Article content continued

The well-spoken Reilly is known for bringing a colourful vocabulary to the field of play, and he still expresses concern that some of the words might make it to the air.

“The biggest challenge when you have a mic’d up game is to go out and be yourself,” said Reilly. “There are already so many other things going on in a game that you can’t be focused on what you’re saying or you’re not going to be as effective as you should be.

“Football is a very physical, violent game and emotions run high and they run hot on the field. That’s the way we play. You’re going to play your best football when you’re not worried about those sorts of things.

“You can’t worry about it. You just play the way you’re going to play and whatever ends up on air is for other people to deal with … The only thing you can do is forget about it and pretend that it’s not there. I’m sure James is going to have to censor himself quite a bit.”

Reilly, of course, was joking about that when it comes to his old back-up James Franklin, who won his first start as an Argo against the Eskimos Saturday in Toronto. Franklin may be the polite player in CFL history.

When your correspondent asked him about it on last week’s CFL conference call, Franklin said he didn’t even know this was going to be a mic’d up game.

“I don’t mind it,” he said. “It’s interesting to watch it on TV. It gives you a different perspective and it’s pretty neat. But I don’t think too much about it. I think it will be pretty good.”

What Franklin didn’t mention was that he played more minutes mic’d up two years ago than Reilly. He ended up involved in the mess.