To be honest, we didn’t quite know what to think of Mason Bennett when he committed to UND back in 2014.  He was a bit a of mystery as we had never seen him in person and didn’t know much about Canadian high school football.

Thunder Lake Lodge

On tape he was a 6’4″-210 pound OT/DT that completely dominated his opponents, who were obviously overmatched. I remember questioning how good the competition was and how to translate that to Bennett’s overall talent level, which on tape was impressive.

At UND’s 2014 summer camp Bennett had a very strong showing and proved he was for real, that the size/speed combination was legit.  Once again, shows what we know.

Fast forward five years: The 6’4″-265 pound Winnipeg, MB product was just selected by the Hamilton Ti-Cats with the 8th overall pick in the first round of the CFL Draft last night.

Bennett is the fourth UND player to be selected in the first round of the CFL Draft, joining John Ulmer (3rd overall, 1985), Tim Prinsen (4th overall, 1997), Greg Lotysz (3rd overall, 1999) and Scott Schultz (1st overall, 2001).  Three defensive lineman and two offensive lineman.  Shows that it can pay off to head north and recruit the big boys.

During his time at UND, Bennett was a dominant defensive end who also played linebacker at times, which showed his athleticism. He finished his career as the Hawks all-time D1 sack leader with 20.

Bennett earned third-team AP All-America honors in 2019.

Former UND DL coach Jordan Gigli, now the DL coach/Recruiting coordinator at Northern Illinois, is a man that had alot to do with Bennett’s progression over the years.  As you can imagine, Gigli was very proud of his protege when we reached out to him after the CFL Draft was over – even including a funny (now but not then) story about Mason during his freshman year.

He showed up at summer camp at 208 lbs, I/we were concerned if he could put on the weight to be a DE. But when you saw him rush the passer and his ability to bend on the hoop drill is still to this day as good as I have seen.

One of my favorite stories was his freshman year. We are out at practice early in the school year, apparently mason hadnt been an ideal student that day in class and a professor had emailed Coach Schweigert. Coach called him up after practice on front of the team (I had no idea, thought he had done something good) and gave him the biggest butt chewing I’ve ever seen in front of the team. I went home that night thinking I just lost my best freshman pass rusher, there is no way the kid shows up the next day. Well, he did. I never questioned his toughness again.

You knew early in his career he could be a great pass rusher but he worked hard to put on weight, improve his fundamentals and become an every down DL.

I reached out to Mason about the story that Gigli relayed to me and he jokingly gave a great response: “I learned alot that day”.  As somebody who was also on the receiving end of a few public “talking-to’s” from Bubba, I agree Mason, I agree.

The status of the 2020 CFL season is still somewhat in limbo due to the COVID situation so it is unsure when camps would get going.  The pre-season was slated to begin on May 24th.

Photo courtesy of UND Athletics.