B.C Lions Wally Buono is expected to announce his retirement as coach of the Grey Cup champions. REUTERS/Ben NelmsBen Nelms/Reuters
All Grey Cup week, he just wasn't his usual self. Instead of being football-fuelled and quick to counter reporters' questions with those of his own, he was relaxed and sanguine. Wally melancholy.
Goodness gracious, he even let his grandkids run on the field during the B.C. Lions final workout of 2011. While the kids were scrambling about in Lions' jerseys, the most successful coach in CFL history was seen chatting with friends and on-lookers, carefree and content.
That's when it sunk in: this was going to be it for Wally Buono. No more sweating the details, the roster moves and third-down gambles. Time for someone else to take over as coach; time for Buono to serve as general manager and vice-president of football operations.
So it was Monday, little more than a week after the Lions' Grey Cup win over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, that Buono put down his whistle and announced his 22-year head coaching run had come to an end. His 254 career wins, including five Grey Cup championships, a record he shares with four others, will stand for years given how tenuous the coaching profession remains.
"I'm really not sad about it," Buono said at a news conference that only touched on his successor, rumoured to be defensive co-ordinator Mike Benevides. "I do know, in my own heart, that another voice, another presentation, another leader is – I believe – what we need to again hoist the Cup. I just believe that that's going to help this organization to stay vibrant, stay strong."
Buono's legacy will always stand on his accomplishments. But the personal side, the guy who would invite you to his office on a Saturday morning to voice his displeasure over something you wrote, was far more intriguing. He could have yelled or screamed in a public forum. Instead, it was coffee, doughnuts and, "Did you ever stop to consider …?"
Then he'd tell a story as if passing on a parable.
"We call them Wallyisms," one former Calgary Stampeder said. The Stampeders got a lot of Wallyisms. Some were funny.
After the 1993 Western Final, which the Edmonton Eskimos won on an ice patch of a McMahon Stadium turf, an apoplectic Buono talked of what went wrong. The Stampeders had warned cornerback Karl Anthony to play off his receiver and not chase the pump fake delivered so expertly by Eskimos' quarterback Damon Allen. Buono may as well have been talking to a snow plow.
"That goofy Karl Anthony," Buono said after his defender was beaten for a long touchdown pass. "We told him, 'Don't jump the pump.' So what does he do? He jumps the pump!" Little wonder Don't Jump the Pump became a Stampeder tag line for many a season.
Although he won three Grey Cups in Calgary, Buono's track record did him little good when U.S. cardboard box maker Michael Feterik assumed ownership of the team and appointed the effervescent Fred Fateri as Buono's boss. The plan was to have the owner's son, Kevin Feterik, start at quarterback. When Buono declined to do that, and the Stampeders began to lose more games than they won, Fateri couldn't help but say, "Wally's not as good a coach as he used to be."
Buono endured the Feterik follies as best he could, publicly defending the owner's right to do whatever he wanted. The first chance he got, though, Buono resigned and joined the Lions, with Feterik and Fateri demanding compensation from B.C. for a coach who wasn't as good as he once was. They got apple sauce; the Lions got a pair of Grey Cup championships, the most recent coming off a season that began with a 1-6 record that would have got most coaches fired.
Buono acknowledged that at the Grey Cup coaches' news conference then passed along another Wallyism – sometimes a little patience goes a long way.
It was soon after the Cup was won – at B.C. Place no less – that you knew it had to be over. The most successful coach in CFL history met with his wife and family on the field and everyone was crying except Buono. He was smiling. All his beliefs and experience had produced a masterful, farewell season. He looked like a guy at peace.
"It's time to move on," he said Monday. "And we move on with great expectation."
With reports from David Ebner in Surrey, B.C.
Wally Buono fact file
Age: 61
Born: Potenza, Italy (raised in Montreal)
CFL player: 1973 to 1982, linebacker for Montreal Alouettes
CFL coach: 22 seasons as head coach in Calgary and B.C.
Regular season: 254-139-3
Postseason: 21 playoff berths, 18 appearances in division final, nine trips to Grey Cup, five championship titles (three with Calgary, two with B.C.)