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Burris bidding for title: Ex-Spiro QB plays for CFL's Grey Cup.
Nov 23, 2008 (Tulsa World - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The 1-yard quarterback keeper he scored on last weekend must have reminded Henry Burris Jr. of some of the option plays he used to run for Spiro High School.
But Burris has always been a passing quarterback first, and this 1-yard run lifted his Calgary Stampeders past the British Columbia Lions and into the 96th Grey Cup game -- Canada's Super Bowl.
Calgary faces the Montreal Alouettes at 4:30 p.m. Sunday from Montreal's Olympic Stadium for the Canadian Football League championship. The game will be televised locally on the Versus Network (Cox cable 251).
This is Burris' ninth CFL season and fourth as Calgary's starting quarterback. It will be his first time to start a Grey Cup game, and his parents say they wouldn't miss it.
"We've been waiting for this one a long time. We're going to Montreal if the bridge don't fall and the creek don't rise," Henry Burris Sr., said by phone. He and wife Caresse were to fly Saturday from Tulsa International Airport.
Burris, 33, has made a habit of succeeding under the radar. Few Americans follow the CFL, with its 12 men on a side, three downs to make 10 yards, longer and wider fields and 25-yard
end zones.
Fewer still could say where Burris played college football. At Temple University in Philadelphia, he set school career passing records for yards (7,459), completions (558) and TD passes (49).
How did a self-proclaimed "country boy" who wears a Stetson cowboy hat and seems more comfortable on the high plains of Canada's Alberta Province wind up playing in Philadelphia?
As an All-State quarterback out of Spiro in 1992, Burris was ready to join high school teammate Anthony Eubanks in signing with Arkansas. But it turned out that the Hogs only wanted Eubanks.
Burris had an airline ticket for a recruiting visit to Temple and his father remembers telling him, "Go on up there and see what it's like -- if that's what you want do. He came back home and said he liked it a lot."
Except for a smattering of time with the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears, Burris has spent almost his entire pro career in Canada, throwing for nearly 28,000 yards and 177 TDs.
He was third in the league in passing in 2008 with 5,093 yards. He also threw 39 TD passes while leading Calgary to the Western Conference title and was named conference MVP.
On April 8, 2006, Burris and his wife, Nicole, had their first baby, son Armand Jaiman Burris.
Mike Brown 581-8390
mike.brown@tulsaworld.com
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