CFLFirings linger forever: CFL coaches

Beginning of Story Content

The late Punch Imlach once found out he was no longer employed as general manager by the Toronto Maple Leafs by showing up for work one day and finding his parking spot had been taken away.

Bill Wirtz fired Billy Reay from the Chicago Blackhawks' organization by having someone slip a note under his door. While Reay was inside. Three days before Christmas.

Firings don't seem to be quite so impersonal these days, but anyone who has been handed the pink slip remembers the moment. Especially coaches.

Greg Marshall remembers his firing day as though it were last week.

No, not that Greg Marshall - the one Saskatchewan tied the can to after just eight games as a head coach in the Canadian Football League.

The other Greg Marshall, the one Hamilton tied the can to in 2006, only four games into a winless season with the Tiger-Cats. And less than two years after winning coach of the year in The Hammer in his rookie season of his first try as a pro sideline boss.

"The details of that day are etched in my mind," he says, down the line from London, Ont., where he's back running the University of Western Ontario football program for the second time.

"At one point, I almost talked my way back into the job," he says. "The general manager who had taken over was Rob Katz, and he called me up and said [owner Bob] Young was coming into town and they wanted to have a meeting with me.

"I said, "Rob, I've been around a long time, level with me and let me get prepared for this.'"

Katz told him, the team might want to go in another direction.

So the next day Marshall told the coaches to be prepared and then went for the evening meeting at the hotel. It went very late.

"We had a long talk, and I had a lot of input into it, it was an interesting evening, believe me. A late evening."

But eventually Young went out of the room, everyone talked, and he came back and said they would make a change.

Going another direction

Bob O'Billovich clearly recalls when he was canned by the Toronto Argonauts in 1995, after his second stint in the city.

"[President] Bob Nicholson told me the team was going in another direction, and that sort of stuff," he says from the general manager's office in Hamilton, where the former league coach of the year now runs things.

Obie called his wife that day to let her know, and more than 15 years later Judy O'Billovich still goes tense, squints, and speaks very, very carefully whenever the talk turns to how her man was so poorly done by in her eyes.

Charlie Taaffe gets it. He had two 12-win seasons in Montreal, won coach of the year, went to the NCAA, came back to a no-talent Hamilton club in 2006 and in 18 months was fired. By O'Billovich, who had been brought in for 2007 with the task of finding some talent for the no-talent Cats.

"I'm not bitter," Taaffe says now, sounding happy and content from the University of Central Florida, where he is the offensive coordinator. "When it happened in Hamilton, I made a comment, you know, I probably would have fired myself, the way things were going."

Obie called him into the office and, well, the team was going in another direction.
The conversation comes about because when the older Marshall (that's how you tell them apart) lost his job last week with the Roughriders, coaches all over North America took notice.

It's a very small fraternity, and as Taaffe points out, when it comes to being fired in this business "it's either been us, or it will be us."

Perhaps surprisingly, the way these men are let go is pretty much the way you and I are. A trip to the office. We're sorry, but we're going a different direction. Anything we can do to help, blah, blah blah.

The exit package can sometimes be a lot better than the rest of us get - Taaffe and Marshall still had a couple of years left on contracts at the time they were let go - but the hurt is about the same.

"When you put a lot of time and effort into something like the coaches do, it's just a kick in the stomach," O'Billovich says. "We're very competitive, having been former athletes. Most of us have gone through a lot of competition with fellow coaches, and with [everyone] in the business of sport."

Losing, in other words, sucks. And nothing says losing more than losing your job. It's embarrassing. And it's in all the media, sometimes before you had a chance to tell the family.

O'Billovich was the one who kicked Taaffe in the stomach, and he didn't like that much, either.

"When I came aboard [in 2007], I gave Charlie the benefit of the doubt because he had been in the league and won coach of the year, so I gave him the opportunity to prove he could be the guy," he says. "But the more I was around him and observed and saw, I knew he wasn't the right guy for the job.

"I just told him what I said to you, I don't think we're going in the right direction, we're not going to get better, we're going to have to make a decision."

Marshall firing has backs up

All coaches agree you have to be ready to accept the short life span in a pro job ("Coaches," some man said "are hired to be fired."), the lack of privacy, the stupid long hours. But, there's something about the Marshall firing in Saskatchewan that has the fraternity a little annoyed.

Marshall, a former defensive end, put in 18 years as an assistant coach in the CFL, eventually earning his big shot with Saskatchewan this season.

This was a Riders team that had been slowly cracking at the foundations for the last two years, losing a pair of outstanding defensive linemen and not replacing them, two excellent receivers and not replacing them, both running backs to injury and not having enough depth to replace them."

Greg's situation this year in Saskatchewan [was] completely ridiculous," says the younger Marshall. "I think everyone knew it was going to happen, but I don't get it."

"Here in Saskatchewan you had a coach with a ton of experience, who was a good coordinator and is a solid, good man as good as you will find, a natural fit, and then they make a change like that."

Marshall the younger believes the Riders are a team that has overachieved and was ready for a fall. When it happened, it all fell on the rookie coach.

Taaffe believes the CFL is much more given to quick firings than other leagues.

"The CFL is faster with the trigger," he says. "I've thought about this a lot.

"My own opinion is the CFL, being a fan-driven league [at the gate], when it starts going south with the fans and they threaten to boycott games, etc., teams look at the ticket sales and you get that knee-jerk reaction."

But having chosen coaching as a profession, and knowing the way the business goes at the pro level, that makes it a little easier to bounce, Taaffe believes.

"There's disappointment ... but life's too short and you move on, close one chapter and open the next and this has been great for me."

End of Story Content