Hamilton, Ontario ? They gave Willie Pless his own sculpted bust Friday at the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
He already holds the distinction of growing half a foot in one night – at least according to one of football’s greatest coaches.
The 42-year-old Pless was playing in a high-school all-star game.
Alabama coach Paul (Bear) Bryant wondered why the kid from Anniston, Ala., who spent the night whacking the far more celebrated Bo Jackson, was committed to Kansas University and not the Crimson Tide.
The next day, Bryant started making calls. He finally was told Alabama’s recruiters had decided that at 5-foot-10 and under 200 pounds, Pless was too small to be a linebacker.
“I think he grew about six inches last night,” he said.
That Pless never stopped growing, if not in height, then in stature, is what gained him a perch among the game’s greats.
Pless played just a shade under six feet and 210 pounds, but in more than 250 games with the Toronto Argonauts, B.C. Lions, Edmonton Eskimos and for one last season, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Pless was the perfect CFLer.
“I was just born to play that inside position,” he said as the golf carts were assembled for a Hall of Fame golf tournament near Hamilton. “I could do things at that position that I wouldn’t have to think about. I would see it and without thinking, react. Usually, those reactions were the right choice.”
Pless probably was the most dominant linebacker ever to play in the CFL. He was a five-time outstanding defensive player and won the award four consecutive years, beginning in 1994.
Pless was an 11-time all-star over 14 CFL campaigns. He retired in 1999 as the league’s career leading tackler.
He tried out for a few NFL camps, but the idea of shifting from the middle of the action into the defensive backfield left him cold. He always would be what he always had been.
“Sure, I had the desire to go to the NFL, but the prototype of a linebacker at that time was 6-foot-4, 250 pounds, so there was no way I was going to play that linebacker position,” he said.
Pless owns a workout studio in Edmonton. A father of three, he works as a personal trainer and has long since settled into the community.
