Canadian Sport Awards: Strap Season

OTTAWA — Strap Season is a phrase I borrowed from my friends in the boxing world — it’s something you say when it’s time to go win a world title. And if you follow me on Instagram you already know it’s Strap Season because I’ve been posting since Monday night about my big win at the Canadian Sport Awards.

Ever heard of the Randy Starkman Award for Leadership in Sports Journalism?

Well, you have now.

Add it to the trophy case.

My wife, Perdita Felicien, won a CSA back during her hurdling days, so if you’re keeping score, we’re now a two-Canadian Sport Award Household.

Here are some more stats for your scoreboard:

I’ve been writing columns at CBCSports.ca for four years, and I made a longlist for an international award in 2023, won a bronze medal for that same award in 2022, and now I’m atop the Canadian Sport Awards podium. The words “Award Winning Sports Columnist” don’t appear on my driver’s license, buy you might as well insert them between “Morgan” and “Campbell.” People who have followed my career could have seen all of this coming. Only thing that ever stood between me and awards like these was opportunity.

I can hear some of you right now, put off by what sounds like bragging.

“Morgan, where’s your humility? Why are you tooting your own horn?”

Because it’s my horn, and I don’t want anybody else’s filthy lips on it. It’s flu season. Let’s protect each other.

Here’s the thing about writing a sports column in this country — it’s a lot like playing quarterback in the NFL in the 1970s and 1980s. Whether decision-makers were racist, lazy, or just afraid to try something new, everybody holding down that particular high-profile, big-money job looked the same. Same race, same gender, with a very few exceptions. As far as I know, none of the major daily papers in this country has employed a Black person as full-time sports columnist, and even though I’m way too young to be the First Black Anything, I decided I would crash this particular party. Call me The Great Black Hope.

The industry, of course, had other plans and a thick glass ceiling. I enjoyed writing features and covering sports business, but it wasn’t my end goal. So by late 2019 I wasn’t marooned in my job; I was Warren Mooned. Where Moon left the US to prove he could play quarterback, leaving my full-time job in the newspaper industry helped me prove I can write columns. Five Grey Cups later, the entire pro football world got the message about Warren Moon.

As for me… I’ll just keep writing. And to the people put off because the last few paragraphs read like a bad combination of bragging and axe-grinding, I’ll paraphrase the Quebecois philosopher Patrick Roy.

I can’t hear you because my journalism awards are plugging my ears.

But this one isn’t just an award. It’s the Randy Starkman award, and that name deepens the meaning for me.

Before Randy passed away in 2012, he was one of my absolute favourite colleagues at the Toronto Star. Like me, he wrote about athletes as human beings and not just walking, talking bundles of statistics. And, like me, he really enjoyed sports that the rest of the media tended to ignore 51 weeks a year. There was track and field, obviously, but also boxing.

In February 2005, Randy and I took a mini road trip to Orangeville, about an hour northwest of Toronto, to watch Troy Ross, a two time Olympian and future Canadian Boxing Hall of Famer, demolish a journeyman named Etianne Whitaker. Five years before that, I was an intern at the Star, looking to do a story on Ross and his time in sports purgatory as he wrangled with promoters over the terms of his first pro contract. Randy handed me Troy’s number, and that phone call led to my first big feature in the Star, and served as my coming-out party as a boxing writer.

It took a while to recognize the significance of that gesture. Most veteran reporters would throw their phone into lake Ontario before they shared a contact from it with a 23-year-old intern, but, for Randy, paying it forward was the whole point. Support is a scarce resource in this industry, and Randy offered it freely.

In this context, “support” is a synonym for “leadership,” and it explains why Randy Starkman’s name is on the trophy I’m taking home. Randy paid it forward, and making room for this award amongst all my wife’s plaques and medals is the best way I can pay Randy back.

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