The song is told from the "voice of an anguished hockey parent from an unidentified northern town", whose son had earned a scholarship with a U.S. team before being killed when a truck travelling in the wrong lane crashed into his car.
[2] The story resonated with Cochrane, who said he began to write a song that crafted a stronger hockey narrative and thematic elements of mortality around the basis of his encounter with the father.
The singer spent less than half an hour forming the basic structure, which he wrote with only a tape recorder, a guitar and a notepad in a rented bungalow in Mississauga, Ontario.
British Columbia radio station CKKQ-FM "the Q" compiled a list of the 150 Best Canadian Songs of All Time, in honour of Canada Day in 2017, where "Big League" was ranked at #11.
[1][4] Another theory suggested the song was drawn from a separate 1986 accident involving a bus carrying the Swift Current Broncos, which skidded off the road after hitting a patch of black ice.
Cochrane performed an acoustic version of Big League during a televised memorial tribute to Luc Bourdon, the Canucks defenceman who was killed in a motorcycle accident in May 2008.
[2] Four days after the Humboldt Broncos crash, Cochrane appeared on Canadian sports network TSN to perform an acoustic version of the song before hockey coverage began.