Chapter 4

‘I literally could put my foot down through the floor’

The most obvious location for a football team to play: Memorial Stadium, the former home of the Baltimore Colts and the Baltimore Orioles. But the Colts left for Indianapolis a decade earlier and the Orioles moved to Camden Yards in 1992, leaving the stadium unoccupied for two years. By the time Speros expressed interest in moving in, it had fallen into disrepair.

Jim Speros (Baltimore Stallions Owner)

I thought I had the best deal in the world when I signed the [Memorial Stadium] lease with the city for $1 per year... And then we found there’s 20,000 broken seats; the field is nothing but weeds and lumps and rocks; literally the locker room was just dungy, dirt, you can imagine even rodents running around.

Scott Oake (“CFL on CBC” host)

I remember being in Jim Speros’ office with water coming out of the ceiling.

Leonard “Big Wheel” Burrier (Baltimore Stallions superfan)

We would be sitting in the lower deck and when people flushed the toilet up in the upper deck it leaked. The pipes were so bad in there.

Ken Murray (former Baltimore Sun sports reporter)

I took a tour of the stadium after they made the agreement. And I literally could put my foot down through the floor in a couple of places.

Tom Matte (Baltimore Stallions vice president, broadcaster)

My role basically was to get improvements. I was brought on board because, politically, I had some connections to make sure that we could get some things done that we had to get done. And we did. We renovated the stadium, we put a new field in. It was a disaster.

Kurt Schmoke (former mayor of Baltimore)

At the time Jim came to talk to me about this, he said there would not be any requirements for the city to put in money for the stadium. He had been in it and he thought there were some cosmetic things that needed to be done, but no major expenditure by the city. And that was one of the reasons that it was easy for me to turn over the keys, because at the time the country was going through tough economic times and the city was too. So it would’ve been tougher for me to invite the Stallions in if I had to use a lot of city resources.

Ken Murray

They cleaned it up. Speros basically traded things. He’d trade tickets, or he’d trade other things, for services.

Bob Leffler (Leffler Agency, marketing firm of Stallions)

We [were] making trade deals for paint, TVs, rugs, computers, equipment, tape, training room supplies. We traded for all manner of stuff to put this thing together. It was fun, I have to admit.

Jim Speros

Within three and a half months I had got the field ready to go, put about $3 million into the stadium just to get that stadium up and running. We painted it, put a new field in, did the locker rooms.

Jim Popp (Baltimore Stallions general manager)

Construction was going on everywhere while we were putting this together over a six-month period… But we had players coming in the building, [we were] starting to put the team together.

Jim Speros

The person I had my eye on [to coach] from Day One was a gentleman named Don Matthews… They call him “The Don.”

Photo Courtesy of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum

Mike Gathagan (Baltimore Stallions public relations director)

He was, without a doubt, the best coach that league has ever seen.

Jim Speros

[Matthews] had turned down jobs in the NFL. I know for a fact that he had a chance to go to Dallas, but he stayed in the Canadian Football League.

Jim Popp

When [Don Matthews] went in and did the interview, he’s like, “If I get this job, I’m gonna push for you to get this job.” And so he first interviewed in Las Vegas and then the following week he was in Baltimore. And then he told them they should be looking at me to come in and be the general manager. And then I got offered the job.

Ken Murray

Speros let Matthews and Popp run the team. That’s what he did. He knew he was in over his head and he said, “Don knows how to take care of the players, Popp knows how to get them. I’m just going to sign the checks.” ... And it was a pretty good combination. Wherever Matthews and Popp would have wound up would have been the team that would have won.

Jim Popp

We set up about one big room and put eight phone jacks in it and set up a table and a white board and had a whole list of players… I just gave them a list of names of players to start calling. One after the other after the other, talking to agents. And we made a little game of it. We were like keeping tally; it was like college recruiting. Who gets the first commitment? Who’s winning the commitment role, landing the guys I gave you? But we were all in one big room. It was all we had.

Scott Oake

[Matthews] started with quarterback Tracy Ham, a great running back in Mike Pringle, and one of the best defensive players at the time in Jerald Bayliss.

Mike Pringle (Baltimore Stallions running back)

Tracy Ham was definitely the team leader... Tracy was extremely professional in how he’d approach the game. He was not a “rah-rah” type of person, it was more of a leading by example.

Photo Courtesy of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum

Tracy Ham (Baltimore Stallions Quarterback)

I think the pressure, especially from a quarterback’s position, was that we have to play good football. Because this town, they’re used to good football. I didn’t want to be the quarterback that didn’t bring good, solid football back to the city.

Ken Saroka (Baltimore Stallions fan) If you look at that roster, I would say half of those people had previous experience. The key people that you needed to be in those key positions were all CFL veterans somewhere along the line. Chris Armstrong (Baltimore Stallions wide receiver) We had a lot of veteran CFL players. I think when I came here I was already playing for four years in the CFL. You had Elfrid Payton, Tracy Ham. Those guys were seasoned veterans. The people on the defensive side of the ball, we had so many people that had played for so long.

Ken Saroka

When Don Matthews gets to be the head coach, he already knew those players and got them to come down with an American dollar that was a little stronger. The dollar could buy a lot more, and there was no salary cap. It was stocked.

Ken Murray

[Future New Orleans Saints wide receiver] Joe Horn came here at the end of the first year. He never got into a game. He never got to the point where he learned the offense well enough to get into a game.

Jim Popp

In our tryout camp we had [wide receiver] Wayne Chrebet, who we cut, we didn’t keep, before he went to the Jets… He did very well that day; just at the end of the day he wasn’t the type of receiver we were looking for. At least what the coaches were looking for at the time, they were looking for more of a speed stretch guy.

Chris Armstrong

When I first got here, my first day, it was rainy but it was real humid. When I worked out, I remember Coach Matthews asking me if I could still run. I said I could run pretty good. So he told me that if I run a 4.5-forty [yard dash] that he’d sign me right on the spot. So I went out in the mud and the rain and ran a 4.4. And the guy was like, “You wanna do it again?” And I was like, “Nope.”

Photo Courtesy of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum

Jim Popp

I knew what it took to put together a team… And I took that approach into Baltimore, I knew what it took and what we needed to be to be successful, and used those concepts with everybody and hit the ground running.

Ken Murray

To be honest, the best way to put it is they were pretty good from Day One. They had very good coaching, they had veterans at the key positions and they just made it work through repetition.

Capital News Service photo