Tyler Bieber
CFL.ca
Together they have a combined 116 years of coaching experience. They are the six coaches who represent the teams that will participate in the 2011 CFL Playoffs.
Despite the fact that all six individuals have at least 11 years of coaching football under their belts, they only combine for a total of 36 years as being head coaches. BC Lions boss Wally Buono leads the way with 21 years of experience, as the head coach of the Lions and Calgary Stampeders. After Buono, none of the other five coaches have entered their fifth season as head coach.
Joining a Buono-led team throughout the years has virtually guaranteed a playoff spot every season. Just one time out of the 21 years Buono has been a head coach, has a team failed to make the playoffs.
That year was 2002, one year after the Stamps had beaten the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Grey Cup. Buono left the organization in the off-season and joined up with the Lions, where he has added to his resumé with two Grey Cup appearances, including a win in 2006.
If Buono’s Lions were to win the Grey Cup in 2011, Buono would become the longest CFL tenured head coach to ever win the Championship. Don Matthews currently holds that record, having won his last Grey Cup in his 20th year as a CFL Head Coach.
Buono is currently in his 21st season as the sideline boss. Buono would also tie Matthews and Hugh Campbell for the most Grey Cup wins as a head coach at 5. He would also tie Matthews in Grey Cup appearances with 9.
With the Grey Cup game being played in Vancouver, Buono and the Lions could add another piece of history to their record. The last time the team hosting the Grey Cup game won the title was in 1994, when the Lions themselves achieved the feat, beating the Baltimore Stallions.
Since the CFL began a regular rotation of Grey Cup venues in 1967, this has only been done three times. The Lions in 1994, as well as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1972, and the Montreal Alouettes in 1977.
Two of the six coaches – Calgary’s John Hufnagel and Montreal’s Marc Trestman were CFL head coaches for the first time in the 2008 season. The two men led their teams against each other in the 96th Grey Cup game in Montreal – a 22-14 win for Hufnagel’s Stamps.
Hufnagel became the second consecutive CFL rookie head coach to win the Grey Cup, and the third in four years overall. Kent Austin achieved the feat in the 2007 season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and Danny Maciocia won the Championship with the Eskimos in 2005.
Prior to Hufnagel, Austin and Maciocia, Adam Rita was the last rookie head coach to win the Grey Cup in his first season. That came back in 1991, when Rita led the Argos to a title victory over the Stampeders. Since 1950, nine head coaches have led their team to a Grey Cup Championship in their first year as the head man. John Gregory in 1989 with Saskatchewan, Sam Etcheverry in 1970 with Montreal, Ralph Sazio in 1963 with Hamilton, Pop Ivy in 1954 with Edmonton, Clem Crowe in 1951 with Ottawa, and Frank Clair in 1950 with the Argonauts.
Current Eskimos Head Coach Kavis Reed will look to join this list, as he and the Esks begin their quest to get back to the Grey Cup. Sunday’s game in Edmonton will mark the first home playoff game for the Eskimos since the 2004 season, when they lost to the Roughriders in the Semi-Final.
Reed, who also played defensive back in Edmonton during his playing career, is the second rookie head coach to lead the Eskimos to the playoffs in three seasons. Current Saskatchewan Roughriders defensive coordinator Richie Hall achieved the feat in 2009, where the Eskimos lost on the road to the Stampeders.
When Trestman became the Alouettes head coach in 2008, many did not know what to expect. Trestman’s coaching career was certainly an impressive one, having been to a Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders in 2002.
But, Trestman had never coached in the CFL before. Now in his fourth season, Trestman was quick to prove that he could get a team to play for him under Canadian rules, as all three of his teams have been to the Grey Cup game, winning the past two titles.
If the Alouettes do indeed make it a three-peat in 2011, Trestman will become the first head coach since Don Matthews in the mid-90’s to record three-straight Grey Cup victories. When Matthews achieved this feat from 1995 to 1997, he did it with two teams – the Baltimore Stallions, and the Toronto Argonauts.
Trestman would become the first coach to do it with one team since Hugh Campbell led the Eskimos to five consecutive Grey Cup wins from 1978 to 1982.
The two coaches with the most pressure on them are Winnipeg’s Paul LaPolice and Hamilton’s Marcel Bellefeuille. The Blue Bombers and Tiger-Cats are the CFL’s only two teams who have yet to win a Grey Cup in the new millennium. Hamilton last won under Hall of Famer Ron Lancaster, while the Bombers have not won a title since 1990.
LaPolice led the Bombers to an incredible bounce-back season following a 4-14 record just one year ago. They defeated the Alouettes twice in the late stretch of the season to capture first place in the East Division for the first time since 2001.
That year, Dave Ritchie was the head coach, but the Bombers lost in the Grey Cup game to the heavy underdog Calgary Stampeders.
Should the Blue Bombers be the ones raising the Grey Cup on the 27th, it would mark the greatest turnaround in one season for any team since 1996, when Matthews led the Argonauts from a 4-14 record in 1995 to a 15-3 record and a Grey Cup win over Edmonton in 1996.
As for Bellefeuille, if his Tiger-Cats are the victorious team at BC, he would become just the second coach in history to win both the Vanier Cup and Grey Cup as a head coach.
Bellefeuille led the University of Ottawa Gee Gees to the Vanier Cup in 2000 before becoming an assistant in the CFL.
Tom Higgins was the first to achieve the mark in the 2003 season when he led the Eskimos to victory over the Montreal Alouettes. Higgins won the Vanier Cup in 1983 with the University of Calgary Dinos.
For more commentary from Tyler Bieber visit his blog at CFLDaily.ca
