Rob Ford's Carleton stint lasted less than a year

Few details of Rob Ford’s sometimes tumultuous life in and out of municipal politics have gone unquestioned, but the Toronto mayor’s time at Carleton University in Ottawa may be the exception.

During the municipal election, the Toronto Star reported that Ford played centre for the Ravens football team at Carleton and left the school just two credits shy of a degree in political science.

That’s news to Ford’s old football buddy from back in the day, although John Lindsay says “buddy” might be overstating the pair’s connection a bit.

“I knew him best of anyone there, but no one knew him,” Lindsay explains. “He was nobody.”

Lindsay says he and Ford spent a lot of time sitting on the bench as the only two rookies to join the team in the 1989 season.

“None of the veterans hung out with us. He didn’t do too much with the team. I don’t think he ever played,” Lindsay says.

That hasn’t kept the mayor, who hasn’t always been upfront about his past, from talking up his history in the Ravens huddle. Even the mayor’s new City Hall webpage mentions his experience playing “university-level football.”

Lindsay is also skeptical that Ford ever came within tackling distance of a Carleton degree.

“The story that he left two credits short of a degree, I don’t know about that,” Lindsay says. “How hard is it to pick up a few credits?”

Lindsay says Ford never returned to football after that first season, and had assumed that Ford had dropped out.

"I thought, like a lot of us, he just didn't work very hard and went back to Toronto," Lindsay says.

The Toronto Star initially reported that Ford had graduated from Carleton, but then published a clarification. That clarification stated that a misunderstanding arose when Ford said of his graduation that he was "21; I took three years."

Reached by telephone, Ford couldn't immediately explain the discrepancy.

"I don't ever recall saying that I went anywhere for three years. I went to university for three years, but I wasn't in Ottawa for three years," Ford says.

Ford, born in 1969, would have been 21 in 1990, the year he confirms he left Carleton. He enrolled at the school in 1989, but now says he went on to study at Atkinson College at York University.

Meanwhile, Lindsay says Ford’s dubious connection to Carleton and the Ravens is a bit of a political football. Carleton’s football program ended in the spring of 1999, but efforts are currently underway to revive the team based on a similar football revival at Laval.

“They want to relaunch the team and they’re just happy that he’s talking about the Ravens,” Lindsay says.

Ford's former position coach, Kevin McKerrow, is leading that relaunch. He suggests that Ford likely never played, but says he's pleased Ford's single season with the Ravens contributed to the mayor's lifelong love of football.

Ford seems to have a different memory of his time with the Ravens.

"It's true I didn't start, but I know I played,"' Ford says.

Neither Lindsay nor McKerrow could say with certainty that Ford never stepped on the field in Ravens uniform.