You’re a McMaster alumni and you’ve been around Hamilton for awhile, what’s your favourite thing to do here?
“I mean, I went to university here, so there’s a lot of things to do. I think the most underrated part is probably checking out some waterfalls. Hamilton has some awesome waterfalls. Other than that, just playing video games and stuff like that. I still live with some of my roommates from university, so we play video games and hang out, and I’ll go check out waterfalls if I’m really bored.”
What’s your go-to video game?
“My go-to game would have to be NHL 14. We haven’t moved to 15 yet because they don’t have two-player online. We just rock online, and we’ll play it for like five hours a night sometimes.”
As for the football team, who do you hang out with most off the field?
“I hang out with quite a few of them off the field. The most, as weird as this sounds, [would be] a few of the Western guys, so Beau [Landry], [Craig] Butler. I hang out with a lot of the DBs just because we’re so close, but the cool thing about this team is that everyone’s so tight, and you can just hang out with anyone. We have team events and that kind of stuff, where we all hang out.”
What’s your go-to pregame meal?
“That’s tough on the road, it’s whatever’s around the hotel. Here, I usually have some chicken, I’m a big chicken guy, so chicken and rice probably. I definitely get a big jug of Pedyalites, which is a ‘baby Gatorade’ almost. I crush some baby Gatorade and some baby cookies, some of those Mr. Christie Arrowroot cookies, those are pretty good.”
Which football player did you idolize growing up?
“Growing up I mainly watched the NFL, so the guys I liked were the Brian Dawkins, Ed Reed. Once I started playing DB I started looking at all the DBs, so I liked all of the good DBs. Once I came to the CFL, I heard a lot about [Rob] Hitchcock obviously, being in Hamilton. As I got closer, it was Butler because he was one of those Canadian DBs that had made it and was doing well, so now he’s here and it’s kind of funny how that happened.”
Where did you get your Ticats jersey number (#35)?
“In university I was number eight. Actually, I was number 19 in first year, but then switched that to number eight. Coming here, Masoli was number eight at the time, so Drew the equipment guy, put three and five together to equal eight. He gave me that, I just kind of kept it, and a number’s a number, you make it what it is.”
Who’s the best player you’ve ever played against?
“The best player I’ve ever seen is Kyle Quinlan, he could change everything. Played against? Him in practice, once I played against him in practice, everyone else seemed pretty easy.”
What’s your number one football memory?
“That’s easy, the Vanier Cup that Mac won in 2011, that was fun for sure. The whole week, going out to Vancouver, my first time being in Vancouver, that was pretty cool, that’s my best moment.”
You had another big moment earlier in the season, your first career CFL interception against Winnipeg, do you still have the ball from that?
“Yeah, it’s in my room. [I have a] funny story about that, actually, that I was telling other people when they asked. I almost gave the ball back to the ref. I picked it off and I was so jacked up, I had the ball and almost threw it back to the ref, and B-Stew was running over yelling ‘keep it, keep it, keep it’, so that was pretty funny.”
