Steve Milton: Canadian Football Hall of Fame doors closed until 2022
Orlondo Steinauer and Mike Walker will have to wait a few more months, and so will their fans.
The Spectator has learned that, due to logistical problems caused by the pandemic, the formal induction of 13 new members of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame has been postponed from December's Grey Cup week until a special ceremony at Tim Hortons Field sometime before the 2022 CFL regular season begins next spring.
The CFL would not comment on the postponement but The Spectator has been told that the league notified the inductees and is expected to announce the change sometime this week.
Steinauer, the current Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach and an All-Star defensive back as a Hamilton Tiger-Cat and Toronto Argonauts in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Walker, a defensive end who played in four Grey Cups for the Ticats during the 1980s, were among the seven members of the Hall's 2021 class, announced last April.
Other 2021 inductees are receiver Nik Lewis, defensive back Don Wilson, defensive lineman Will Johnson, and two builders of the Canadian game: coach Marv Levy and former CFL commissioner Doug Mitchell, father of Ticats' CEO Scott Mitchell.
Members of the 2020 Hall of Fame class were also to be inducted at the double-cohort ceremony at the Hamilton Convention Centre on the Thursday of Grey Cup week after their original induction - planned for the week of the Hall of Fame Game that summer - was put off when COVID-19 cancelled the entire 2020 season.
The 2020 inductees are offensive linemen Clyde Brock and Freddie Childress, and quarterbacks Henry Burris and Greg Vavra, plus builders the late Larry Uteck, coach of St. Mary's University, and John Hufnagel the former head coach and current president and GM of the Calgary Stampeders.
The classes of '20 and '21 will both be inducted in the spring ceremony at Tim Hortons Field. The Hall of Fame, which honours significant achievement in all of Canadian football not just the professional game, was located in downtown Hamilton for more than four decades. Now administered by the CFL, it reopened on the fourth floor of Tim Hortons Field in 2018.
The 2022 class will be announced next February and formally inducted at the Hall of Fame Game in Hamilton in August or early September, 2022.
With the province beginning its gradual approach" to long-term reopening only last week, it was too late to plan an induction ceremony which would do justice to the talented double cohort of 2020-21.
The league and Tiger-Cats decided more people could attend a ceremony at Tim Hortons Field in the spring. Travel worries were also a concern for some inductees and their families and there were other considerations. For instance, if the Tiger-Cats and/or Stampeders are in the Grey Cup game, Steinauer or Hufnagel, or both, could have been prevented by current pandemic protocols from attending their own induction because CFL personnel who interact with players are not permitted to interact with the general public.
Walker, who lives near Tacoma, Washington, confirmed that he was told last week by Greg Dick, the CFL Head of Football Operations, that the inductions were being moved to next spring. Walker has been relearning to walk after back surgeries put him in a wheelchair three years ago, so after his initial disappointment he saw a silver lining.
I'm fine with it, and to tell you the truth if gives me extra time to work on walking across the stage," he told The Spectator Monday. I was really fired up about the Grey Cup but when I think about it, it would have been such a hassle and worry for me and my family to travel right now."
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com