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 Montreal Alouettes head coach Jim Popp directs a play during practice in advance of the Grey Cup in Winnipeg on Wednesday. (Winnipeg Sun/Brian Donogh) |
Montreal head coach Jim Popp was reflecting on how he first got into the CFL yesterday, and to hear the story makes you wonder why he stayed.
It was some 15 years ago, and Popp, a 26-year-old from North Carolina, was out of work after his team, the Raleigh-Durham SkyHawks of the World League of American Football, had folded after one season.
Someone told him a team in Saskatchewan, Canada, might be looking for an assistant coach, and the next thing Popp knows he's getting off a plane in Regina and shaking hands with Don Matthews.
"Got off the plane, he told me I was too dressed up," Popp recalled. "Spent three days there, got grilled. Then, three weeks later, get a call: 'You want the job?' I said yes. I U-Hauled it for three days, 12 hours a day -- and I've never left the league. That's my story."
STILL UNFOLDING
Actually, Popp's story is still unfolding. In fact, it's come to a potentially huge turning point.
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You see, soon after joining the CFL as an assistant coach, Popp decided his future was in personnel, not coaching.
So he became the league's most successful general manager, putting together Grey Cup champs in Baltimore, then Montreal.
It's typical Popp: get an idea in your head, and go with it. Take the leap.
Like when, as a 19-year-old, he left home in Elkin, N.C., to play football at Michigan State.
"I dream all the time," Popp said. "I dream of doing great things. And it motivates me. And I act a lot of times on my dreams, to see if they happen."
But he admits he never dreamed of this: being the head coach in the Grey Cup game.
Certainly not when he took over a floundering Alouettes team for the last two games of 2001, replacing the fired Rod Rust. That didn't work out so well -- the Als lost both, and were done.
Six weeks ago, the call came again, this time to fill the significantly larger shoes of Matthews, the CFL's all-time coaching king who left the Als with four games left in the regular season.
This time, the Coach Who Never Wanted to Be won two games, including a season-ending victory in Toronto that clinched first place.
It was there, Oct. 28, that Jim Popp, the GM, may have become Jim Popp, the head coach.
The transformation occurred at half-time, the Alouettes down, 16-8, and in danger of going into the playoffs on a three-game skid.
"The first time I've seen him lay into a team," offensive lineman Scott Flory recalled. "He put it on the line. I remember the inflection and the tone. I can't repeat the comments. We came out and dominated the second half, we won the East and got the home game, and then it's all history.
"From that point, he took control. That was the biggest game of our season. We've really gone straight ahead, right from that point."
Popp says he doesn't remember what he said that day -- it just came out.
"Our guys have, at times, not realized how good they are," he said. "Sometimes you've got to get their attention and make sure they understand it. And sometimes it takes a mouthful."
That was Popp's sixth game as a head coach, at any level.
After a win over those same Argos in the East Final, his career record is 3-4 -- same as the Grey Cup record of Wally Buono, Popp's opposite number on the B.C. sideline this Sunday.
"If everybody's wanting to say he's got one up on us as a coach, they're obviously correct," Popp said. "He should. He's one of the great coaches in this league."
And Popp -- who knows?
"Most of the people here don't know who I am," Popp agreed. "They don't know anything about my background, they don't know what I've accomplished... and they maybe don't know what I'm capable of, as being a leader or head coach."
Perhaps Sunday we'll find out.
He might, too.