If you haven’t made out your list of best 10 sports videos of 2011, we have a nominee for the top.
Two one-time rivals from the Canadian Football League, Joe Kapp and Angelo Mosca, were scheduled to patch it up at a benefit luncheon for CFL players in Vancouver over the weekend. Didn’t work out too well.
The plan was to have Kapp, 73, present an olive branch to Mosca, 74, to end a grudge dating back to the 1963 Grey Cup championship game when Kapp believed Mosca deliberately injured a teammate.
Mosca refused to accept, Kapp shoved the flora in his face, and mayhem ensued. Mosca swung his cane and knocked off Kapp’s glasses, whereupon Kapp landed a roundhouse right.
The host of the event, comedian Ron James, said it was definitely unplanned.
“People had assumed it was staged or premeditated, but it was nothing of the sort,” James told CBC.
Kapp is a 1959 Cal grad who played seven years in the CFL and four years in the NFL, ending in 1970. Despite having never coached, he was coach of his alma mater in from 1982 to 1986, whereupon he had another dubious moment of notoriety. After Washington beat Cal 50-18 at Husky Stadium, Kapp didn’t care for a post-game question. He unzipped his pants and nearly offered to share more than an answer with Seattle media.
He was fired before his last game in 1986, after which he was carried off the field by students who had been chanting, “Win One for the Zipper!”