MONTREAL -- You'd think it was the Comedy Festival here this week instead of the Jazz Festival the way Richie Hall performed a stand-up routine yesterday.
Actually he was sitting down at his first head coach's pre-game press conference of the year on the road.
When he got going, the topic switched from tonight's rematch of last year's Eastern Conference final. Clearly Hall was enjoying himself and the media members who formed his audience started throwing creative questions at the man considered too nice to ever get a chance to become a head coach until the Edmonton Eskimos gave him this job.
It all started when someone asked him about the adjustment from assistant coach to head coach.
"It's been a big adjustment," he began. "It rained last week."
COMFY CONFINES
As a defensive co-ordinator of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Hall explained he's used to watching games in the dry, toasty spotters booth in the press box.
"I'm looking around wondering, 'Where is my rain jacket?' "
Hall was asked if, in celebration of his first win in the CFL, his players gave him one of those Gatorade baths on the sidelines.
"No, they didn't," he said. "I was already wet."
Hall said so far he's not completely convinced being a head coach on the field is a more ideal location than doing it from up in the booth. But for this one, he said, he'll be happy to be down on the sidelines. You need to be a bit of a mountain climber to get to the press box in Percival Molson Stadium.
"There are some steep stairs," he said. "As co-ordinator I had to carry the headset box and those were not little boxes."
Jim Daley, who was the head coach who made Hall the defensive co-ordinator in Saskatchewan, says it's been fun watching him.
"You have to remember it's probably been 15 years since Richie has been on the sidelines. He has problems finding the right bench, the headphones, where to stand and when to talk to the team. 'Where do I go and when do I do this?' "
Hall was being serious about there being benefits of being a head coach from upstairs, although he says he doubts if he'd ever break tradition and actually try it.
"You are up there in your own little world. You can pick your distractions. Down on the sidelines, you've got coaches and players talking to you. And I've got the officials always telling me to stay off the white lines."
Hall was asked if his first crisis was, as it appeared in his first preseason game, when he got to the bench and had no clue where the headset was located. Daley had to show him.
True, he said. But that wasn't his first crisis.
"It was when the team was getting ready to run out on the football field. All of a sudden I thought, 'When do I address the team?' I'm normally already gone before that. I'm on my way upstairs before the five-minute bell. 'When do I talk to them?' "
Overall, Hall says so far, so good.
"It's great. It's a lot of fun. It's like I told the players at training camp. The one thing I want to make sure we do this year is have fun. I want to make sure they all get better and make sure that by the time the season is over that they've all had fun."
There's also one thing Richie Hall confessed in a quiet moment back when he was hired. He said he's seen a lot of assistant coaches change when they became head coaches and wanted to make sure that didn't happen to him.
"He hasn't changed one bit," said Maurice Lloyd, the middle linebacker who decided to follow Hall to the Eskimos as a free agent.
"He hasn't come out and started yelling or being different in any way. He speaks when he needs to speak. He treats us like men and yet always wants us to have fun."
HCD IMMUNE?
Richie Hall hasn't lost a game yet. So it's probably too early to make the pronouncement.
But clearly to this point he hasn't been infected with HCD.
HCD? Everybody in football is familiar with it. It's called Head Coaches Disease.
Daley says Hall will never catch HCD.
"He's not going to change in this role. He's a level person. He handles everything with the same poise."
