Keith Shologan isn't going to lie.
The defensive tackle was
not exactly doing cartwheels when the Ottawa RedBlacks plucked him from the
Saskatchewan Roughriders roster in December's expansion draft. Just like that,
he had gone from the CFL's top team to the franchise with less than half a roster.
"For me, going from
winning a Grey Cup, I was excited and hoping to ride that wave for at least the
first part of the off-season," said Shologan, who built a house in Regina
a year and a half ago. "So that was kind of taken away from me, which was
kind of bittersweet. Actually, it was bitter."
If the Alberta native was
wearing a frown in December, it was gone this week in the nation's capital. A
smiling Shologan and a handful of other RedBlacks had a meet-and-greet with 500
season ticket holders at a downtown hotel on Wednesday night as part of the
annual CFL Congress meetings.
"It kind of lights a
little fire inside of you," said Shologan, who had been to Ottawa only
once before this week, and that was when he was in Grade 9.
The rest of the RedBlacks
roster, meanwhile, is slowly but surely coming together. It currently features
46 players, which would be just enough to field a team, but CFL squads are
permitted to carry 75 players during the off-season, so general manager Marcel
Desjardins still has a ways to go. The uniforms haven't been revealed and their
stadium, TD Place, won't be finished until just before the start of the season,
but the team will conducts its training camp at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Normally when a player gets
traded or signs with a new team, he's at least familiar with the city because
he has played there before as a visitor. That's not the case with many of the
RedBlacks. Thomas DeMarco, a former B.C. Lions quarterback, had never been to
the Canadian capital before this week, so he was doing as much reconnaissance
as he could to get ready for his move from Virginia in May.
"I have a map from the
front desk (of the hotel)," DeMarco said with a laugh. "I'll take a
look at how to get around. There's a lot of one-way streets here and I don't
want to be that guy driving the wrong way."
Remarkably, DeMarco has
experience with expansion teams, as he was part of the reborn football program
at Old Dominion University in 2009. He believes new teams, which should have
trouble with chemistry, actually develop a tighter bond than usual.
"Here, we all want to
be a part of something special," DeMarco said. "Ottawa's had a team
before and faltered. We want to be a part of the team that builds and makes it
a strong ninth team in the league, to make sure that we can win games, have a
tradition.
"Even though we don't
have any chemistry together, you put together a bunch of guys who are used to
winning, used to competing and have experience in the league, and it's just
like every other year when you shuffle the board with an existing team."
Other than the lack of uniforms, the unfinished stadium and
the half a roster, the players don't feel like they're part of an expansion
team. They are in the midst of their winter training at their usual off-season
homes are waiting for their first team gathering, which will probably occur at
a mini-camp in April somewhere in the U.S.
That's when the RedBlacks
will probably notice they're an expansion team, as they'll have to break out
the name tags. That's also when the veterans like Shologan, DeMarco and Henry
Burris will get to work.
"We don't have a group
yet," Shologan said. "You don't know who makes up the team, which
guys are going to be around, who's going to make the team. Realistically,
that's going to be a camp thing, but hopefully we're going to get a mini-camp
in April and then that's going to build some ties. And then we'll get into main
camp, and then by the end of that is where we need to build. That's a challenge
for our coaching staff, and that's the challenge for some of the guys who have
been around.
"If we can become a
team in the next couple months and when the season starts, I think we're going
to be competitive."
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