Woe, horsey
Think this Stamps team is bad? Just ask Bob Baker about 1976
You have to rummage through decades-old archives to find a Calgary Stampeders team that knew misery like this year's 2-10 club. The 1976 Stamps staggered winless through their first 11 games while head coach Bob Baker -- who had taken over from Jim Wood with six games remaining in the previous year -- was sent packing after opening the season 0-9-1. The Stampeders won just twice in their final six contests in '76 under replacement Joe Tiller in a 2-12-2 season, the most futile campaign in team history.
The 1985 Stamps finished 3-13, suffering one more loss but also squeezing in one additional victory after starting 2-12.
This year's bungling crew under head coach-GM Matt Dunigan could set a new standard for futility through the current
18-game schedule, expanded in 1986.
Baker winces when prodded for memories of '76 when the team discovered new ways to lose.
"I loved the city but as far as football is concerned, it was a disaster," groans the 77-year-old retired coach over the phone line from his home in Coldwater, Mich.
"It was a very trying experience. Maybe we did have talent but it seemed like things were always falling in around us."
Baker's 42 years of coaching later included successful stints at Michigan State, Arizona State and as an assistant in the NFL with Detroit and Los Angeles -- but his Calgary days left the deepest scars.
"We had some good guys, like John Helton," Baker recalls. "He could have played in the NFL. But things just seemed to go from bad to worse."
The '76 team lost five games by four or fewer points, missing the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season.
"I can't believe how many football games were lost in the final seconds that year," remembers former Stampeders linebacker Tom Higgins, now head coach of the Edmonton Eskimos.
"There were some talented, talented people on that football team."
Higgins had come out of a winning program at North Carolina State under Lou Holtz, going to four straight bowl games before arriving in Calgary.
The 1976 season was quarterback Joe Pisarcik's last in the CFL and the first in Red and White for future star John Hufnagel, who ran the offence through the 1979 season.
After missing the playoffs in '76, the club began a renaissance under new head coach Jack Gotta, reaching the West final twice (1978-79), only to lose to the Eskimos dynasty on a run of five straight Grey Cup wins.
"Calgary was pretty good in the following years after that but there was a pretty good team up in Edmonton that got on a roll and won all those Grey Cups in a row," says Higgins, who was released by Gotta and ended up with the NFL's Buffalo Bills before returning to the Stampede City in the 1990s as a coach.
"It was an outstanding group of football players (in 1976) that was on the verge of becoming very good. We had some very unfortunate things happen in that the head coach got fired and Joe Tiller took over. The general manager (Gary Hobson) also died, so Tiller was all of a sudden GM and head coach. It was a strange year but we had some talented, talented people."
Higgins remembers a fitting end to that '76 season as the Stamps blew a huge halftime lead at home for another painful loss.
"The last game of the season was against the Roughriders and
I remember they had to score a touchdown in the final minute of the game to win it," recalls Higgins, who had a chance to sack QB Ron Lancaster on the final play only to watch him complete the winning touchdown pass.
"On the final play, I remember Lancaster rolling out to the right and me hitting Lancaster.
"I know he didn't see that ball being completed in the endzone and I was thinking, 'This is a fitting way for this season to end.' "
