What the Hell Was That?: Life in the CFL in the '90s

by Ed Willes

"What the Hell Was That?" is the story of the CFL's ill-fated period
of expansion into the United States during the early to mid-
1990s. It was a time filled with intriguing characters, from John
Candy to Nick Mileti to Pepper Rodgers, the coach who loved everything
about the Canadian game except the rules and the teams. With
a cast of investors who are hopeful but unfamiliar with the game,
bizarre stories emerge, from the Las Vegas Posse practising in the
parking lot of the Riviera to the Shreveport Pirates camping out
above a barn full of circus animals.
The CFL's attempts to push the Canadian game into expanded
territory brought both heartbreak and victory, with the 1994 Grey
Cup victory of the BC Lions coming alongside the quick decline of
every American club under low sales and resistance to new rules.
The CFL survived these turbulent times to the harsh realization that
it is a game for Canada alone, breaking through to a promising new
era for the venerable institution.

Genres: Sports

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

Sports columnist Ed Willes was born in Ottawa in 1955. Growing up, he moved across the country living in Ottawa, Montreal, Regina, Chilliwack, Toronto, Kingston, and Victoria. He remained in Ottawa to complete his third year of journalism BA at Carleton, but, alas, never obtained his degree.

Willes' first newspaper posting was for the Medicine Hat News in 1982 when he covered the WHL Tigers, minor league Blue Jays, rodeo, and more curling than he cares to remember.

In 1996, Willes moved to Regina where he reported on the WHL Pats and Saskatchewan Roughriders. He was working on a feature about a woman darts thrower when he was offered a columnist job at the Winnipeg Sun.

In Winnipeg, he spent two years as the General Columnist before moving on and becoming the Jets beat writer and hockey columnist. This stint led him to cover the tragic demise of the Jets while he also took on the role of the first beat writer for the IHL Manitoba Moose.

After Winnipeg, Willes spent a year as a freelance writer in Montreal appearing regularly in the New York Times.

Willes was finally drafted to The Province in the fall of 1998.

Aside from his extensive writing career, Willes boasts a single-digit handicap in golf, an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-1982 pop music and an "inexplicable fascination with movies and popular culture as a whole."