History By Colin: Not On The Radar

Colin Jose
Unlike sports such as hockey, football, baseball and basketball, very few records were ever kept of soccer in North America, and hardly any books were ever published.

If someone asked me to nominate a soccer player to the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame, I wouldn’t know who to nominate. Ottawa has never seemed to be a soccer town.

However, there is one person with a soccer connection in the Ottawa … Sam Berger. He owned the Montreal Olympique of the North American Soccer League in 1971, 1972 and 1973.

This is not unusual. Soccer often gets overlooked in these things.

Frank Calder, first President of the NHL, was a big soccer man, a referee, and founder of the Province of Quebec Football Association, long before the NHL began. But that’s not mentioned in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Neither is the fact that Gump Worsley was a good soccer player. When he died, I told various sports writers that they had omitted his soccer career … none of them knew. The last time I looked, Gump’s Hockey Hall of Fame bio doesn’t mention it.

Few sports halls of fame in Canada or the USA have inducted soccer players. Soccer is not on their radar screens it seems.

For 2008, I have nominated Jason DeVos to the London Sports Hall of Fame. If he is selected, he will be the first soccer player. We won’t know until November.

I have been invited to nominate soccer players to the BC Sports Hall of Fame and will do so shortly. BC is the only sports hall of fame in Canada that has inducted many soccer players. In BC there is a soccer lacrosse connection as well.

All of this is why it’s important that there be a Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame.

About Colin Jose
Colin Jose has been researching the history of soccer in both Canada and the United States for over 40 years, and is currently the historian at The Soccer Hall of Fame in Vaughan, Ontario and Historian Emeritus at the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, New York.