By Bill Powers
Special to Stampeders.com

No one knows a receiver better than his quarterback and when former Calgary Stampeder pivot and now assistant coach Dave Dickenson was asked this week about Allen Pitts, he wrapped it up in just two words: “The best.”

Pitts is an amazing success story for the Stampeders, the only Canadian Football League club he would play for and he would do that for 11 years — 11 brilliant years, we might add.

You see, he paid his own way to a free-agent camp in California, where he was discovered by Roy Shivers, one of the finest judges of football talent ever to work for the Stamps organization. From that camp, the football club got a receiver who was to post nine seasons of more than 1,000 receiving yards and in both 1991 and 1994 he led the CFL in yardage.

In fact, when he retired, he was the CFL’s all-time leading receiver in career yardage although he would eventually lose that title to Milt Stegall. When he hung up his cleats, Pitts held the league record for most career receptions, a mark that has since been broken, but he still shares the record for most games in a season with 100 or more yards at 11 and remains the career record-holder for plus 100-yard receiving games at 64. And remember, he’s been retired for almost a decade.

Says Dickenson: “I played with Geroy (Simon) with the BC Lions and watched Milt (Stegall) in Winnipeg for years and while they were superstars, Allen Pitts was even better. In fact, I would say that he used the motion of the CFL game to his advantage much better than any other receiver in the league.”

Another to know a player better than most is the equipment manager and George Hopkins has held that post with the Stamps the past 38 years and going on 50.

In his words: “Allen was one of the quietest people we’ve ever had in that dressing room. He kept to himself mainly although on occasion, I could hit him with a joke and get a laugh or at least a chuckle out of him. But I will say that in all the players that have come through our dressing room over the years, there was not one who would work harder than Allen Pitts. He earned his superstar numbers.”

Pitts, who was born in Tucson, Ariz., in 1964, was an All-Canadian winner no fewer than six times and made the West Division all-star team seven times during his career in the Red and White. Going into this season, Allen Pitts holds Stampeder records for touchdowns with 117, TDs in a season with 21, total yards gained through the air with 14,000-plus and most yards in a season with more than 2,000.

On a team that featured the likes of quarterbacks Doug Flutie, Jeff Garcia and Dickenson, Pitts was twice named the Stamps nominee for the CFL’s Most Outstanding player award, losing to BC’s Doug Flutie in 1991 and Hamilton’s Danny McManus in 1999.

He became a member of Canadian Football Hall of Fame member in 2006 but maybe more important, was added to the Stampeders Wall of Fame at which time his jersey number 18 was retired. Only six others can boast having been honoured with a jersey retirement.

A six-foot-four 200 pounder who came out of Cal State Fullerton, he played in five Grey Cup games and won the big one twice, in 1992 and 1998.

There was none better than receiver Allen Pitts who, as Dave Dickenson described him, was “The Best.”