknames (Eskimos and Blue Bombers and Argonauts) and its bizarro edicts (110 yards instead of 100, three downs instead of four, 12 men instead of 11), with the idea that there is a league just like ours and yet completely different, as if it were birthed on an alternate plane of reality. Is there a more apt metaphor for how America sees Canada than how Americans view the CFL? Most of our knowledge is acquired out of desperation and boredom; the CFL regular season starts in June, when we are jonesing hard for football, and when it does show up on our television — say, on an otherwise idle Friday night on the NFL Network — it is more Rube Goldberg than Vince Lombardi, because of its extra-man-per-side and its stretched field and because it allows us to reconnect with former college standouts we had otherwise forgotten. In Canada, Ken-Yon Rambo and Avon Cobourne are stars.
I've turned on the CFL when it was on NFL network, but haven't really paid much attention. I usually look to see who was playing and who was winning, but I was really surprised the other Saturday when I saw Edmonton leading 1 to 0. That left me scratching my head. Here's the explanation of the 1:
That "4" was put up not because the Eskimos sacked Calvillo twice in the end zone, but because of the novelty concept known as the single, or rouge: One point is awarded when the ball is kicked into the end zone by any legal means other than a made field goal, and the receiving team is unable to scuttle the ball out of the end zone by either running or kicking it back out, which can lead to a back-and-forth straight out of Benny Hill. As an American, you probably find the rouge an idiotic perversion of the game, and I wouldn't blame you. Even Canadians are self-conscious about the rouge, and there's been discussion about abolishing it. Thirty years later, the rouge was the first thing Charlie Weatherbie mentioned when I asked him about adapting to the peculiarities of the CFL.
Anyway, congratulations to Anthony Cavillo, and good luck to the Alouettes (not offspring of the Alou brothers).
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