Inside the CFL: Grey Cup success starts at the top

By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on November 17, 2022.

sports@medicinehatnews.com@MedicineHatNews

One of the most important qualities of a successful leader is insight.

When it comes to a professional football team someone has to pick the general manager, who in turn chooses his staff and head coach. Often the right choice isn’t obvious.

In the 60s when Edmonton was floundering, the executive chose an unknown volunteer to reorganize the franchise. That was Norm Kimball, who then selected the 32-year-old Ray Jauch as coach – the youngest in the league at the time.

They later chose the 36-year-old Hugh Campbell, again the youngest, to be the head coach. The three won six Grey Cups in nine years. Norm Kwong gave Wally Buono his first head job in Calgary.

The Winnipeg football club will make its 27th appearance in the Grey Cup Sunday. They’ve won 12 times, including the first for the West in 1935 when Fritzie Hanson put on a great display of running in rain and mud to defeat the Hamilton Tigers 18-12. They were called the “‘Pegs”. The following year they were given the sobriquet Blue Bombers by reporter Vince Leah, imitating boxer Joe Louis who was called the Brown Bomber.

Hanson was one of the first Americans to play the Canadian game. Tired of never beating the East, team president F.J. Hannibal hired neophyte Joe Ryan as GM. He went out and recruited Americans from nearby states. Imports were banned in the eastern divisions and so the West became competitive overnight. Hanson was one of his first signings.

“My first year, 1935, I got a straight 125 bucks a game,” he told me in 1980. “It doesn’t sound like much but that was pretty good pay in the Dirty Thirties.”

He more than earned his pay. In the win at Hamilton in 1935, he ran back punts for more than 300 yards on seven returns, including a 78-yard TD run through the entire Tigers team. No official stats were kept then so he wasn’t credited with any Grey Cup records. Winnipeg won again in 1939, beating Ottawa 8-6.

“We played with only 13 guys. Our punter couldn’t lift his leg so we gambled on third downs. I carried the ball 13 times in a row.” He also played defence.

The golden age of Bomber football was between 1957 and ’66 with the likes of Hall-of-Famers Ken Ploen, Leo Lewis, Gerry James, Charlie Shepard, Farrell Funston, Ken Neilson, Ernie Pitts, Frank Rigney Cornell Piper and Bud Tinsely. When coach Allie Sherman left after the 1956 season GM Jim Ausley made his thir ty-year old receiver Bud Grant head coach. They won four Grey Cups in six tries, all against Hamilton, including the first overtime Grey Cup win, in 1961 and the Fog Bowl the following year.

The Bombers fell on tough times after Grant signed in 1967 with the Minnesota Vikings, who went winless in four Super Bowl appearances.

When I asked if his Grey Cup experience had helped him prepare for the NFL’s big game, he replied, “My record certainly wouldn’t indicate that.”

Winnipeg had a brief recovery under Ray Jauch before beginning their next period of success, in 1983 under Cal Murphy, a Vancouver native. He was 51 when he was hired, had been a career assistant except for a few months in 1976 when he replaced the fired Eagle Keys as head coach of the Lions. Later Hugh Campbell took a chance on him, leading to a young Bomber GM Paul Robson making him his head coach. Murphy won 15 Grey Cup rings.

With no Grey Cup victory since 1991, Winnipeg hired a former player, the 40-year-old Wade Miller as president. He gave Kyle Walters his first GM job. He, in turn, extended Michael O’Shea his first chance to be a head coach.

O’Shea hired the veteran Richie Hall as his defensive co-ordinator and former Bomber boss Paul LaPolice and later player Buck Pierce as his offensive co-ordinators. Along the way, the front office convinced free agents tackle Stanley Bryant, defensive end Willie Jefferson and linebacker Adam Bighill to move to Winnipeg. They found rookie-of-the year Dalton Schoen. They have put together the finest Canadian corps in the league.

Whether it be Hugh Campbell, Cal Murphy, or Mike O’Shea someone saw something in them that others missed. Insight.

Graham Kelly has covered the CFL for the Medicine Hat News for 50 years. Feedback for this column can be emailed to sports@medicinehatnews.com