Inside the CFL: It’s Fairbanks’ time to enter the CFL Hall of Fame

By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on October 13, 2022.

Over the course of a 17-year career with Calgary, Montreal and Hamilton, Raymond, Alberta Over the course of a 17-year career with Calgary, Montreal and Hamilton, Raymond product Lloyd Fairbanks had 11 team nominations for the Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman Award, he represented the West Division once in that category, was nominated for Most Outstanding Canadian, was a seven time division all-star, twice All-Canadian, is on the Stampeder Wall of Fame and has won that team’s President’s Ring, twice.

No one in Calgary football circles and former opponents can understand why he isn’t in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

“That’s life”, he laughed when I asked him about it.

Fairbanks toiled with the Stamps from 1975 to ’82. Unappreciated by his coach and GM Jack Gotta, he signed as a free agent with Montreal and was there until the team folded in June 1987. In the ensuing dispersal draft he became a Tiger-Cat for two seasons. He then finished his career in red and white. His last game was the 1991 frigid Grey Cup in Winnipeg, which Calgary lost to Toronto.

After his high school career, he attended an Idaho junior college before playing at Brigham Young University. In those days, CFL teams had territorial rights to Canadians and Fairbanks belonged to Calgary.

Lloyd believes in an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work and that the employee is worth his hire, ideas that brought him into conflict with his football bosses from the beginning.

“I came out of university a year early in 1975. I had talked to Calgary and we had different opinions about my worth. So I told them I was going back to school. At training camp they had issues with the offensive line so they called me up and I came back and signed a contract.”

His first two years he had four head coaches. They won eight games. Jack Gotta, who had coached Ottawa to a championship in 1973 was hired as coach and GM. He was a legendary figure beloved by most, but Fairbanks wasn’t one of them.

“Jocko and I had a really interesting relationship. We’d joke with each other and get along for awhile and then go back to hating each other. Finally we divorced and I went to Montreal. We got along really good after that. He had issues with my work. I guess I always thought I was pretty important and should get paid that way.”

After three losing seasons, the Stampeders were outstanding in ’78 and ’79, ready to contend with Hugh Campbell’s dynasty. “I thought under Jocko we had superior talent to Edmonton but we could never beat them.”

An honour of his first stint with Calgary was blocking for the late Willie Burden.

“He had it between the ears. There were lots of guys who were faster, stronger, he just found the seam and ran to it. He made really good decisions. He was very wise. He was a wonderful person.”

The Stamps struggled at quarterback until John Hufnagel arrived in 1976.

“Huff was probably the smartest quarterback I ever played with. John was not an athletically gifted human being but he understood and knew the game. For an offensive lineman, having a quarterback like that is more than half the battle. As a GM he’s done a remarkable job. He is similar to Wally Buono who knows and understands the league.”

His proudest achievement was to play 17 seasons.

“I think I really understood the game and used that to my advantage. I had some speed but I wasn’t a big guy so I had to have a bit of savvy to play the game. Offensive lineman is more a learned position than a skill position.

“You play through bumps and bruises but I was very fortunate injury-wise. I blew my knee and broke an arm in Hamilton. That was it.”

His biggest disappointment was not winning his only Grey Cup game, although, “my last three years in Calgary were by far the best years I ever had.”

What has football meant to him?

“It got me educated. For the first 40 years of my life it was what I did. I can’t imagine not having played. But when my kids stopped playing I wasn’t sad. Football was right for me, was very good for me. But It’s not something I wished my children could be.”