O’Leary: Age is wisdom for CFL’s veteran coaches
You may not have noticed it through the CFL off-season, but there’s a movement afoot.
It started in Hamilton last year, when June Jones assumed head coaching duties. Montreal got on board in December, when the Alouettes hired Mike Sherman as head coach. The Ticats went further in on Feb. 23, when they hired Jerry Glanville as their defensive coordinator.
That makes three significant coaching hires going to, we’ll say gently, experienced coaches.
The average age of a head coach in the CFL is 54.4 years. Those three are comfortably above that.
We’re all getting older, but CFL players — most of them in their 20s — stay the same age.
Is it harder for an aging coach to relate to that age group?
“I don’t think so at all,” said Sherman, who turned 63 on December 19, the day before the Alouettes hired him.
“I think players appreciate your life experience. Either you relate to players or you don’t relate to players.”
“That doesn’t change,” added Wally Buono, 68, who will work his last season on the Lions’ sideline this year.
“Honestly, at times I think it’s easier to relate to the players as you get older. I don’t want to say you mellow out a little bit but you’ve gotten more experience. What was important to you 25 years ago isn’t as important today.
“You have to understand that with most people you have to learn to communicate with them, you have to respect them and you find that today you have more opportunities. Twenty-five years ago we didn’t get to interview the players (at the draft combine). We didn’t get to see some guys get as close as we do today.
“Experience has value, experience teaches you things. At the end of it, when the players come here, what you enjoy about sports, football, I love working with young people.
“He carries himself pretty young. He has a lot of good stories, I feel like he’s very relatable.”
– Hamilton LB Simoni Lawrence on d-coordinator Jerry Glanville
Glanville is at the top of the age scale, coming into his first season in the CFL at 76. He coached in various capacities in the NFL from 1974 to 1993 and spent 12 years working in the NCAA. He was also out of football from 1994 to 2005, when he raced cars (which isn’t relevant to this, but cool enough to warrant mention here).
Ticats linebacker Simoni Lawrence can’t wait to work with him.
“He carries himself pretty young,” Lawrence said. “He has a lot of good stories, I feel like he’s very relatable.”
“I feel as though it’s a plus because they have a lot of rich football history and me being a football guy, that’s my life,” said Larry Dean, about to start his third year with the Ticats as a linebacker.
“I want to be around the people that know the most, so I can soak in that wisdom. It’s just like life. I hang around my dad. He done been through a lot, he knows a lot. He conveys that message to me. I can live vicariously through him.
“I don’t have to do a lot of the stuff he did, just like coach Glanville or coach Jones. They can put me in positions where I don’t have to make the mistakes that their former players have made. It’s simple.”
Sherman said that his home life helps bridge the age divide. He has five children between 18 and 34.
“I know what the music is, I know what the styles are, I know what the language is,” Sherman said. “There isn’t too much I haven’t seen. I think if I didn’t have kids it would be a harder job.”
“Honestly, at times I think it’s easier to relate to the players as you get older. I don’t want to say you mellow out a little bit but you’ve gotten more experience. What was important to you 25 years ago isn’t as important today.”
– BC Lions head coach Wally Buono
Als’ running back Tyrell Sutton said that he can’t wait to start working with his new head coach.
“He’s been around so many different players, so many different walks of life, so many avenues, that he has a lot to teach us. Not only just as football players, but as men,” he said.
“He’s been around so many different types of characters that he knows how to get the best out of anyone he comes in contact with. I think that’ll be great for us, just because we’re kind of in no-man’s land at this point. We have to have a foundation and a philosophy and he’s going to bring that to us.”
In one conversation with the 76-year-old Glanville, who was a character through his years in the NFL, it’s clear that the profession has kept him young at heart. He told CFL.ca in late February that he views coaching as very similar to teaching. When he was out of football, working as a NFL broadcaster or whipping cars around a track, he was always working with college teams.
“Here’s what I tell every college that I’ve ever been to: I’ll be the best professor you’ve got on campus,” Glanville said. “I think of myself as a teacher. So my goal in Hamilton is to be the best college professor those players have ever had to sit and listen to.”