By Bill Powers
Special to Stampeders.com
In the pass-happy Canadian Football League, one of the pass-happiest teams over the years has been the Calgary Stampeders. That’s thanks to quarterbacks like Henry Burris of today and people like Dave Dickenson, Jeff Garcia, Doug Flutie, John Hufnagel, Peter Liske and even Keith Spaith before him.
But this club has also been blessed with some talented running backs like Joffrey Reynolds of today and many others before him. And one of the best was Willie Burden, who came to the Stamps out of North Carolina State with a momentary stop in the National Football League with the Detroit Lions.
Burden, who like Burris had a smile that could light up McMahon, had National Football League written all over him when the Lions selected him in the sixth round of the draft in 1974. He had led NCS to wins in both the Peach and Liberty Bowls and was the 1973 ACC Player of the Year.
Unfortunately, he injured a knee in his senior year at college and not because he didn’t have an operation until the following spring, he was not 100 per cent at Detroit’s training camp and found himself a victim of the cutdown process.
As the saying goes, though, timing can mean everything and it just so happened that the new assistant general manager of the Lions was Rogers Lehew, who had just left the Stamps after nine years as the team’s general manager. Lehew told him his professional career was far from over and suggested the Stamps.
Burden never looked back, joining the Red and White in 1974 which started a career that would last until his retirement in 1981.
Long-time Stamp athletic therapist Pat Clayton says Burden’s reputation as a hardnosed player was well deserved.
“While he didn’t have a lot of injuries,” said Clayton, “he played hurt when he had to as players of that era did. He was a delight to be around and a true professional athlete.”
Willie led the team in rushing for four straight years while being named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player in 1975, a year he was also named to the all-Canadian and all-Western teams. In that year, he rushed for 1,896 yards, which was a CFL record that stood until 1994 when it was bettered by Mike Pringle and again in 1998. But Pringle played 18 games in those seasons while Burden did it in a 16-game season.
He was what you might call a true team player because with the arrival James Sykes in 1978, Burden became a tough blocking back and helped Sykes win the CFL rushing title two years in a row.
Burden had his sweater No. 10 retired by the Stampeders while also being named to the Wall of Fame and into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and he was named one of the top 50 players of the modern era in the CFL.
A tribute to Willie came from former head coach and general manager Jack Gotta who, when asked how to build a winner, said: “Give me a team of Willie Burdens.”
Today, Willie is a professor of recreations and sports management at Georgia Southern University and has added doctor to his name. Dr. Willie Burden was one of the best of many great ones to proudly wear a Stampeders uniform.