As a general manager in the Canadian Football League, Mike McCarthy helped build a pair of Grey Cup winning teams, in Hamilton in 1986 and Toronto in 1991.
However, there are some who feel he also helped build a third, the 1993 Edmonton Eskimos, even though he was the Argo GM at the time. The reason for this was because Edmonton benefitted greatly from the largest trade ever in team sports, an 8-for-8 swap initiated by McCarthy before that season started.
"The 8-for-8 trade was a financial one, nothing more," admitted McCarthy, who put his stamp on the Argos as their general manager from 1989 to 1993, his often outgoing and flamboyant style reflected on the teams he put together.
Some of the moves paid off, others did not, but they sure got everyone's attention.
If the big trade that brought Tracy Ham to Toronto could be considered McCarthy's lowpoint, his major coup was the signing of U.S. college star Raghib "Rocket" Ismail prior to the 1991 Grey Cup winning season.
"The signing of Rocket lit the league up," claimed McCarthy, speaking from Hamilton as the new president and chief operating officer of the B.C. Lions, a position he took up two months ago. "The league was dead, it was going nowhere."
A month before the Ismail signing, the CFL received another lifejacket in the form of the ownership troika of Bruce McNall, Wayne Gretzky and John Candy, without whose money the Rocket signing would have been made impossible.
"I said to Bruce, 'no matter what happens, you just bought a Grey Cup team," said McCarthy, whose 1990 team lost by a field goal to Winnipeg in the Eastern final, without Matt Dunigan in the lineup.
However, the team needed a draw to stir up interest, and McNall stirred a lot of it up by saying he was going to pursue Ismail, a projected #1 NFL draft pick, on Hockey Night in Canada. This got McCarthy's phone ringing from various media, most feeling it was an impossible task, but at the time, CFRB's Pat Marsden said: "You know what, (McCarthy) just might pull it off."
He did! Ismail came to the Argos on a one year and option contract worth $3.5 million a season (the 4-year, $18 million contract reported in the media was false) and helped pay for himself by increasing paid attendance 16,000 a game and delivering the largest ever gate (over $1 million) for a single playoff game in the 1991 Eastern final.
The next week, he scored the game-clinching touchdown as the Argos won the Grey Cup, but from there it was all downhill.
"The downfall was that I had to reduce costs," said McCarthy, as McNall's known money problems were coming to light.
Two years later, he was out of a job. He moved to Ottawa, who play the Argos at SkyDome tonight, as a player personnel consultant, the same job he held in Hamilton last year, before taking the B.C. position in May.
But McCarthy must commute out west, as he still lives in Stoney Creek with his wife Robin and kids Tara, Sean and Caitlin.
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