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David Braley cradled the broken Grey Cup protectively, gently, like a baby, as he made his way off the field last night.

In the heat of the British Columbia Lions' victory celebration, the ancient mug had come apart at the seams. Given all of the wear and tear, the trips it has taken, the places it has seen, the creative uses to which it has been put, it's a wonder that hasn't happened before on the field.

The Lions owner, whose cranial silhouette bears more than a passing resemblance to the Canadian Football League's championship trophy, is a polarizing force in the league. More than anyone else, he is responsible for the fact that the smiling fellow who handed him the Cup last night, commissioner Tom Wright, is soon to be out of a job.

But love him or hate him, the car parts magnate absolutely deserved this reward. It took him a while, with both the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Lions, but he eventually learned the most important lesson of professional sports: Hire the right people, then leave them alone to do their jobs.

It's remarkable how often that simple truth is ignored by rich men with toys who assume their success in other worlds must automatically translate here. But with this, his second Grey Cup in Vancouver, there's no arguing Braley has got the message and reaped the benefits.

He hired coach Wally Buono to run the football part of his football team. He hired Bobby Ackles to run the business in Vancouver.

Last year, they staged a successful, sold-out Grey Cup in Vancouver even though the home team fell heartbreakingly short of getting there.

At the Western final last week, there were 47,000 fans in the stands. And in the day before the game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders there was an honest-to-god football buzz in the air, pushing the omnipresent Canucks at least slightly to one side.

And then last night, the team that Buono built capped off a dominant season, defeating the Montreal Alouettes 25-14 to claim its first championship since 2000.

It wasn't pretty and it certainly wasn't a classic. In a year of unusually dreary CFL football, it was absolutely appropriate that one of the stars of the game was kicker Paul McCallum, who tied a Grey Cup record by knocking six three-pointers through the uprights. (And found redemption a year after his terrible miss while playing for the 'Riders and the infamous ensuing manure dump on his front lawn.)

When in future years they repeat the broadcast of the greatest Grey Cup games, this one won't be among them. For the Lions, though, and for their fans, it must be sweet and perfect and fine. Especially so knowing that the Cup, even if it's patched together with duct tape, will be returning this time to a city that cares.

"When I went to B.C. in 2003, I was told that I was going to a dead market," Buono said last night. "The market was never dead."

Well maybe not. Maybe it was just pining for the fjords.

Before Ackles's and Buono's arrival, there was precious little reason to assume a revival. Ackles talked this week about returning home after his years in the National Football League and being broken-hearted seeing 15,000 at a game at B.C. Place instead of the 50,000 he remembered attending when he left.

Those seats have been sold one by one, the credibility has been regained bit by bit, and the football team has been assembled with consummate skill, a terrific mixture of skill at quarterback, power at running back, the best receiving corps in the league, and a defensive team that is aggressive and smart.

At times last night, it looked like they might squander all of that as they did in the title game two years ago against the Toronto Argonauts.

They were facing a Montreal club that was at the end of a wild, roller-coaster season. The Als' fragile self-confidence was obvious last night, though for a few minutes in the third quarter, it looked like they found themselves after B.C. had let them off the hook. But in the end, the same quality that had set the Lions apart all season long was enough.

In past CFL years, history would suggest an obvious question: So how are they going to blow it now? How will the Lions manage to squander all of that goodwill in the marketplace? Remember that after his team won its last Grey Cup, Braley responded by mothballing most of his front office over the winter to cut costs.

That's not going to happen now, given who's in charge. In what are still uncertain waters for the game as a whole, that formerly dead market has a beating heart.