From Belleville to the bright lights of L.A., Mike Schad changed the way the NFL looks at Canadians on draft day
While Canadian talents Jevon Holland, Chuba Hubbard and Josh Palmer wait to see what unfolds over the next three days in Cleveland, Mike Schad, a first-rounder out of Queen’s in 1986, reflects on starts and ends. From its very outset, the life of a professional athlete is not short of either.
Joe Callaghan Special to the Star April 29, 2021
Hollywood had called. And Mike Schad suddenly realized he was underdressed.
When he took the phone call that changed his life, Schad was wearing an old, well-worn white shirt and blue jeans. Once he hung up, he knew such threads wouldn’t cut it where he was going. So, late on this Tuesday night, he had to figure out how to get his Sunday best. Fast.
Schad, his family and his agent, Gil Scott, in whose Unionville home they’d all gathered, had been warned of the possibility of such a call. That’s why a phalanx of Canadian media were gathered in the Scott living room too. And yet it still took them somewhat by surprise. History has a habit of that.
With the 23rd pick in the 1986 NFL draft, the Los Angeles Rams had selected Schad, all six-foot-five and 300-odd pounds of him. In doing so they made the offensive lineman the first Canadian to be drafted in the first round. That bit of history would be repeated down the years. But the second piece has never been matched: the Rams selected Schad out of Queen’s University, making him the first and, 35 years on, only player to be drafted out of a Canadian school and into the NFL in the first round.
Pretty good reason to go grab some wardrobe options, then.
“The Rams called and told me they’d drafted me and pretty much right away told me they were flying me out to Los Angeles — that night,” Schad recalled this week. “I just had what was on my back … which wasn’t much. So my mom drove from Gil Scott’s house in Toronto back to Belleville, picked up a suit, some clothes and put together a travel bag. And I flew out to L.A. for the draft announcement. That was the start of it all.”
The start, for sure. The start of an NFL career that would take its time warming up, three years of toil and tests with the Rams, adapting and adjusting before being traded to and thriving with Buddy Ryan’s Philadelphia Eagles in the late ’80s and early ’90s, where he’d start all 55 games of his Eagles tenure alongside the likes of Jerome Brown and Herschel Walker. But in a way, draft night was the end too. The end of the journey to fulfil the dream in the first place.
A whole new class of draftees — including Canadian talents such as Oregon safety Jevon Holland, Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard and Tennessee receiver Josh Palmer — will wait to see and hear their dreams fulfilled over the next three days. With the draft kicking off Thursday in Cleveland, Schad reflected on many starts and ends. From its very outset, the life of a professional athlete is not short of either.
“I was a member of the Hastings Prince Edward regiment in Belleville,” says Schad, an army reserve for three years during high school. “The lieutenant, his name was Skip Simpson, would bring you into his office and he wanted to know what you want to do, what your goals are. Do you plan to stay with the regiment?
“I said, ‘I don’t plan to stay. I plan to play in the NFL.’ I had just turned 17. He scolded me, yelled at me and said, ‘I’m trying to be serious here!’ I said, ‘No, I really want to play the NFL. That’s my goal.’ I remember him yelling some more. That was the first time I actually knew I wanted to play.”
Mike Schad got the call he’d been hoping for during the 1986 NFL draft — from Los Angeles Rams owner Georgia Frontiere at pick No. 23. “The Rams were true to their word,” Schad says today. “Now why … I don’t know. They had four Pro Bowlers on the offensive line and why they needed another was beyond me.”
Schad had been an athletic phenom in high school. Football, basketball, rugby, even track. Already six-foot-five and 260 pounds at 16, he still ran hurdles. At Queen’s, he took more leaps, dominating then-CIAU opponents, initially as a linebacker. Then he blew out his knee in his third year.
“I remember the surgeon looking down and asking, ‘How’s school going?’” recalls Schad. “He said, ‘I suggest you start studying a lot more. I don’t think you’re playing football again.’”
Schad did study. But he also dug in and worked harder again, switching to the Gaels’ O-line and dominating even more. He would be named the country’s top lineman in his senior year. But even with such accolades, varsity football north of the border didn’t stir NFL front offices like the NCAA did. Only three CIAU/USports players had been drafted prior to 1986 and none of them earlier than the eighth round.
Enter Scott.
“I had (ex-CFL quarterback) Dieter Brock at the L.A. Rams at the time,” remembers Scott, still a leading sports agent in CFL, NHL and NFL circles. “Every time I’d go to a game, I’d take film of Mike and Queen’s University to these NFL teams. I showed it to John Robinson, who was the coach of the Rams at the time. He said, ‘That looks like high school film. I wouldn’t really be showing that to a lot of teams.’ But in reality he didn’t want anybody else to see it.”
Scott brought the Packers, Broncos and Falcons to Kingston to see Schad work. But it was his exploits south of the border after being invited to the East-West Shrine Bowl that finally had the NFL on alert. “He was this huge guy, but he went downfield on a kickoff and made a tackle,” says Scott. “That athletic ability and speed, that really impressed them.”
Schad duly followed it up by wowing teams at the combine.
“They had me projected fifth or sixth round, but I went to the combine in New Orleans and had just great numbers,” he says. “I ran a 4.65 at 309 pounds in the 40-yard dash, had a 37-inch vertical. That had them looking closely.”
Draft night in 1986 is best remembered for Tampa Bay wasting its first overall pick on Bo Jackson, when he’d promised them he wouldn’t sign and opted for baseball and the Kansas City Royals instead. But Schad’s eyes were a little further down the order. The Rams had made positive noises. So too had the Raiders at 24. He wouldn’t get that far. The phone rang in Unionville at pick No.23.
“The Rams were true to their word. Now why … I don’t know. They had four Pro Bowlers on the offensive line and why they needed another was beyond me,” says Schad, for whom the gravity of it all hit home on that flight into L.A. “Coming from Belleville, going to Queen’s, and then I ended up coming over the mountains on the west coast and seeing Los Angeles. It was night and there’s just a stream of lights on lights. It just kept going on. I just didn’t really grasp it all.”
The L.A. Times archive has a remarkable, at times hilarious, profile of the Rams’ newest recruit from June ’86 which emphasizes that point. The culture shock and awe of it all for Schad is clear. He expresses surprise at California’s rates of divorce “coming from a conservative background.” He outlines his aim to team up with Arnold Schwarzenegger on an action movie. And he explains why he eschewed a Porsche for a more sensible car.
Schad’s worked in banking for the past 20 years, living in New Jersey with daughter Kali and son Colt, both teenagers. At 57, he chuckles at the quotes in the L.A. Times. But he remembers the car as if he was 22 again.
“Coupe DeVille Cadillac. The first car I bought,” he says. “The first car I ever owned, let alone bought. At Queen’s I didn’t have a car. I had a 10-speed bike and that got stolen. I got a half-million-dollar signing bonus and $125,000 salary for the year. I paid off my student loans at Queen’s and bought the car, but that was it. It’s not like it is now in terms of money.”
No, the riches in the first round are significantly higher today. As many as five, potentially six Canadian talents could get drafted over the next three days. Six would be a record. A handful of his countrymen followed Schad as first-rounders down the years. But no player from a Canadian school has been drafted higher than the fourth round since that night in 1986.
Schad is fiercely proud of his heritage. He finished his career in Ottawa with the Rough Riders. Brother Andre owns a number of businesses in the capital. Schad’s parents are still in Belleville, and he chokes up when he speaks of not seeing them in this pandemic year of closed borders.
He’s proud too of Canadian-grown players and points to the likes of Super Bowl-winning lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, taken in the sixth round out of McGill by Kansas City in 2014, as evidence that the talent is there.
“Will Canadians be able to repeat what I did? I’d like to say I think so, because I think Canadian football has come a long way since 1986,” adds Schad, who coached in NCAA football with Temple University before his move into banking. “The Canadians are getting much more intense and focused with training and their approach to coaching. I do think Canadian schools have a better perspective — you’re going to school to learn too.”
Scott’s take?
“Obviously Canadian college football can produce a first-round draft choice, Mike proved it,” he says. “But more of the top Canadian kids now are going to the NCAA, right? And in lots of ways, Mike opened that up for them too. His impact was big everywhere.”