10 games into the 2021 CFL season, Ottawa Redblacks linebacker Micah Awe has made 59 total tackles, a sack and has forced a fumble. After being signed by the Redblacks late in the 2020-21 CFL off-season he, alongside fellow linebackers Avery Williams and Don Unamba has made his presence felt on what could be one of the CFL’s top defences. It’s clear that signing Awe has been a big acquisition for Mike Benevides and the Ottawa Redblacks’ defence, but also has helped the team off of the field. Micah Awe has brought a positive energy to the Ottawa Redblacks’ locker room at TD Place which has helped the team stay positive over the span of the season, which they now sit at 2-8, and on top of that he has also brought a business and entrepreneurial mindset to the Redblacks’ locker room through his app “PurpleShift.”

Awe’s app, “PurpleShift” is a combine testing and fitness based app where people of all ages have the opportunity to see their results in the 40 yard dash, 20 yard shuttle, 3 cone drill, vertical jump, broad jump and a number of other combine activities which just announced a partnership with Jim Mullin’s Football Canada. “Its incredible! It can be historical.” Micah Awe said regarding the partnership, “I come from Texas where everywhere you go football is such a big part of the communities and yeah football is a sport and a lot of people may think sports is just sports but it is much more than that. Football can bring everyone together and I want that same connection that football has in Texas to come to life here in Canada too. With this partnership, I think it is possible. PurpleShift wasn’t just made for athletes, it was made for the average person and Jim Mullin has been busy with Football Canada. We both have the same idea of growing football in Canada.”

The growth of football in Canada is something that Micah Awe has seen and been on the front lines for, now in his 4th CFL season, having played with the B.C Lions and Toronto Argonauts previously and he is ready to help it grow even more moving forward. Talking about the potential of Canadian football and how PurpleShift can have an impact on the growth of it moving forward, Awe mentioned, “We had 16,000 fans at the Ottawa Redblacks game on Saturday and when I saw that it was awesome because it was a rainy day and that was profanely the fullest I’ve seen the stadium (at TD Place) since I came up here. There is a lot of potential. It’s like ‘man, this can be even better than it is.’ We can really make it a bigger event and I feel like there can be like 5 times the amount of people at the games. It is just a matter of making it fun for everyone and I think that is something that can be done with PurpleShift. It can be as easy as having little events throughout a gameday that include PurpleShift, like a 40 yard dash challenge at half time where fans can get their PurpleShift scores on the field at half-time.”

When interviewed by JZ Media’s Jordan Zlomislic regarding the partnership with Football Canada, Micah Awe had also added, “When I built it I really just built it for the everyday person. I didn’t necessarily build it for the athletes or people like myself. That all came to life afterwards but I built it so that anyone can keep their goals and dreams reachable and continue to progress because anyone that can has the ability to film themselves doing an activity and is able to see their athletic growth and progression through the PurpleShift app. Now there are so many things we can do and I would say the overall goal with it is to now help football blow up in Canada.”

With the mission of making football bigger in Canada, the Ottawa Redblacks’ linebacker looks to make a change in the recruiting side of the game north of the border with his app PurpleShift. Helping get more Canadian athletes playing at the next level, the game will then grow north of the border. “One big way of recruiting is the eye ball test.” he said, “Coaches and scouts at the University level often go to camps or high school games and they take notes as to who may look like a football player or who looks like they can play at that level but to me it goes even deeper than that. To get that eyeball test you have to first be in front of the scouts and that is often the hardest part because you first have to go to certain camps or play in certain games but with PurpleShift you don’t have to be in any certain place at any specific time, all you have to do is film yourself and as an athlete, if being recruited can be as easy as just showing your athleticism at any time through just a series of videos we’ll for sure see a growth for football and it can only help the scouts and coaches too.” 

How may it help coaches and scouts in the recruiting and scouting process? Well they can use the app to find their next best players. “Purpleshift can be like Zillow but for football. My fiancé and I actually just got a house in San Antonio and we knew exactly what we were looking for so we just went through the filters and looked at the houses that fit our wants and needs. That is something that coaches can do on PurpleShift.” Awe explained, “They can put in a search for the kind of player they are looking for, the position, the size, the type of athlete and they’ll see a list of athletes that meat that criteria as well as their PurpleShift scores and how they have performed on the app. This can really change the way recruiting is done in Canada and can help so many athletes get the opportunities that they deserve and that they would have never gotten before.” 

With the partnership in place between both PurpleShift and Football Canada, Micah Awe now has the opportunity to make the biggest impact on the game of football here in Canada than he has ever had. “The partnership with Football Canada can really turn into something that makes football huge in Canada and that is really the goal.” He said in the interview with Zlomislic, “I want this to change the way people look at football in Canada because as much as we’ve been called a hockey country here the more I’ve been here the more I think this is really a football country.”