Alouettes' Cahoon on verge of CFL catch record

Sometime this Friday in Calgary, or at his next home game against the Stampeders on Oct. 11, Montreal Alouettes slotback Ben Cahoon will catch a pass — No. 1,007 — that will make him the greatest receiver in Canadian Football League history.

When it occurs, there are certain things you know will not happen.

He will not pull out a Sharpie hidden in a sock and use it to sign the ball.

He will not run to the sidelines, take someone's popcorn and mug for photos while wolfing it down.

He will most certainly not dance on the other team's logo.

The play itself will most likely be something inside, something key, something involving at least one defender tugging on his sweater while another commits an act slightly illegal because that's often the only way to stop the Montreal star once he makes his razor sharp cuts.

And the deed will be done — 1,007 receptions in nearly 13 seasons, one better than Calgary's great Terry Vaughn. Cahoon will hug his teammates, jog to the sidelines, say hello to his family when the camera inevitably shows him sitting on the bench, and then flash that slightly goofy grin of his.

On to the next play.

"Ben Cahoon is not an attention-getter on the football field," says Alouettes general manager Jim Popp, the man who drafted him all those years ago, coached himself for a few and, you can easily tell even over the phone line, is filled with admiration for his receiver.

"He's not a guy who sits there and draws attention. He does not showboat. It's a rare time he's even slammed the ball and then it's pretty much because he's been held the entire game and no call has been made."

What Cahoon has been, and still is, is a football-catching machine, teaming up with fellow future Hall of Famer Anthony Calvillo on most of his exactly 1,000 catches at this writing.

He's done it despite having a bad knee for a lot of years, bumps and bruises Popp believes most other players would never have played through, and recently, ongoing rib problems that Cahoon basically ignores.

"Over and over, the ball has gone to Ben in critical situations and he's performed," Popp says. And then he's just flipped the ball to the official.

Cahoon is somewhat startled to be where he is now, mostly because he focuses on other things, like his "two families." More on that below.

"I don't think about the numbers very much, but when I do it surprises me," Cahoon told The Canadian Press last week. "I never thought I'd play this long or that I'd amount to much in this league.

"I just tried to do my best every day in practice and in games. It shows what can happen when you stick to something and work hard and persist. It shows that consistency is more important than greatness, because I definitely haven't been the most phenomenal, talented receiver."

Oh, yes he has. What Cahoon is alluding to is that, at 5-foot-10 (ish) and 185 pounds (kind of), and not blessed with afterburner speed, he doesn't fit the mould of the star receiver currently blasting out of your television screen — ego in full, multi-hued bloom.

Montreal took him sixth overall in the Canadian draft in 1998, following one excellent campaign at Brigham Young University. What they were hoping for was a possession receiver who could fill a key non-import role and maybe help out here and there.

What they got was a revelation.

"His rookie year in training camp [when he wore No. 32, switching to No. 86 the next season] he did not drop one pass," says Popp, marvelling still. "He caught every single ball, made catches you see in textbooks or on highlight films, laying out parallel.

"He was determined to say he was the best, 'You'll find it out and you're going to play me.'"

Popp's coaching father, Joe (Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Cleveland Browns), was so impressed while attending camp that year, he still talks about those moments.

The Als dressed Cahoon for all 18 games of his rookie season, where he caught 33 balls for 471 yards and three touchdowns. And the race — an even-keeled, carefully considered, hard-working, under-the-radar one — to the top of the CFL stats heap was on.

But piling up personal glory has not been what has kept Cahoon going all these years, nor does it seem to be what motivates him now.

What's important to him is family. Especially so as a practising Mormon — a religion that counts the family unit above almost all else.

Cahoon has his direct family — wife and four girls — and his football family, headed by the two patriarchs in coach Marc Trestman and Calvillo, constituted by young men from every walk of life.

"That's one of the beautiful things about the game of football is the diverse backgrounds the teammates come from," he told CBC Sports in a quiet, measured tone. "You come together and you focus on a common goal of winning.

"There are problems occasionally, but for the most part guys are very, very mature and understanding and willing to overlook differences and build on common beliefs."

How to do that was learned in part on a two-year Mormon mission taken after his first season of college and one that put football on the back burner for 24 months. The last part of that ended badly one night in the dangerous Germantown area of Philadelphia.

Waiting for a bus with his mission partner, in the dark, the two were jumped from behind by two men who wanted their money. There wasn't any. A backpack, a camera and a few others items were grabbed and the attackers ran when a car pulled up.

Cahoon and his partner chased them (he admits that was a dumb idea) and in the ensuing fight he was stabbed in the right hand, something he told the Montreal Gazette created a pain like he'd never imagined. But nothing was seriously damaged and the football career continued.

When he speaks of the mission now, it is only in glowing terms.

"My mission definitely went a long way towards teaching me how to get along with somebody," he says. "You live with a companion 24 hours a day, you might not get along with them all the time and you've got to figure out a way to live together and try to have peace.

"If there's no peace, you are totally ineffective."

As in a dressing room.

Then there's that import/non-import thing.

Cahoon was born in Utah to Canadian parents who were there as part of their church work. He spent his boyhood in Alberta, where all of his relatives still are, and then it was back to Utah for high school at Orem, where he was all-state in three sports.

Under the CFL's complicated rules for who is a "non-import" and who is an "import", Cahoon is the former.

And that, Popp feels, is important in a number of ways, including that a Canadian will become this league's best-ever receiver, and that he may not have earned all the recognition due because of the designation.

Only twice has he been the CFL's most outstanding Canadian and never the league's MVP.

There's also been an argument over the years that if Cahoon had been designated an import, he would not have lasted as long because it's so difficult to balance the import-non-import ratio in the CFL and imports can be cut before their time because of it.

"That is so not true," says Popp. "Ben Cahoon could have been [Wes] Welker, Wayne Chrebet or Steve Largent [all NFL stars] — any of these guys you want to point out."

It doesn't matter, in other words. Ben Cahoon is one of the best ever simply because he's one of the best ever.

And seven catches from now, it will be official.