Kaseem Ferdinand began the conversation by informally interviewing the interviewer.
“What do you remember about my dad?” the Carleton Ravens receiver asked a 60-something scribe, a long-time follower of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, shortly after arriving in Regina to demonstrate his abundant skills at the CFL Combine.
Ferdinand’s late father, Denny, spent half of his eight CFL seasons with the Roughriders, for whom he was a running back from 1985 to 1988.
As a first-year Roughrider, he scored on a career-long 50-yard run in Edmonton on Aug. 23, 1985.
“Denny down the middle!” Kaseem, who has seen a grainy VHS recording of the play, said with a smile.
The reminiscences soon related to Sept. 4, 1988, when Ferdinand scored the Roughriders’ final touchdown — a 59-yarder — in a 29-19 home-field victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Late in the fourth quarter, Roughriders fullback Milson Jones took off on a 41-yard run. When his progress was halted, he alertly flipped the ball to Ferdinand, who sprinted 18 yards down the right sideline before reaching the end zone. And there was bedlam at Taylor Field in the midst of a breakout season for the Green and White.
That was one of 11 touchdowns Ferdinand scored in the CFL. While playing for Saskatchewan, the Montreal Concordes (now Alouettes) and Ottawa Rough Riders, he rushed for 2,346 yards and averaged five yards per carry.
With Montreal in 1983, he rushed for a career-best 603 yards (averaging 5.9 yards per carry), caught eight passes for 128 yards and averaged 27.7 yards per kick returns en route to being named the East Division’s Most Outstanding Canadian — all of that at age 21.
Post-football, he still looked like he could play, and carried himself in that fashion.
“Mom said he would wake up and just sprint around the neighbourhood,” Kaseem Ferdinand said.
“My brother Tristan would be playing basketball and my dad would just jog by. A jog for him was like a full-speed sprint for everybody else.”
It was especially shocking, then, when Denny Ferdinand — always cheerful and in great shape — died suddenly of heart arrythmia at his suburban Ottawa home on April 2, 2002. He had just turned 40.
“The doctors who examined Denny said he had the heart of an 18-year-old,” his wife, Alexia, told the Montreal Gazette in 2003. “He had a checkup just before he died and he was in perfect health.
“But his heart rate apparently was so low — what they call an athlete’s heart rate — that when he lost it, he never got it back.
“He’d been in the kitchen preparing macaroni dinner for the boys. He was just slicing it up when he fell. The doctors later told us he was probably dead as soon as he hit the floor.
“It was unreal for all of us. It still is. Denny was too young and too strong to die.”
Six months later, Kaseem and his twin brother (Denny Jr.) were born. Denny Sr. had three sons (Cedric, Tristan and Justin) from a previous marriage.
“I never really wanted to ask my mom what happened, because obviously I felt it would be a tough conversation,” Kaseem recalled. “There was Google and Wikipedia and iPads and iPhones, so around Grade 8 or 9, I kind of Googled it.
“I saw that it said he had a heart attack, so I asked my older brother what happened. Eventually we had that conversation with my mom.”
Long before that, Kaseem had noticed that something was different.
“I’d say I didn’t really get curious about it until the third or fourth grade,” he said. “When you start to become a little bit more conscious of things, you realize, ‘These kids have their dads picking them up from school every day.’
“At the start, I’d be a little bit jealous and wish I had something like that. The older I got, I realized that my mom is the best person of all time.
“To me, she’s a goddess. I put her on a pedestal above everybody. I’d do anything for her. I’m here in front of you right now because of her.”
There are myriad examples of Alexia Agraniotis Ferdinand taking parenting to the next level.
“She has driven me to every practice,” Kaseem marvelled. “Even in my first year of university, Mom would still drive me to practice.
“I didn’t have my driver’s license yet. I was still 17 and it was during COVID, so it was a little bit harder to do.
“During COVID, they wouldn’t let the parents come to watch practice or anything. She would sit in the parking lot and have the car face a certain way so she could see us through the trees. “Afterwards, she’d say, ‘Kaseem, you had a crazy play!’ I’d say, ‘Mom, how are you even seeing that?’
“Even though I never had a dad, I would say that my mom was more than enough. The one parent I did have was better than two or three anyone else could have had.”
Unsurprisingly, Alexia is flying to Regina to watch Kaseem take part in the Combine, having enjoyed his many feats of excellence as a Raven.
The 5-foot-10, 176-pound speedster has registered at least 40 receptions and 500 receiving yards in each of the past three U Sports seasons. Those numbers, extrapolated over the length of a CFL team’s regular schedule, would put him over 80 catches and 1,000 yards per year.
Each year at Carleton, he has produced a peak total — in catches (51 in 2023), receiving yards (645 in 2024) and TDs (seven in 2022).
Additionally, he has maintained an admirable academic standing while studying global law.
“Football and school have always been connected,” Kaseem stated. “It’s not like you do one and not the other. Football and school move together.
“Obviously, I want to play in the CFL for 20, 25 years. If it was up to me, I’d like to get drafted and Kobe it — win seven or eight championships and be in one city the whole time.
“But you never know what could happen. Your leg could get sawed off or you could tear your ACL four or five times and — bang! — now you need a career.
“I was thinking that I’d like to be diplomat with global law. I’d like to travel the world and see a bunch of things.
“I figure being a diplomat wouldn’t be too hard — sign some papers, eat some good food, and live in a couple of different countries. That would be nice.”
And fitting, considering that his father loved to travel.
“I’ve never seen him but, based off the stories and from some of the things that have happened in my life, I feel like I know him,” Kaseem said.
“Obviously, I’ve trained all my life. I love football. That’s all I ever do. But every now and then, I’ll go back and watch film and think, ‘I don’t know how I did that, but there’s a guardian angel up there.’
“He might be giving me that little bit of extra strength or extra speed that, on a regular basis, I might not need. But as soon as the game’s on, as soon as the ball is in the air, and soon as there’s a dude coming right at me, I can make that move and I know that the guardian angel has blessed me with a little bit of extra strength and speed.”
And here’s another blessing: He is taking part in a Combine in Regina, where his father resided while taking part in 51 of his 96 CFL regular-season games. In fact, Day 2 of the Combine is his dad’s birthday (March 22).
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Kaseem said with a smile. “I think that everything that happens in life happens for a reason.
“The way God has it set up for us, life is beautiful. To see how everything goes, you should always be thankful for what you do have and not think about what you don’t have.”
