Don’t bother Simon about retirement plans
Despite turning 37 this fall, Lions veteran is looking forward to catching passes for several more seasons
Geroy Simon had a hand in designing the B. C. Lions 2011 Grey Cup rings, and while he isn’t looking to turn that into another career, he says he does have a backup plan for when his days playing football are over.
Those days, he believes, won’t be for a while, so people best stop questioning him about it.
According to Simon, football fans have asked the 36- yearold slotback — he turns 37 in September — many times when he will retire, which prompted a rather straight forward response to any and all inquiries of that nature on his official Twitter account (@geroysimon).
“People please STOP asking me when I’m retiring! I’m about to win another GC. I’m too young to think about it being over,” Simon posted on the popular social networking site Thursday.
The “GC” referred to the Grey Cup, which Simon and the Lions won in 2011, the sixth in franchise history.
“I get that all the time,” Simon said Friday, during the unveiling of the new Grey Cup rings at the River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond.
“I mean, when people find out I’ve been playing football for 16 years, that’s the first thing that they ask, like ‘ when you going to quit playing?’ I’m not really interested in not playing football. I’ve been playing all my life and I still have a number of years left to go.
“It’s something I don’t really think about.”
Hard to imagine why people are asking Simon about when his career will end, especially considering he’s 67 yards away from a tremendous personal achievement, becoming the CFL’s all- time leader in receiving yards ahead of Winnipeg Blue Bomber great Milt Stegall.
Simon, who started his career with Winnipeg back in 1999, will start 2012 with 15,087 yards receiving.
It’s possible, if not probable, that the man who made the Superman end- zone pose famous during his first 11 years in Vancouver could set the record at BC Place on June 29, when the Lions take on the Blue Bombers in the regular- season opener, a rematch of last year’s Grey Cup.
The matter at hand right now is getting through training camp. Veterans reported to camp in Kamloops on Sunday, two days after the final party commemorating last year’s championship.
A quick glance at the statistics shows Simon has produced nine consecutive seasons with 1,000 yards or more in receiving. In fact, last year he recorded 1,350 yards receiving, a noticeable improvement from 2010, when he had just 1,190 yards.
But, given his age, it was legitimate to ask Simon how he feels heading into camp and another season of football.
“I feel great. I actually took three weeks off just to kind of let my body rest. A lot of guys rest in the first couple of months of the off- season, but I just keep training,” he said.
“I took a few weeks off just to let my body rest and relax before we go into training camp and hit it hard. It’s something that has worked for me over the last few years and it keeps me strong at the end of the season. I feel good. I’m actually excited to go to training camp, which isn’t normal. I’m prepared to have a big year.”