With the end of the fall season came what Seamus Power ‘16 thought was the end of his football career. However, an invitation to the Toronto Regional Canadian Football League Combine changed his plans.
“I finished football this fall and thought I was done,” said Power. “Then I got the email with the invite and was like ‘This is a cool opportunity. It’d be cool to just go and participate for one day.’”
The all-day event held on March 10 ended up opening up many more options for continuing to play after Bowdoin.
“The interesting thing from being at the combine was that I technically have a fifth year of eligibility in Canada,” said Power. “A lot of coaches came up and talked to me and were trying to get me to come back and play one year in Canada and do a one-year master’s. So I have one more year of college football, in theory, if I wanted to go back to Canada.”
The Canadian Football League (CFL) holds three regional combines each March in order to determine the athlete pool for the May 10 draft. Over the course of the day, the athletes’ strength, speed and agility are measured through six tests: the bench press, the vertical jump, the broad jump, the three-cone drill, the shuttle run and the 40-yard dash.
Forty-five athletes representing colleges and teams from all over Canada and the US were invited to the combine, where they broke into position groups as they went through the tests.
“It was just me and 11 other wide receivers, and everyone was from different schools, said Powers. “So my favorite part was just talking about your football experience for the last four years and meeting different people who’ve played football in western Canada.”
While a strong wide receiver for the Bowdoin program, Power hasn’t been in the position for long. He shifted from quarterback to wide receiver after a shoulder injury rendered him unable to throw. However, he attributes some of his biggest strengths at wide receiver to this change.
“I think it was a natural transition to wide receiver because it was just the other side of the equation,” said Power. “Normally, I was throwing to the wide receiver, so I already had a good concept of how the offense works and how the routes work. My strength as a wide receiver is I understand the spacing on the field. I’m not the fastest guy, I don’t have the best hands, but I think I run pretty good routes, and I understand what we’re trying to do as an offense.”
While playing football at Bowdoin, Power also joined the indoor and outdoor track teams for the winter and spring seasons. The in-season training for indoor track this winter particularly helped Power focus on his speed and agility going into the combine. Similar to the NFL Combines, the 40-yard dash is usually the most prestigious and important test of the day, as it tests athletes’ speed and ability to explode from a stationary start.
While the combines are run quite similarly, the CFL differs from the NFL in a number of key ways. Unlike the NFL, the CFL has mandated quotas that state that the 44-man roster of each team must include 20 Canadian citizens. The game itself also differs in the size of the field and the number of downs, as Canadian football is only played with three downs. These changes in the game can make the transition from American football to Canadian football quite difficult, yet that doesn’t hinder the frequent crossover between the two leagues as the CFL is a common gateway into the NFL.