Sunday is the 2024 CFL Grey Cup: Browns have an important Canadian connection

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League (CFL) will compete in their fifth straight Grey Cup this Sunday, November 17, 2024, as they meet the Toronto Argonauts in the league championship game with a kickoff at 6:00 p.m. (Eastern). The title game is the 111th and will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network as well as CFL+, CTV, TSN, RDS networks, and Sirius XM radio.

Two seasons ago these same two clubs played in the Grey Cup as Toronto came out on top 24-23 to capture their 18th CFL crown. The Blue Bombers won the Cup in 2019 and 2021, then lost to the Argos in 2022 and the Montreal Aloutettes last season. The 2020 schedule was canceled due to COVID.

This year, Winnipeg won the West Division with an 11-7-0 record while Toronto placed second to Montreal (12-5-1) in the East Division going 10-8-0 and clinched a Wild Card berth. The Argonauts then defeated the Alouettes 30-28 in the playoffs.

The venue is BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia with a capacity of 65,061 while the halftime show for this year's Grey Cup is the Jonas Brothers. The stadium is the largest cable-supported retractable roof in the world. It features a center-hung high-definition scoreboard measuring 68 by 38 feet plus installed around the building is a 51-inch electronic ribbon board with a circumference of 2,200 feet.

With the game on everyone's mind, the Cleveland Browns have a connection to the CFL.

On the list of Browns team executives under the category "Football Operations", the first name you view is Catherine Hickman. She is the Assistant GM & Vice President of Football Operations. Under her job heading, the Football Administration, Football Information Systems, Training and Medical, Player Engagement, Security, Equipment, and Video all fall under her responsibilities with 36 people employed by the team to perform these duties.

Hickman is the highest-ranking female executive in the NFL. She was born in Canada. She began her trek interning with the CFL.

Catherine Hickman (formerly Raiche) was born in 1989 in Montreal. At the age of seven, she fell in love with the game of football. She had a brother who played offensive tackle and she was the water girl. In high school, Catherine played for the girl's flag football squad.

Her father was an accountant with a Master's degree in taxation. Her mom was a nurse (who now manages HR) working with nurses for a private company.

Catherine then attended the University of Sherbrooke located in Quebec with a second campus on the South Shore of Montreal . She completed a law degree and was admitted to the Quebec Bar Association in 2012. She then went back to night school and got her Master's in tax law while practicing during the day. Her forte' focused on corporate and tax laws but she always wanted to get involved in the sports world. She looked into the agent side of the business but had in mind the organization and front-office aspects of teams. She put in three years at the law firm Gascon & Associates in Montreal.

Catherine heard of a football conference in Indianapolis that could become the doorway to jobs in the industry. She booked a hotel, flew to Indiana, and made herself known despite not knowing anyone there.

She was hired as an unpaid intern on weekends with the front office of the Alouettes of the CFL. This meant she was in court during the day, went to classes at night, and worked for the Alouettes on her two off days.

Eventually, a position opened up with Montreal for the Coordinator of Football Administration under GM Jim Popp who was in charge when she got the internship. She was interviewed and hired for the paid position. Then in 2017, she was named the Assistant GM and became the second woman in the CFL to have the wording "General Manager" in her job title. Jo-Anne Polak made history with the Ottawa Rough Riders 30 years ago as the league's first female to be named GM.

Catherine was responsible for daily operations, managing the salary cap, determining the value of players, and handling contractual duties for the Alouettes.

When Popp was hired as the GM of the Argonauts, he brought Catherine with him as his Director of Football Administration.

In 2019, Catherine took a front office position with the Tampa Bay Vipers for the reboot of the XFL. As a league, the XFL was hiring quite a few women in key front-office positions. The move reunited her with former Argos head coach Marc Trestman. Catherine was named the Director of Football Administration.

After a successful stint with the Vipers, Catherine was hired as the Football Operations Coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles. The hire made her the second-highest-ranked woman in Eagles history to be involved in football personnel.

In 2022, the Minnesota Vikings requested the Eagles to interview her for their vacant GM position but did not hire her. With that process, she became the first woman to interview for a GM position in the NFL.

While with Philadelphia, she had worked with Andrew Berry, currently the Browns GM, who worked as the Eagles Vice President of Football Operations. Berry was hired as the Browns GM in January of 2020.

The Browns named the then-33-year-old Montreal native as their Assistant GM and Vice-President of Football Operations in June of 2022.

There have been several women who have - and are - listed as the owner of an NFL club. The highest executive-positioned woman in the NFL was Susan Tose Spencer who became the Vice President of the Eagles in 1982. One day, Hickman will become the first female GM in the league. Her journey will have come from Canada and the CFL then through Cleveland.