Oh, Brother

Doug and Darren Flutie are very close and so far apart.

Doug plays to packed NFL stadiums and national TV audiences. Just across the border, hardly more than an hour’s drive away, Darren toils in the Canadian Football League.

With smoke rising from the steel mills behind Ivor Wynne Stadium and the crowd of 17,157 leaving plenty of room for more fans, Darren helped the Hamilton Tiger-Cats rout the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 65-15 a week ago Saturday.

The next evening, Darren watched Doug lead the Buffalo Bills to victory over the New York Jets. Doug connected with five different receivers in the game, then found Darren.

“We talk all the time; we talk about the games,” Doug said. “He talks about what’s going on with them on the offense. Sometimes I throw out suggestions. Sometimes I’m down or he’s down. We can both relate to winning and losing.”

The brothers, both of whom are supposedly too short at 5-feet-10, have followed similar paths. Doug’s finally has led to riches in the NFL. But Darren is happy in the CFL.

“It’s usually a high-scoring affair,” Darren said. “With three downs, you throw the ball a lot, and there’s the 20-second clock, so you get a lot of plays in. There’s a lot of passing, a lot of scoring, a lot of yards, a great game -- a little lopsided tonight. It’s a fun league to play in.”

Darren is now in his ninth season in the CFL. In a typical year last season, he was second in the league in both yards receiving with 1,386 and catches with 98.

Quarterback Doug cheered as receiver Darren followed him through high school stardom and the Boston College record books. Doug would like to see Darren take one more step to the NFL.

“Maybe if it got down to the end of the season and somebody needed help, maybe they could bring him in,” he said. “If he was a free agent and available ... he’s not going to hold his breath over that. But I believe he could have a great career in this league, as well.”

Darren doesn’t think so. “It’s a done deal now,” said Darren, who joined his brother in British Columbia in 1991 after stints with the San Diego Chargers and Phoenix Cardinals.

“I’m not looking to go back to the NFL. Maybe three or four years ago when I was in my prime I would have liked to have gone back there, just for the money, but I’m past that now.”

Doug won the Heisman Trophy in 1984, spent eight years in the CFL after the USFL went bust and the NFL rejected him. Last season, he played his way to the Pro Bowl and was voted NFL Comeback Player of the Year after leading the struggling Bills to the playoffs. In the offseason, he signed a $22 million contract extension.

Darren, after setting Boston College records for receptions (134), yardage (2,000) and TDs (14), played one year in San Diego, catching 18 passes for 208 yards and two touchdowns in 1988. He was released by the Chargers in September 1989 and signed as a free agent with Phoenix in May 1990. But he broke his foot and spent the year on injured reserve. The Cardinals released him at the end of training camp in 1991.

That’s when the brothers who played for BC wound up together at B.C.

“I just said come up here, and we played together in British Columbia,” Doug said. “Right away we changed our offense and he was a big part of it. We had eight games together that season.”

In their only CFL season together, in British Columbia in 1991, Darren caught 52 of his brother’s passes for 860 yards and six touchdowns.

“Then I signed as a free agent in Calgary, and we tried to hook up, but we were free agents in different years. It just never worked out,” said Doug, selected as the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player for the first of six times that season.

The two played against one another in the 1996 Grey Cup between Doug’s Toronto Argonauts and Darren’s Edmonton Eskimos, won by the Argos.

Now their playing days together are limited to their rock band--Doug on drums, Darren on guitar. They won’t be mistaken for Creedence Clearwater Revival, but they do raise money for a charity established in the name of Doug’s autistic son.