CLOSING OFF ROUTES TO THE NORTH : Steve Benjamin Quits the CFL as Defensive Back and Returns to the Valley as an Assistant at Granada Hills High

Steve Benjamin has nothing against the Canadian Football League. It’s just that the money’s not great and you have to go to Canada to play in it--for six months each and every year.

That was getting to be a drag for the former Van Nuys High and Cal State Northridge standout, so he decided last spring not to drag his world there for another season and called it quits.

“For me, the desire to play football is kinda over,” Benjamin says. “After your first year, you’re really eager to go. After your second year, it’s a little harder to leave to go up there and after the third year, you’d have to just about drag me there.”

Although Coach Joe Faragalli of the Edmonton Eskimos would have liked to drag Benjamin back to Canada after the defensive back chose to retire, he decided instead to make a trade to try to replace him.

“He could have still been playing, there’s no doubt in my mind,” Faragalli said. “He had a contract. Last year was his option year, but his agent--he kept calling himself an adviser--said don’t even try calling him. His adviser said they didn’t want to negotiate anymore. We didn’t even negotiate.”

Still, Faragalli did try to get Benjamin to change his mind, calling him on the telephone once a month during the off-season until the roster had been filled and the deadline for new players had passed.

Benjamin would spend the summer camping and fishing when he wasn’t with his wife Victoria and 5-month-old daughter Vanessa, the birth of whom he acknowledges played a part in his decision to retire.

Now Benjamin need only drag himself to Cal State Northridge--to pick up where he left off when he was acquired by the Montreal Alouettes: with two years of schooling remaining toward a degree in engineering. And to the practice field of Granada Hills High, where he is currently working with the defensive backs as an assistant coach.

“When I went up to Canada I paid a lot more taxes, and my wife doesn’t work when she goes up to Canada . . . It was starting to get to the point where it was just a good job,” Benjamin claimed. “Good for a guy who’s 21 years old.”

Benjamin is 25 now, and although he is not completely out of football, it might be just a matter of time before he is.

Living in the Mission Hills condominium that he bought after he signed with Montreal, Benjamin says that after graduating “I’ll probably be working nine-to-five and won’t have the time.”

Retiring after just three seasons in the CFL--one with the Alouettes and two with the Eskimos--is something few might expect from a player that became one of the better defensive backs in the league, and one who was still considered in his prime.

A three-time All-Western Football Conference selection with the Matadors, Benjamin joined the Alouettes in 1986 as a starter, playing in all 18 games and making 77 tackles.

After the Alouettes folded just before the 1987 season, Benjamin was picked up by the Eskimos in the dispersal draft and helped the team win the Grey Cup.

In 1988, Benjamin was a key player on a defense that led the league in fewest points allowed and fewest passing yards allowed. The Eskimos finished in first place in the Western Division last year, but lost in the division final to the British Columbia Lions.

But still, this was the CFL and Canada was far from the comforts of home. It became apparent that he wouldn’t be picked up by the NFL and with hockey being the main attraction for the sports fan, it was no secret that there wasn’t enough money in the CFL to make changing life styles every six months worthwhile. The Eskimos averaged about 30,000 a game, well above the average draw of most CFL teams.

“Basically I was making the same money for three years and they said that that was the best they could do for me,” Benjamin said. “So I had to make a choice.”

The choice has been made, and when asked if he has any regrets Benjamin responded quickly and coolly: “That’s the question I’m getting from everybody. None at all. Maybe that’s because I’m coaching, not getting away from football cold turkey.”

Just getting away from the cold Canadian winters, back to the sunny Southern California weather to which he had grown accustomed.

Back home and still part of a football team, Benjamin is content with his dual status as student-coach.

After all, Granada Hills, having won its first two games, is ranked No. 1 in the Valley by The Times. And Benjamin likes to think he deserves some of the credit, at least from a defensive standpoint.

“I really know a lot about that,” he said of his working with the defensive secondary. “When I think back to when I was in high school, and if I would have been taught what they’re being taught right now, how much better I would have been.”

Granada Hills co-Coach Darryl Stroh, who also works primarily with the defensive unit, agrees that Benjamin’s impact has been a positive one for the Highlanders, saying: “Anybody that plays at that level can help you. They know a few tricks of the trade that we never knew or have forgotten. The kids love him and he’s been a super, super help to us. We’re glad to have him.”

Like most high school football players, Steve Benjamin’s goal was to eventually end up in the NFL--to be a star and make lots of money. “That’s everybody’s goal while in high school,” he said.

As a linebacker at Van Nuys he wasn’t heavily recruited by major college scouts, who, because of his size--5-foot-10, 178 pounds--considered him too small for the position.

“I was out of position,” he says. “It’s hard for a college scout to say this guy could play corner. Northridge had a good coach and I was able to play right away, so I had a lot of experience.”

Acquired by the Montreal Alouettes as a free agent in May of 1986, Benjamin fit in immediately despite the difference in rules, which emphasized passing--there are 12 players on a team, a wider field and just three downs to make 10 yards--and made a cornerback’s task more difficult.

“You have to cover a lot better. At my position it’s like being on an island all by yourself. There’s a safety in the middle, but he’s so far away, he can’t really help,” Benjamin said in 1988 while in his final season in the CFL.

Faragalli became coach of the Alouettes shortly after Benjamin’s arrival and he immediately took to the ex-Matador, as both a player and person, calling him “a kind of a mild type of kid who doesn’t speak too much and who kind of whispers when he talks, just the kind of kid you like--but he comes to play.”

Apparently so.

Faragalli was so impressed by Benjamin the football player he recommended that Edmonton pick him up after the Alouettes folded just before the ’87 season.

“Hugh Campbell (Edmonton general manager) called me when Montreal folded and said ‘what do you think?’ and I said take Steve Benjamin, he’ll solve your problem at corner,” Faragalli recalls. “And he did.”

Faragalli, who had been coach of the Alouettes, became head coach of the Eskimos a week later and the Eskimos, with Benjamin as a key member of the defensive secondary, went on to win the Grey Cup.

Now Benjamin is gone, and Faragalli has no hard feelings, instead preferring to remember Benjamin as “one of the nice guys that played in this league.”

Benjamin, meanwhile, prefers to look back at the good things that came from playing football north of the border.

“I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, a lot of which came and went,” he said. “My goal was to go up there and prove myself. And I proved myself.

“Football gave me a good start, I had a chance to buy condo when I was 21, was able to save up a nice nest egg so when I do finish school I don’t have to work two or three years to save for a home, so that was another thing that I liked about it.”