By all accounts, Jim Speros, the brash 35-year-old owner of Baltimore's new Canadian Football League team, has successfully completed his latest Hail Mary pass.

"He made an announcement to us in September {1993} that he was going to pursue a Canadian Football League franchise," recalled Gus Anthony, who co-owned two Champions restaurants in Northern Virginia with Speros. "And then by February he gets a team. And then by June they're playing."

By early October, Anthony might have added, Speros's team was 10-4, tied for first in its division, and had clinched a home playoff berth. It was leading the league in home attendance, with an average of nearly 39,000.

Speros isn't shy about highlighting his achievement.

"Everything I said from the beginning, I've lived up to," he said, sitting in his office the morning after a 35-18 win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders. "In seven months, we've been able to renovate a stadium and put a competitive football team on the field. We lead the league in attendance. We lead the league in corporate sponsorship. We lead the league in concession sales, merchandise sales. We lead the league almost in every category."

In the team's first year, Speros said, it has sold $4 million in season tickets and has been taking in about $500,000 per game in walk-up ticket sales. Concessions sales have averaged $210,000 per game and merchandise sales have averaged $31,000. Plus, the team has earned $1.6 million in fees from corporate sponsors whose logos appear on signs at the stadium.

In owning a team, Speros, who made his money in the real estate and restaurant business in the Washington area, is returning to his first love.

A three-sport letterman at St. John's College High School in the District, Speros bagged a football scholarship to Clemson University. After a stab at a pro career in the CFL, where he was cut from the Montreal Alouettes just before the start of the 1981 season, he signed on with the Redskins as an assistant strength coach. His job there was to schedule and supervise players' workouts.

After two seasons with the Buffalo Bills in a similar job, he returned to Washington to work as a real estate broker for Carey Winston Co.

In 1989 he started his own firm, Speros Cos. Among his first deals were a 37-lot residential project in Bethany Beach, Del., where he bought, rezoned, subdivided and resold the land, and a larger, mixed-use venture in Fauquier County.

Speros hooked up with Champion Sports Inc. in 1989, when he represented the Arlington-based restaurant company in its search for new office space.

Champions restaurants are casual eateries that attract sports fans by offering overhead televisions and a decor rich in sports memorabilia. The flagship restaurant in the District was booming, and Speros figured the concept would work in Northern Virginia too.

Forming a partnership with longtime pals Gus Anthony and Peter "Stretch" Williams (son of Edward Bennett Williams), Speros opened Champions franchises in Herndon and Fairfax.

"I basically took care of restaurant operations, the day-to-day stuff," Anthony said. "Jim would find sites and arrange for financing."

The partners bought rights to develop 10 Champions franchises in this region. After they'd built two, the company had a management change, and the new team decided to focus on company-operated rather than franchised outlets.

The parent firm struck a deal with the partners to buy back the rights to seven locations. In return, the partners got Champion stock, and Anthony and Speros were given board seats and jobs with the company. Both have since resigned those positions, apparently on amicable terms.

As Speros launched his CFL venture in August 1993, he faced the formidable task of persuading Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke to let the team lease Memorial Stadium. Schmoke was hesitant because Baltimore was then in the running for an NFL expansion team. Speros, who had gotten the CFL's support but not its final okay on the franchise, had to act fast if he hoped to field a team by July. He hired Coach Don Matthews from Saskatchewan on Dec. 30, giving him a three-year guaranteed contract. (He won't say for how much.)

The city finally signed the five-year stadium lease for Memorial Stadium on Feb. 15, and the CFL awarded Speros the franchise two days later. The stadium terms call for rent of $1 a year, with a $7,500 cash bonus for the city whenever the team draws a crowd of 30,000 or more.

On one recent weekday, Speros stood in an aisle near the south end zone, offering details about his new venture, in which he owns the majority stake. Total investment was $10 million -- more than half put up by him, he said -- including a $3 million franchise fee and $7.2 million operating budget for the first year.

Speros said the investment took all the savings that he had earned during "12 years of work" in football, real estate and restaurants.

Thanks largely to heavy attendance and sponsorship from the likes of Pontiac, Cellular One and Crown Petroleum, Speros said, the team will make about a $1 million profit in 1994. Only five or six of the CFL's 12 teams are expected to be in the black this year, according to the league.

Speros has also landed the Grey Cup, the CFL's version of the Super Bowl, which will be held in Baltimore in November 1997. Speros projects that event will bring 23,000 people to Baltimore for most of a week.

"I feel that that's a tremendous shot in the arm for our team," he said, adding that the Baltimore Development Corp. has projected that the event "will have a $50 million impact to the city."

Speros's CFL team (which so far is nameless because the National Football League won't let him use the name "Colts") is his second attempt at bringing big-league sports to the Washington area. And it won't be his last try either.

In 1991, he led a group that bid successfully to set up a World League of American Football franchise in the District. But the WLAF, a spring league with a meager U.S. following, folded before Speros's team saw action.

Undaunted, Speros recently signed on as a general partner of a group that aims to bring a major league baseball franchise to Northern Virginia. A stadium plan has been drawn up, and a financial proposal has been submitted to the league.

Although Northern Virginia's chances to land a team appear slim to none, in the view of many, Speros asserts that the area has more attractive demographics than other cities known to be in contention for teams. "We blow Tampa and Phoenix away," he said. "I think there's another Camden Yards opportunity in Northern Virginia."

Speros isn't shy about criticizing people who he believes have cramped his style. High on his list of foes are National Football League lawyers, who have refused to allow him to name his team the CFL Colts, and Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer.

Speros is irked at Schaefer because the state of Maryland offered no money to help spruce up 40-year-old Memorial Stadium, although Baltimore loaned the team $500,000 for the project.

"We give a 10 percent amusement tax to the state," Speros said. "To date, we've given over a half million dollars. And I think it's ridiculous that a portion of that money has not come back to help us renovate."

Speros wins praise from his CFL peers. CFL Commissioner Larry Smith calls the Baltimore franchise "tremendously important" to the league, and salutes Speros for his "vision, energy and ability to influence people." Calgary Stampeders owner Larry Ryckman, noting that his own team's average home attendance is 8,000 less than Baltimore's, exclaimed, "I'm jealous!" and added, "We need more owners like Jim."