Results tagged “pittsburghsteelers”

Anticipating the arrival of the NFL's Chicago Cardinals for a pre-season exhibition game against the CFL's Toronto Argonauts on August 5, 1959, The Star's Jim Hunt asked the obvious question: "Argos against the Chicago Cardinals—the mismatch of the century or a football game?" The Argos, who'd dominated the CFL for most of the early twentieth century, were now in the early years of what became known as The Dark Ages. The league's perennial bottom-feeders between 1953 and 1983, the Argos went nineteen years between Grey Cup appearances and thirty-one years between Grey Cup victories. As if to make up for their on-field futility, according to Jay Teitel's The Argo Bounce (T.H. Best Printing Co. Ltd., 1982), the franchise simply tried to play with big league style by signing one big-money player after another. In this, the team seemed to reflect Toronto's post-war insecurity and its ambition to prove itself a world class city. With the huge success of the 1959 exhibition game—with 27,770 fans in attendance, it was the largest crowd to watch football in Canada at that time—the Argos hosted similar exhibition games in 1960 and 1961.

Peyton Manning, Doug Brien, Joshua Errett. All three neglected to show up while their reputations were on the line. All three were faced with daunting tasks and failed to come through when their teams put the game in their hands. All three possibly solidified their place in sporting history, not for triumph, but collapse.