Amid the Grey, a Ray of Light : Pro Football: Sean Salisbury has taken a starring role in the Canadian Football League, hoping it will lead to an offer from an NFL team.

WINNIPEG, Canada —  Winter came to Manitoba with a sense of urgency on the first weekend of October, the temperature having dropped 50 degrees to the freezing level from one day to the next. The nonstop wind, with no mountains near this provincial capital to slow it down, blew through town at 50 m.p.h. Flags snapped straight as sheet metal.

Inside Winnipeg Stadium, Sean Salisbury, quarterback of the hometown Blue Bombers, the defending Canadian Football League champions, dressed at his locker. Wide receiver Randy Fabi was at the next stall. It was about 90 minutes before the start of the 7 p.m. game against the Toronto Argonauts.

“If you’re a fan,” Salisbury said to Fabi, “do you come to this game?”

They laughed. But he had spoken like a true foreigner, a warm-weather import at that. As it turned out, an average-size crowd of about 22,000 people leaned against the relentless wind to watch an eventual Winnipeg loss.

Despite this one bad guess, Salisbury is very much a local, as much a part of the football scenery as end zones 20 yards deep, 110-yard fields, 12-man sides, three-down series, and the Grey Cup that the Blue Bombers won last season--the Grey Cup that Salisbury led them to.

Now, many in this city of 650,000 are holding their breath, not to mention their football hopes and wallets, to learn his next move.

“If Sean signs a new, long-term contract, he would be the most popular athlete in town,” said Blue Bomber kicker Trevor Kennerd, who works at an advertising agency during the off-season. “He might be right now. But this is a bit of a wait-and-see city, and they’re just waiting to embrace him.”

Waiting to see if Salisbury, whose contract expires after this season, makes a commitment to staying.

And then?

As Kennerd, a 10-year Winnipeg resident, said: “If we can get this guy signed, he’ll own this town.”

During a much-maligned career at USC, no one would have believed it possible. Owning a house, yes. A town, no.

There is no secret to his astounding popularity, just surprise that it would belong to an American quarterback rather than to a member of the National Hockey League’s Jets. He came in at the midpoint last year and led the Blue Bombers, a 9-9 team during the regular season, to the Grey Cup, the CFL equivalent of the Super Bowl. Next thing the 6-foot-5, 215-pound Salisbury knows, he’s bigger in Winnipeg than parkas.

“I wouldn’t trade that feeling for any I’ve ever had in sports,” Salisbury said the day after the Toronto game while sitting in the apartment he shares with his wife of 15 months, Kim. “Winning a championship, at any level, is what it’s all about. . . . When I was growing up, that was all I ever wanted to do.”

Except that in his dream, the championship was a little closer to home, not in Ottawa, and he’d make commercials that lifelong friends could see.

That didn’t happen, and therein lies the rub. Right plan, wrong time.

While Salisbury may be a big fish in the smaller pond of the CFL, he is very much a fish out of water.

Movies come to town weeks after friends in Los Angeles are talking about them. Players’ wives used to sit in the stands before a game and wait to see if Kim would dress more for California than a Winnipeg winter night, not realizing until later that she was from Denver and knew something about the cold.

Salisbury originally turned down overtures from Winnipeg because he considered the CFL a minor league.

“I knew about Warren Moon and Joe Theismann; I’d run across a few plays on TV, laugh a little bit and wonder why the end zones were so long,” he said.

“If you would have asked me 16 months ago if I would play in the CFL, I would have laughed in your face. I would have said I’d retire first.”

But when the decision came to that--Canada or quit--he came north. On Aug. 27, 1988, the night after he and Kim were married in Denver, they became residents of Manitoba.

Salisbury went because he had something to prove.

He left USC as the Trojans’ then-No. 1 career leader in completions, since surpassed only by Rodney Peete. And Salisbury accomplished that despite having to come back from two knee operations. He was the quarterback in the 4-6-1 season of 1983 but was injured and on the sideline when Tim Green led the way in the 1985 Rose Bowl victory over Ohio State.

“When the last game of my senior year was over, I was glad it was over,” he said, admittedly sensitive about his USC years. “I went through two knee injuries, a coaching change, two quarterback coach changes, a 4-6-1 season, sitting out a Rose Bowl and not being drafted, and it’s like people are still saying they’re not sure if I can make it. I guess I’m upset because nobody seems to point out how hard I worked to achieve what I did.

“Even now, when I go back to the campus sometimes, the feelings are partly of hurt because I don’t feel part of the tradition like I should. The alumni were, and still are, great, and I got a great education. But . . . “

But something is not right. He says today he would recruit for the Trojans any way they might ask. He recalls the majority of his time at the school with great fondness, and he calls meeting current Coach Larry Smith at a booster club meeting in San Diego an honor. And they still don’t give him due respect?

The night of the National Football League draft, Salisbury left a party at his brother’s house in San Diego without hearing his name called, went home to Escondido and cried himself to sleep. No calls, inviting him to try out as a free agent, came for several days.

He hooked on with Seattle and spent the entire 1986 season with the Seahawks. He got cut during the next training camp.

He went to Indianapolis just before the end of the strike. The next draft when the Colts acquired Chris Chandler, and Salisbury knew his time was limited as quarterbacks were stockpiled. He asked to be released.

No one else from the NFL called. Winnipeg did, but Salisbury said no. He finally went for a tryout, said no again as the interest continued, and left to prepare for his wedding.

But he couldn’t quit yet. He considered a career in broadcasting, but the time for that would come later, he decided.

There was this little matter of his ability as a football player, something Salisbury had been confident about for what seemed like forever. He still needed to prove it to people at USC and in the NFL. To himself.

“There’s, what, 80 or 84 quarterbacks in the NFL, right?” he said. “I promise you, there are not 80 quarterbacks there better than me. Let’s be blunt.

“You know what I want more than anything? To have an NFL team solicit me to play for them. That’s when I’ll know I’m wanted.”

That’s one thing the Blue Bombers had going for them. They wanted Salisbury.

After arriving in Canada, his opinion changed. The city was bigger than expected, likewise the talent of the players was better. It wasn’t Los Angeles--or Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver, for that matter--but there’s something to be said for being a starting quarterback in professional football making other transitions easier.

Meanwhile, his career took off. Suddenly thrust into surroundings where the wind chill can drop to 10 or 15 degrees below zero, to the point that you learn to hate halftime because going into the locker room provides a false sense of security against the cold, Salisbury started five of seven regular-season games in 1988. He was Winnipeg’s only quarterback in the three postseason outings, and the Blue Bombers went 7-2 when he played.

There is no such thing as national ad campaigns for CFL players, unlike their counterparts to the south. But Kennerd estimates that Salisbury, 26, is popular enough after last season to earn $25,000 a year on commercials. A deal with Salisbury House, a coffee-shop chain, was so obvious that one marketing firm had a script ready within a few days of the Grey Cup victory.

Picture Salisbury, the player, in a booth at the restaurant. He puts his arm around the Cup, and looks into the camera, saying: “C’mon over to my house.”

A natural.

Except that Salisbury, who rents an apartment in Carlsbad, Calif., during the off-season, would have to stay in Canada to land the deal, and apparently several others. Stay for a while, not just another season.

He could be the big man in town some more, but he would still be in Winnipeg and he would still be in the Canadian Football League. He tries to be diplomatic about remaining a Blue Bomber, but the truth has no soft edge.

“That I would love to stay is a saying that’s a little far-fetched,” Salisbury said. “I tell the people that in the media here, so they’ll get off my back. But I’d love to stay?”

No.

So, what are the chances he will be back in Winnipeg next season?

“Slim,” Salisbury said.

Said Kim: “Hopefully, very slim.”

Added Sean: “I don’t think they can make it worthwhile.”

In a league that operates under a $3-million salary cap, which includes incidentals like training camp, Salisbury reportedly could break the $90,000 barrier, depending on bonuses for games played and started. He turned down an offer before the season worth nearly $130,000 a year, hoping to parlay another big season into a contract equal to the $165,000 deal that former Cal State Fullerton star Damon Allen has with the Ottawa Rough Riders.

Meanwhile, Salisbury waits for what he has wanted all along.

“Maybe I’m being presumptuous, but I have to believe some team in the NFL will put me in the position to make it crazy for me to come back (to Winnipeg),” he said. “That’s what I hope. I want them to make the decision for me.”

He wants a reason to leave is what he wants. After all, if you’re a strong-armed California boy with confidence and pride so robust it should be declared at customs, do you come to this game, in weather like this?