The author takes you through a little history of Canadian football and also the history of the Toronto franchise. Then how in 1991 the big signing of the CFL of Rocket Ismel out of Notre Dame. the owners of the franchise Wayne Gretzky, John Candy, and Bruce McNeil who at the time also owned the L.A. Kings. A Good story about the team looking at other players on the roster getting to the championship and the fall of grace. A really good book.

When a college football star signs with another professional league that is not the NFL, it usually makes big news. This was the case in 1991 when Notre Dame star Raghib "Rocket" Ismail signed with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (CFL). This book by Paul Woods is a very good account of that 1991 season for the Argonauts, which would not have happened without two other famous celebrities with ties to the team.
Those celebrities were Wayne Gretzky and John Candy, who along with Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall (who was Gretzky's owner at the time as he was a player on the Kings) purchased the floundering CFL and promised to make the team better. Their first step was to sign Ismail. This was done not only to make the Argonauts better but also to bring much more exposure to the league and eventually expand it to the United States.
Some of those goals were accomplished, thanks to the generous cash flow of McNall. Not only was Ismail's contract much higher than the limit on salaries placed on CFL TEAMS, but there were also other incentives such as $100 bonuses paid to Argonaut players. That season, thanks to not only Ismail, whose main contributions were exciting kick returns (the description of his return touchdown in the 1991 Grey Cup championship game is my favorite writing in the book about action on the field) but also a dominant offense led Toronto to the championship.
What also makes this book quite good is that Woods did NOT limit the book to being about the Rocket, McNall, Gretzky and Candy. Many players and coaches on that Argonauts team have nice write-ups and for those who want to get a good picture of what the state of the CFL was at that time, this book does that as well. American readers may not be familiar with all the names, but will still enjoy this book about a championship team that took an entire nation by storm.
I wish to thank Sutherland House for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In the world of gridiron football, the NFL reigns supreme. The league has become an entertainment behemoth, a multibillion-dollar monolith that is the closest thing to monoculture that North America experiences anymore.

But to the north, there is another football league with a storied history of its own.

The Canadian Football League has been around for a long time too – decades longer than its more prominent neighbor to the south – though it has never developed the same sort of all-encompassing hold on the general population. As the NFL exploded in popularity in the 1970s and into the ‘80s, the CFL – once an entity on more-or-less equal footing with its counterpart – began losing ground.

But in the early ‘90s, thanks to a bizarre confluence of timing and circumstance and a handful of bold and ill-conceived choices, a celebrated college star headed north and the CFL briefly found itself the talk of the sports world.

“Year of the Rocket: When John Candy, Wayne Gretzky, and a Crooked Tycoon Pulled Off the Craziest Season in Football History” by Paul Woods is the story of that moment, where a trio of celebrated owners took control of one of the CFL’s most storied franchises and used their combined clout and cash to convince Notre Dame’s Raghib “Rocket” Ismail, one of college football’s biggest stars, to sign with them.

Woods goes deep into the situation, documenting the struggles that came from dealing with the sky-high expectations across the board; on the field and off, behind the scenes and in front of the world, these were circumstances unlike any ever experienced by the CFL. It was a whole new world – some of it good, some of it bad, all of it compelling.

1991 was shaping up to be a rough year for the CFL. The venerable football league was in a financial tailspin, with every team in the league dealing with some degree of economic hardship. Even the league’s flagship organization, the Toronto Argonauts, was in danger of succumbing to these harsh realities.

And then – it all changed.

A new ownership group took command of the Argos, including two of the most iconic Canadians of the day. There was John Candy, the beloved comedian and Toronto native who was a lifelong fan of the Argonauts, and there was Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, the consensus best hockey player of all time. Tough to find a pair that would be more engaging to a Canadian crowd. The third member of the trio was Bruce McNall, a rare coin and antiquities magnate who also owned the NHL’s L.A. Kings.

Suddenly, there was a new excitement surrounding the league. Still, there’s only so much buzz that can be generated by an ownership group. Ultimately, it comes down to the players on the field … but this threesome had a plan for that.

And so it was that Raghib Ismail, better known as “The Rocket,” – Notre Dame star, Heisman Trophy runner-up and one of the most hyped college football players ever – wound up the subject of a bidding war, one that found the Argonauts making him the highest-paid player in the history of football before he’d ever played a professional down.

But as it turned out, while there was room for short-term success, there was an underlying reality to the situation that would leave almost everyone involved dealing with some degree of disappointment. And while this period was relatively short in chronological terms, the impact from the situation would reverberate through the league for many years afterward.

As someone with a well-documented fondness for the CFL, “Year of the Rocket” was always going to hit right with me. Doubly so considering that in 1991, I – while not yet enamored of the gridiron of the Great White North – was only just ascending into general sports fandom and was rather fascinated by Rocket Ismail. This is a story I remember in the moment, though only the initial splash – the aftermath was something that I never knew.

Until now.

Woods has written a remarkably thorough deconstruction of the turbulent chaos that was the early-90s CFL. It is an eminently readable time capsule, a breakdown of the unique set of circumstances that led to such a wild ride – some of it on the field and so much more of it off. He handles so many aspects of the situation with deft delicacy. There was the massive pressure on Ismail to live up to the terms of his contract, both as a player and as a league ambassador. There was the genuine passion of Candy, who completely and utterly adored his time as an owner; his was a very real love of the game. There was the general shiftiness surrounding McNall – shiftiness whose depths would become apparent in the years that would follow. All of the ownership stuff – particularly anything involving Candy, who comes off as a combination of CFL Pied Piper and Dionysian saint.

Oh, and in the middle of all of it, an Argonauts team surrounded by a publicity circus the likes of which the league had never seen was trying to win a Grey Cup.

Well-reported and engaging, “Year of the Rocket” captures a moment in time unlike any in the history of any sports league – Canadian or otherwise. It brings together many of the main players, delving into their memories of a stretch that – however briefly – changed the landscape of professional athletics.

For fans of the CFL – or of sports in general – “Year of the Rocket” provides a concise and comprehensive account of one of the weirdest moments in pro sports, a time when a single massive splash produced ripples that expand outward to this day.

Books about the Canadian Football League don't pop up on this blog very often, and for a very good reason - I live in the United States.

"Year of the Rocket," written by Paul Woods, is the exception.

Raghib "Rocket" Ismael's career is quite a story, at least at the beginning. He was raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and went to Notre Dame to play football. The Rocket may not have been the best pure player in the country, but he certainly made things happen. His blinding speed made him a threat to score a touchdown whenever he had the ball in his hand. Ismael finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting that year, and certainly figured to go high in the first round of the 1991 draft.

However, Bruce McNall had other ideas. He thought he saw a back-door method into the National Football League by buyig the Toronto Argonauts of CFL. If the NFL wanted to expand to Toronto someday - and really, why wouldn't they? - the owner of the Argos might have the edge in winning that franchise. But the CFL team would have to become much more relevant than it was at the time.

So McNall, the owner of the Los Angeles Kings, decided to take a shot at making this all work. To do that, he enlisted Wayne Gretzky, who was playing for the Kings at the time, and John Candy, an actor/comedian from Ontario. They put up a little money, and bought the Argonauts. Then the group essentially bribed Ismael to skip the NFL and play in Toronto. The rookie received $4.5 million per year for four years, making his annual salary larger than the rest of the team's income.

But it didn't work for a couple of reasons. The Rocket was supposed to serve as a spokesman for the team in its attempt to gain attention, and he really wasn't the least bit ready for such responsibilities. Candy tried to fill in for Ismael in a sense, and worked hard to make the Argos go. But the other problem was that McNall was a crook - a go-to-jail-for-financial fraud crook. His sports empire was made out of paper. The Argos hemorrhaged money, and even a championship didn't help. The team, and McNall, ran out of cash rather quickly, and the experiment ended when the franchise was sold. By the way, McNall says in the book that he never could figure out how to get the NFL to add a team in Toronto as long as Buffalo's Bills were just down the highway.

Woods worked for about four years putting all of this together. Some of the principals wouldn't talk about it, even today, and others like Candy had died. But most of the other key personalities were more than happy to speak about this era of Canadian football. In hindsight, most treat it as something of a dream where they look back and say, "Did all of this really happen?"

Clearly Candy is the star of the show here. He was a huge football fan, and it was his childhood dream come true to own the Argos. Candy was full of ideas, and was willing to do almost anything - well, except for investing more than $1 million - to make it work. What's more, John had a ton of fun doing it - as the stories show. There are plenty of other people who were a smaller part of the story who turn up in the book to provide facts and perspective.

If there's a downside to the book, at least for Americans, it's that the Argos' football story needs to be told along the way. Almost all of the names besides the Rocket on the roster and coaching staff will be unfamiliar to U.S. readers. Therefore, it's tough to draw people in to read about a quarterback battle during Toronto's 1991 season.

Even so, 'Year of the Rocket" goes by as quickly as a punt return for a touchdown, as it checks in at less than 200 pages. No, the cast will attract a very specialized audience. If you qualify, you will be entertained.

Subtitled: John Candy, Wayne Gretzky, a Crooked Tycoon, and the Craziest Season in Football History

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I was in my early 30s when Notre Dame’s Raghib ‘Rocket’ Ismail shunned the NFL to sign a monster contract with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (CFL). While he only fulfilled two of the four years of that contract, Ismail’s time in Toronto turned out to be way more entertaining than I remembered.


Just prior to Ismail’s signing with the team, the Toronto franchise had been sold to an ownership group that included actor/comedian John Candy, hockey great Wayne Gretzky, and business tycoon Bruce McNall – at that time, the owner of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings. The Argonaut braintrust gambled that Ismail’s high profile combined with the star power of Candy and Gretzky would not only enhance the fortunes of the Toronto franchise, but also lift the entire CFL out of the economic problems it had been experiencing. I leave it to you to read the book if you want to know the rest of the story.

I gave Year of the Rocket five stars on Goodreads. Even though I’ve never been a huge fan of the CFL, there were enough familiar names to keep me interested. The CFL always seemed to have more ‘characters’ than most sports leagues, so this was a really entertaining read.

I really enjoyed Year of the Rocket. Author Paul Woods captures all of the details, whether it is play-by-play of the penultimate games, the feelings and quirks of the football players, the egos of coaches or the strange behavior of owners, it is all here in a vivid recollection of the 1991 CFL season focused specifically on the Toronto Argonauts. Like any good author, Woods sets the reader up with a strong background on the league, team and ownership.

The CFL at the time was in dire straits financially. It only had one TV partner which made for a less-than-savory contract. Additionally, fan attendance was really down in the 1980s. The Argos were among the better positioned teams in the league in terms of attendance, but they faced difficulties with the NFL being broadcast on Canadian televisions and a ton of cultural attractions in Toronto.

Bob O'Billovich coached the team to their first Grey Cup title in 1983, but the team struggled to match that subsequently. He was dismissed after the 1989 season in favor of the brash Don Matthews. Matthews was able to find underutilized players to construct an incredibly exciting offense.

After a season under Matthews, the team changed ownership, which leads to the meat of the book. When the team found itself owned by Wayne Gretzky, John Candy, & mysterious business tycoon Bruce McNall, the team generated a ton of buzz and led to an unforgettable 1991 season. I loved the detail that McNall popularized the idea that having Hollywood celebrities watching a team would increase the team's popularity tenfold. We see it still today with Jay-Z and Beyonce attending the Staples Center and now Barclays Center. Suddenly, the Nets went from a snooze to one of the bestselling teams in the NBA led by Kevin Durant.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this to sports fans and even those interested in Canadian popular culture, in marketing & business, and in general history. I'd like to thank the author, the publisher & NetGalley for the ARC. I'll post a review to Goodreads & Amazon upon publication.

A good sports book needs to tell behind the scenes stories that make the fan feel like they are there with the team.

Woods really delivers on the behind the scenes stories. I felt like I was right there with Rocket Ismail as he struggled to adjust to life as a professional. Woods could have made Ismail a spoiled prima donna, but he shows the sensitive side of Rocket. I also loved reading about guys I didn’t know about like Matt Dunningan, D.K. Smith and Pinball Clemons. They all held the team together during the wild season. Finally, the stories about John Candy are priceless. I always heard how great of a person John Candy was; this book showed me.

I recommend this book to all sports fans. It was a fun read that made me appreciate the CFL and its quirks.