These Multisport Athletes Paid Their Dues in the CFL

These Multisport Athletes Paid Their Dues in the CFL

Cracking the professional ranks in one sport is difficult. Many promising athletes spend their early lives immersed in a single sport, devoted to the far-out dream of one day becoming a pro. Finding that rare specimen who plays two or more sports at the highest competitive levels is an order of magnitude more difficult. We’ll call it insanely difficult.

But multisport athletes do exist, and their stories are quite captivating. Here’s a look at four multisport pros whose résumés include CFL playing time.

Bud Grant

Few can claim a dominant athletic career spanning multiple sports like Bud Grant. Grant did it in basketball and football as a member of both the NBA and NFL Draft classes of 1950. He was selected by the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers in the 4th round (42nd overall) and taken in the 1st round (14th overall) by the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL.

In addition to basketball and football, Grant also excelled in baseball at the University of Minnesota where he was a three-sport, nine-time letter winner.

Grant’s NBA career was short-lived, spanning only two years with Minneapolis during the 1949-50 and 1950-51 seasons. During which, the Lakers won the 1950 NBA Western Championship with Grant averaging 2.2 points per game as a reserve player.

Following his stint in the NBA, Grant switched to football, joining the Eagles, first as a defensive end and later a wide receiver. He spent two years in Philadelphia before a contract dispute at the end of the 1952 season caused him to ship north to the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Grant played four more seasons as an offensive end in Winnipeg where he became a three-time Western Conference all-star.

But Grant was only getting started. His greatest football successes came during his head coaching tenures with the Blue Bombers and Minnesota Vikings of the NFL. Grant was at the helm in Winnipeg from 1957-1966, earning four consecutive Grey Cup championships between 1958 and 1962.

Grant transitioned to the NFL in 1967 and continued to pile up the victories in Minnesota. He led the Vikings until 1983 and again in 1985, racking up four Super Bowl appearances during his tenure. Grant remains the most successful coach in Vikings history and the first in NFL history to take a team to four Super Bowls

Grant was inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame in 1983 and the NFL Hall of Fame in 1994.

Jay Triano

A former Toronto Raptors head coach and current assistant with the Charlotte Hornets, Jay Triano is rightfully associated with the NBA. Before becoming a pro basketball coach, Triano was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 8th round (179th overall) of the 1981 NBA Draft. Despite failing to make the Lakers squad, he enjoyed a successful career with the Canadian national team, captaining them in both the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics.

Triano also excelled at football in his formative years and was a sixth-round pick by the Calgary Stampeders in the 1981 CFL Draft. He opted to play basketball instead of football due to his lifelong experience on the hardcourt.

T.J. Cloutier

T.J. Cloutier’s athletic career began with football and baseball. He earned scholarships to the University of California, Berkeley, for both sports, even playing in the 1959 Rose Bowl before leaving college and joining the U.S. Army.

Cloutier soon resumed his football career in Canada’s highest ranks with the Toronto Argonauts in 1962 and the Montreal Alouettes in 1963. Unfortunately, an injury cut short Cloutier’s CFL playing days after two seasons.

But this multisport talent was far from finished. Cloutier learned the strategy of poker while working on oil rigs in Texas. Soon, his poker winnings exceeded his work salary, and Cloutier left the oil rig job to focus on pro poker full-time.

Specializing in no-limit and pot limit hold’em poker, Cloutier has spent decades on the pro poker circuit en route to raking in more than $10 million in lifetime earnings at live tournament events. He has won six World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets and is the only player to notch wins in three types of Omaha poker, a take on Hold ‘em with a wide range of variants, at the WSOP.

Jesse Lumsden

You may recognize the name Jesse Lumsden if you followed Canada’s bobsleigh team at the 2010 or 2014 Winter Olympics.

At the 2010 Games in Vancouver, he competed as a brakeman with famed driver Pierre Lueders, a member of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, propelling both the two-man and four-man bobsled squads to fifth-place finishes.

Lumsden returned for the 2014 Games in Sochi as a member of the Canada 1 four-man bobsled team and Canada 1 two-man team, which finished 7th overall.

Prior to Olympic glory, Lumsden was a journeyman running back in the CFL from 2005-2010. He had stints with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders, even

making the 2007 CFL Eastern All-Star team as a Tiger-Cat. He also found NFL suitors along the way in the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins but didn’t appear in any NFL games.

The CFL has a long and storied history, full of accomplished players and fascinating characters. However, few have found success at the highest level of other sports. Bud Grant, Jay Triano, T.J. Cloutier and Jesse Lumsden are exceptions to the rule, and we applaud their multisport achievements.