Ticats become first team to make Grey Cup without a league all-star, leading to Twitter jawing

The CFL's list of league all-stars was released Wednesday, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats aren't particularly happy they weren't included. Despite the team's run of success carrying them all the way to the Grey Cup game, the CFL head coaches and Football Reporters of Canada members with all-star votes elected not to name a single Tiger-Cat to the league all-star team. By contrast, Calgary placed seven players on the list, Saskatchewan and Toronto each had five, Montreal had four, B.C. had three, Edmonton had two and even 3-15 Winnipeg had one. That led to a funny back-and-forth between the Ticats' and Argos' Twitter accounts Wednesday:

Well-played on both sides there; it's nice to see that Twitter rivalry still running. What about the merits of the Ticats' complaint, though? Well, they have a few players who should have received consideration. Quarterback Henry Burris in particular led the league with 4,925 passing yards and was a consistent presence, unlike All-Star selection Ricky Ray who only played in 11 games, but the voters opted to go for peak over durability here (as they did in the divisional all-star voting). Burris was selected as the CFLPA's all-star quarterback though, so he at least has that.

Speaking of that divisional all-star voting, though, it's interesting that Hamilton had six players named to the divisional all-star team: running back C.J. Gable, receiver Bakari Grant, guard Greg Wojt, defensive end Brandon Boudreaux, punter Josh Bartel and special teams cover man Marc Beswick. At first, it's curious that none of them beat out their West counterparts for league all-star status, but it makes more sense when you look at who they were up against. It would be tough to pick Gable over West selections Jon Cornish and Kory Sheets or Bartel over West punter Rob Maver. All four of the receivers picked had substantially better stats than Grant, and Boudreaux recorded just seven sacks on the year, less than half the totals put up by league all-star ends Charleston Hughes (18) and Alex Hall (16). Thus, the main guys with an argument as league all-stars are Wojt (who has a case against Toronto's Chris Van Zeyl, but not against lineman of the year Brendan Labatte) and Beswick (who might have had a better year than Calgary returner Larry Taylor, but it's tough to compare a returner and a cover guy; this really should be two separate positions).

In the end, though, this is unfortunate for Hamilton fans, but it's far from a travesty. Sometimes you can find team success without a lot of superlative individual performances, and that's exactly what the Tiger-Cats did this year. Playing on a good team doesn't necessarily make you a star player, even though that's how this voting often tends to go. Hamilton execs and fans can definitely gripe about the omissions if they like, but it's worth pointing out this is just a vote (and that the Tiger-Cats landed two players on the CFLPA All-Star team, Burris and guard Peter Dyakowski, so at least they're good at winning votes from players). Moreover, the Ticats made it further than the Argonauts despite their lack of league all-stars, so it looks like they win this round despite falling short in the voting.