Family death a catalyst for the career of CFL great Reggie Hunt

Reggie Hunt said he’s blessed to have had the football career he did.

But the event that turned the focus of the Saskatchewan Roughriders great to the sport was anything but a blessing.

“I still remember that night like the back of my hand. I was 13 years old, it was late night or early morning and my aunt knocked on the door and it was uncommon; that doesn’t happen,” Hunt recalled.

His cousin and role model, Fred Washington, who was in the middle of his rookie season with the NFL’s Chicago Bears, was killed in a car crash in December 1990.

“She made that announcement and it just tore our family up. I didn’t play (football) very much before then but after he passed away, I rededicated my life to sports. My eighth grade year is where I started separating myself and started realizing how good of a football player I could be,” Hunt said.

From that point on, it became all about football for Hunt.

But it’s not like football was a foreign concept to him. Growing up in Denison, Texas, football was always on people’s minds.

“When you grow up in Texas, (football) is a way of life. Every Friday night, every Saturday and every Sunday, that’s what we do is watch football. My earliest memory, our hometown Denison won the state championship in 1984 and I was six or seven years old and pretty much every day from then on, my mind has been on football and track,” Hunt said.

He and his brother Aaron, who would enjoy a CFL career of his own, were raised by their mom Regina.

“She did a great job. We don’t question a lot of things and we didn’t miss a lot of things growing up because she did an excellent job working and providing for us, being a mother and also a father-figure for us when she had to. She didn’t accept quitting and she didn’t accept anything other than our best,” Hunt said.

But for most of his childhood, Hunt’s family never envisioned him being a professional athlete. He earned the nickname “Einstein” from his uncle.

“If you take me back however many years and asked them what I would do when I grew up, the last thing they would tell you is play professional sports. When I was about six years old, the only I only cared about was learning,” Hunt said.

Hunt first excelled in track and field, even challenging his older cousin to races.

“I’d challenge him quite a bit. I was small and I considered myself a sprinter and he was in college and he was about 285, 300 pounds so I challenged him to races and I thought that I could beat him. He’d get out there and dusted my butt. (He) still put me in place 300 pounds later so it’s the kind of freakish athlete I was dealing with at the time,” Hunt said.

During high school, Hunt made quite a name for himself and garnered attention from college programs like Alabama, LSU, Texas, Notre Dame and Oklahoma.

Hunt ultimately chose to play at Texas Christian University, the same place Washington played at.

During Hunt’s time there, he played safety, tailback and kick returner. But despite showing talent at a number of positions, Hunt wasn’t drafted by an NFL team.

He spent some time with the Dallas Cowboys and San Diego Chargers before spending the 2001 season in the World League with the Scottish Claymores.

“I visited a country, a completely different country that I’ve never seen, and played all over Europe and stuff like that — it was a great, great experience. Would I want to make a living playing in the World League or NFL Europe? Absolutely not but the one time that I got to do it was a great opportunity and great experience for me for sure,” Hunt said,

After that season, Hunt came to Canada to check out a league he didn’t know much about.

“Before signing that contract I could probably name two CFL teams and that would probably be with a little bit of help just from the fact I never really thought about it. It’s not that I didn’t respect the league because I completely respected the league because I heard good things about the CFL,” Hunt said.

He spent some time in 2001 with the Roughriders, joining the team with just a few weeks left in the season.

“It was already snowing. I was up there three days just standing up there learning. After three days just standing out there and learning, I convinced myself it was too cold to just be standing there and learn plays and not go to the playoffs a few weeks later,” Hunt said.

He spoke with then-head coach Danny Barrett and chose to go home.

Hunt rejoined the team in 2002, signing a contract with the goal to replace George White, who was trying out for the Green Bay Packers.

White eventually returned, meaning Hunt had to prove he deserved to keep his starting job.

“There’s only two things you can do at that point. You could take on that challenge or you can put your tail between your legs and shy away from it and I just wasn’t that type of player,” Hunt said.

He proved his worth to the coaching staff and maintained his spot on the starting roster. He enjoyed a lot of success during his rookie season with the Green and White, with 102 tackles and three sacks en route to being named the team’s most outstanding defensive player.

He became one of the CFL’s top defensive players during his six seasons with the Riders

In 2003 against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Hunt set a then-single-game CFL record with 16 tackles.

Hunt says he can still remember the good — and not so good — moments from that day.

“That morning we had a team meeting — we always had team meetings in the hotel the day of the game — and for some reasons I was late for that meeting and I’m late. I’m a team captain and I’m late and that does not look good,” Hunt said.

“When that happened, I realized, ‘This is going to have to be one heck of a game today.’ I knew I wasn’t going to be in trouble but I didn’t want to be a distraction. I didn’t want people to say we had captains late for the meeting. You never want to be a distraction on a football club so my mentality in that game was to go out and make every single tackle I possibly could and it turns out that’s what I did. I had a lot of energy that day because I overslept.”

Then 2007 came and Hunt knew it was going to be a make-or-break year for him with his contract set to expire.

“I’m really glad that we were finally able to put a team together to finally overcome that hurdle because we had been flirting with it for years. That 2007 year I realized also that my contract was up that year. I realized that if we didn’t win a championship that year, it might not happen for me,” Hunt said.

Along with wanting to win one for himself, he wanted to win one for Rider Nation.

“One of my personal goals that I had in my mind after my first year was that I really wanted to be one of the people, one of the members of this team that brought another Grey Cup to Saskatchewan,” Hunt said, noting the only other times Saskatchewan had won the CFL’s top prize was in 1966 and 1989.

“I remember thinking, ‘That’s way too long ago,’ and I wanted to be a part of that team that won a championship.”

The team accomplished the goal with a 23-19 win over Winnipeg.

But despite winning it all, Hunt’s time with the Roughriders came to an end after that season.

He said it was tough but the Montreal Alouettes really wanted him and made that clear so he headed out east.

Despite moving from the province during football season, he kept his house in Regina throughout his entire CFL career — even renting it out to Riders receiver D.J. Flick when Hunt was playing in Montreal or later with the Edmonton Eskimos.

When it came time to retire in 2011, Hunt knew there was only one jersey he wanted to wear on the way out.

“It was everything to me. I only played six years in Saskatchewan but that’s the longest I played football anywhere in my life. I didn’t want to retire as an Eskimo or an Alouette,” Hunt said.

He finished his CFL career with 563 tackles, 28 sacks and eight interceptions. He was inducted into the Riders’ Plaza of Honour in 2014.

While he admits it’s a cliche, Hunt said he’s blessed to have had the career that he did.

“Coming from what I come from to where I’ve been and being able to see the world and because of this game of football it’s gotten me to meet so many different people, I’ve got to see so many different places. I’m still reaping the benefits of playing football and I haven’t played in years,” Hunt said.

And he still thinks about Washington — Hunt’s role model, friend and inspiration — to this day.

“We had the same goals. He was my hero. It still tears me up to this day to even talk about him, that’s how big of an influence he had on my life,” Hunt said.

This Rider Alumni feature is appearing one day before the 2020 Roughriders were scheduled to play the Toronto Argonauts in the Touchdown Atlantic game. The 2020 season is on hold due to COVID-19.