Family of ‘lost’ Cup champ Jearld Baylis connects with Hall

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Jordan Baylis sent an email, identifying himself as the younger son of pending Canadian Football Hall of Fame inductee Jearld Baylis. Jordan attached a photo showing his son and his late father together, sharing a toy and an affectionate moment. And Jordan asked how to contact the Hall of Fame.

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“They said they couldn’t get ahold of the family but here I am lol,” read Jordan’s email.

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Jordan recently read a Regina Leader-Post article in the wake of his father’s death, describing the hall’s futile, five-year search for Jearld. According to Jordan, his dad used his physical education degree and taught for years at Reynolds Middle School near Portland, Ore., where he hung out with family and loved to go bass fishing. Jearld wasn’t really hiding, but he never was big on notoriety.

“He knew (about the hall),” said Jordan Baylis during a phone conversation. “There was somebody looking for him. I think somebody put out a — what do you call it when they’re trying to find somebody — an APB. They had somebody here in Oregon who was trying to reach out to him, but we were all kind of skeptical at the time.

“Why didn’t they just find me on Facebook? Find my brother on Facebook? You can just ask (my mother Lucy).”

Would Baylis have accepted the invitation and attended the induction ceremonies?

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“I have no clue,” said Jordan. “He probably would have said something like this, ‘You’re taking away some time to go fishing.’ So probably not.”

Jearld Baylis was a stellar college player at Southern Mississippi who spent one season in the USFL before joining the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts in 1986. He was one of six Argos dealt to the B.C. Lions in 1990 for Hall of Fame quarterback Matt Dunigan, but an injury sidelined Baylis for that season and he was waived midway through 1991.

Baylis spent 1992-93 with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and 1994-95 with the Baltimore Stallions, winning a Grey Cup with the Stallions at Regina’s Taylor Field with the only U.S.-based, short-lived expansion franchise to have won a CFL championship. A four-time league all-star at defensive tackle and a 6-foot-0, 285-pound bowling ball of a pass rusher with strength, speed and amazing leverage, Baylis was the first Roughrider to be named the CFL’s outstanding defensive player.

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Teammates and opponents raved about his ability and work ethic. They liked him as a teammate, marvelling how much his laid-back, off-field demeanour contrasted with his on-field fervishness.

“He was a great grandpa, too,” said Jordan Baylis, who has two children and an older brother, Jearld Baylis Jr.

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to have played against him. I remember when he was training me in high school and he was trying to teach me the shuttle run. He could do the shuttle run so much faster than I could!”

After winning that Grey Cup, Baylis reappeared briefly in 1997 with two Arena Football League teams. Otherwise he kept a pretty low profile for about 30 years.

Former CFL and college teammates, when asked decades later, said they hadn’t seen or heard from Baylis since his playing days.

The CFL began looking for him in 2020, after the selection committee nominated him for induction into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. Baylis couldn’t be found, until a report in Mississippi Today announced he died on Jan. 30.

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“We’re not 100 per cent sure (what he died from),” Jordan Baylis said during a phone conversation. “He had regular (health) stuff like everybody else, but we don’t know for sure.”

To honour Jearld Baylis’ football legacy, his family decided to contact the hall and support his induction. Jordan could have attended this year’s ceremonies in September in Hamilton, but Lucy is apparently slated for back surgery that would have kept her from travelling.

Because the Canadian Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025 is about to be announced and preparations — including commissioning commemorative busts — are already underway for the this year’s ceremonies, a representative during last week’s CFL Combine in Regina said the hall will be reaching out to Jordan Baylis and likely plan Jearld’s enshrinement for 2026.

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