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The hard-hitting question which delivered the big scoop: When you weren’t playing football, what did you do for fun in Saskatchewan?

“Fifty cent wing night,” Hicks answered with a hearty laugh. “Fifty cent wing night with the boys. We had an all day Owl. The Owl was the campus bar. We would go there at noon. And we would drink until there was one guy left. The guy who lasted the longest won.

“One day I drank 40 beers.”

What? Forty? Come on.

“I’ve never drank that many beers in my life,” said Hicks. “But those Canadians got me going, man. The drinking age was 19, so we had guys … oh, maybe this shouldn’t be in the article (more laughter). We had a good time, man. We had a really good time.”

But eight beers shy of two, two-fours? I know a lot of football fans back home reading this and saying “right on, mann, Hicks can hold his suds!”

“I was one of the last ones standing,” he said. “Let’s just say … oh, I’m going to put his name out there, let’s just say Stefan Charles wasn’t so lucky.”

Charles, an Oshawa native, was on the same Regina Rams D-Line as Hicks. He went on play three years with the Buffalo Bills and one with the Detroit Lions.

What happened to Charles that night?

“Oh man, he dropped off about 11, 11:30 p.m.,” Hicks said, with more laughter. “Just before The Owl started to get going.

“I’ll never forget those days, man. It was cool. I really enjoyed my time in Canada.”

For those who didn’t know, Hicks didn’t qualify academically to get a big-school NCAA scholarship when he came out of high school, so he played at Sacramento City Community College. As one of the top junior college players in U.S., he signed to play at LSU, which turned out to be guilty of recruiting violations that made him ineligible for the 2009 season.