CIS CORNER: RUMBLE MIGHT HAVE GOT COACH CANNED

Inquiring minds (at least those with a CIS fixation) would love to know what connection, if any, exists between York ousting Tom Gretes as head football coach today -- former Ottawa Gee-Gees coach Andy McEvoy, who'd been a co-ordinator with the Lions for the past three seasons, has been named to replace him -- and the March 29 brawl that marred the school's athletic banquet.

The melee, which broke out at an after-party, involved football and basketball players. There's no point in playing a blame game when an entire school gets bad press, but it could not have helped win Gretes any points with the sports-admin people at York, especially coming off a 1-7 season where the Lions lost to everyone except the U of T Varsity Blues. It kind of screams of that damning phrase favoured by NCAA investigators, "loss of institutional control." Even if there's no connection between the brawl and the coaching change, it's definitely unusual to see this occur less than three months before the start of the season. If anything it's something that York waited this long.

McEvoy, who was offensive co-ordinator for the 2000 national champion Gee-Gees and head coach the following season (Denis Piché became permanent head coach in early 2002 and that eventually worked out), isn't taking the head coaching job at York under the best circumstances.

This will come off as a bit Pollyannaish, but someone needs to build a winning program in Toronto. It would go a long way toward improving the perception of CIS football if one or both of the programs in the country's most influential media market could ever be more than a punch line. (Over the past four years, York and U of T's combined record vs. teams from outside the COTU is 6-52.)

York always has some impressive parts (Andre Durie before his thermonuclear knee injury or current CFL linebacker Ricky Foley, who earned a Grey Cup ring with those other Lions in B.C. last fall), but the sum total has always been daunting. There is football talent in the outlying areas of the Golden Horseshoe, but those players aren't being channeled toward York or U of T. Most are ending up in at places such as Western Michigan or Toledo in the NCAA, or at Laurier, Western and McMaster.

As a sidebar, it's reasonable to wonder what the status is now of former Queen's Golden Gaels star Tom Denison, who was York's offensive co-ordinator in 2006.