• Age: 14
• Grade: 9

"Put aside the fact that it ended my playing career, punched holes in my memory and put life as I knew it on indefinite hold, it wasn't that tough a hit."

Thus begins Goin' Deep, Matt Dunigan's gritty, often startling memoir of his 14-year journey as a Canadian Football League quarterback, a career brought to a shattering halt on an afternoon in Hamilton in 1996 in a game he still cannot remember. It is a story that takes readers where football fans cannot go--down the stadium runway into the dressing rooms--where injury is a fact of life, injections can put agony on temporary hold, and the tough-minded live by the credo that "Pain is mind over matter. If you don't mind the pain, it doesn't matter."

But Goin' Deep is more than a football story. The concussion suffered in that game against the BC Lions marked the end of Dunigan's brilliant Hall of Fame career in the no-quarter world of professional football--and the beginning of another journey still in progress, where some days start third-and-long and memories can be shrouded in a drifting, frustrating fog that may or may not clear.

"You play the hand you're dealt," he says. "There are good days and bad days. Sometimes putting sentences together can be a struggle. Some days Kathy will say 'Remember when such-and-such,' and I can't. But these are my cards, and I'll play 'em." The way he's played and continues to play them as a TSN football CFL analyst makes Goin' Deep a riveting, heart-warming read.

Matt Dunigan is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and a former quarterback for the Edmonton Eskimos, BC Lions, Toronto Argonauts, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Birmingham Barracudas and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. In 1994, Dunigan achieved a
pro football record, passing for a remarkable 713 yards in a single game. He is now a CFL analyst and broadcaster for TSN. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Matt Dunigan's profile page

Born on March 16, 1937 in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, Jim Taylor of West Vancouver was B.C.'s most widely-read sports columnist. Taylor began his newspaper career in 1954 as a part-time sports reporter at the Daily Colonist in Victoria and later wrote for the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province and the Calgary Sun. He became a nationally syndicated sports columnist, author, and broadcaster. His 1987 chronicle of Rick Hansen's wheelchair journey, Man In Motion, reputedly had a record first printing for a B.C. book. In addition to Taylor's books on Wayne Gretzky, entitled Gretzky:The Authorized Pictorial Biography with Wayne Gretzky, and B.C. Lions` Jim Young, entitled Dirty Thirty. Taylor is credited with the re-write of a Soviet journalist's biography of Igor Larionov. In 2004, he compiled The Best of Jim Coleman: Fifty Years of Canadian Sport from the Man Who Saw it All. A member of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame, Taylor was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Sports Media Canada in 2000. He began his writing career as part-time high school sports reporter, drank beer from the Stanley Cup, saw Paul Henderson score "The Goal" in 1972, predicted rookie placekicker Lui Passaglia wouldn`t last with the BC Lions more than one season and wrote more than 8,000 newspaper columns. He recalls his half-century as a sports writer in Hello, Sweetheart? Gimme Rewrite!

Jim Taylor's profile page

Goin’ Deep: The Life and Times of a CFL Quarterback

Dunigan’s swaggering style as a distinguished CFL quarterback excited enthusiasts in six CFL cities throughout his fourteen-year career, but it left him with some disturbing, perhaps lifelong baggage. His multiple head injuries threatened not only to rob him of his career but also of himself. The story illustrates the glory of professional sports heroes and the hidden side of that world—temptations, injuries, depressions, bitterness and struggles. The book takes you behind the scenes demonstrating what is required to be a professional player. It provides useful insights for both male and female young people who have aspirations of becoming a famous athlete.

Dunigan is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. He is now a CFL analyst and broadcaster for TSN.

Caution: Some mild profanity and vulgarity.