Full disclosure: Former Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly is my friend. He’s been my friend for 20 years. He will still be my friend.
With that said, Kelly’s unceremonious departure from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Thursday was not surprising. After a difficult season in which he was forced to rebuild a football team that had been crumbling from within under Doug Berry, and then had to fight a vindictive media that was out to destroy him, Kelly was attacked in his own home by an ex-girlfriend and, as a result, was arrested and charged with assault under Pennsylvania’s strict zero tolerance law.
A man can’t get into a physical altercation with a woman — anyplace, anytime — and regardless of the details, the man will always lose in the court of public opinion. After the arrest, it was only a matter of hours before the Blue Bombers Board of Directors fired Kelly. They really had no other choice.
I spoke to Mike on Friday and, not surprisingly, he wasn’t talking. When legal is involved, there isn’t much one can say.
Still, the events of Thursday were quite interesting. In case you’ve forgotten, CEO Lyle Bauer resigned and head coach Kelly was fired. The circus of news conferences, complete with festering piles of bullshit you could actually measure with a thermometer, brought two things into focus:
(1) If you are the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, you don’t ever argue — even discuss — the delivery of your message with the mainstream media. In Winnipeg, the media will control the Bombers’ message, not the Bombers.
(2) Despite the existence of the Bombers board and despite Lyle Bauer’s presence as CEO for the past decade, the Bombers are run by the local mainstream media. If the mainstream Winnipeg media wants something, the Bombers will roll over and give it to them. That might account for the fact the team hasn’t won a championship in 19 years.
When you turn the operation of a sports franchise over to people who have never worked a day in the front office of a sports franchise, you’ll have problems. When you turn a football franchise over to people who have never played a game of touch, let alone tackle football, you will be a disaster.
In Winnipeg, the Bombers fear of the media has proved to be their undoing. This year, that was made quite clear.
When Kelly suggested that it was time to become professional with the dissemination of information, he was actually reprimanded by his boss.
Kelly’s plan was to handle the media the way the National Football League handles the media. Say the team plays on a Friday night. Kelly would speak to the media on Thursday and Friday morning, then after the game on Friday and then again on Saturday. On Sunday, the offensive co-ordinator (or the No. 1 offensive coach) would speak to the media and then, on Monday, it would be the defensive co-ordinator. On Tuesday and Wednesday, assistant coaches would get the floor and then it would come around to Kelly again.
When certain members of the local media got wind of that, they were all over Bauer. It was Kelly every day or nothing. Bauer, of course, relented, and Kelly was thrust into that tiny, smelly stairwell outside the media bunker every day. For the Bombers, it was another dumb decision in a season of dumb decisions.
So when people wonder, “Why didn’t Kelly just shut up?” the answer was, he tried but he wasn’t permitted.
Kelly also wanted to move the daily news conference out of that claustrophobic stairwell and into the Sun Centre (frankly, all Bomber media information should be disseminated in the Sun Centre), but he wasn’t permitted to do that either. Seems the Bombers couldn’t afford to keep the Sun Centre clean.
Unlike an NFL franchise which has a vice-president of communications who not only has equal authority with the head coach, but is regarded so highly by his employers that he/she is at an equal pay grade with the head coach, the Bombers’ communications people have always been little more than back-room peons who make small paycheques and send out press releases. Kelly received no direction, got no help and had no filter because there was no one in the organization with the responsiblity or the authority to make sure the message was not only controlled, but delivered in such a manner that the local mainstream media felt sufficiently appeased.
Meanwhile, Kelly wanted to control television’s access to his practice time. He decided early on to give the TV stations specific times to record. It’s been done in the NFL for two decades and Kelly just wanted to feel more comfortable about TV’s ability to record what he was doing at practice (Not that a TV anchor would have any what’s on tape, but what an opposing football coach might do if he saw something odd. Kelly had no fear of the media. He knew they had no clue). Simple request.
Trouble was, the team’s communications peon didn’t bother to send out the schedule until, oh, AFTER, the first practice of training camp. Global’s Joe Pascucci went nuts when he was told he couldn’t record most of the first practice and Kelly was left to accept responsibility for a communications department that either didn’t do its job or was told, at a higher level, not to do it.
There were dozens of other incidents. Kelly was not going to be allowed to control his own message and not only was the local mainstream media not going to allow him to do it, but apparently neither were certain members of the Bombers front office.
2009 was a Gong Show in Bomberland. In the end, the Bombers board got a rebuilt team (yes, yes, the Bombers still need a quarterback) without a leader off the field, without a leader on the field and without a decent place to play.
However, that’s no problem for this Bomber board and their pals in the mainstream media, the folks who have created this little problem. After all, we’ve already been handed a list of acceptable CEO and coaching candidates by the local press and one of the names of the coaching list is Paul LaPolice. Yep, that’s the same Paul LaPolice that the local media called “incompetent” when he ran the Bombers offence in 2002 and 2003 (even though he put up huge passing numbers in 2002). That’s the same guy they ran out of town on a rail.
In Winnipeg, there are two professional sports franchises that are privately owned. The baseball Goldeyes, 2009 Organization of the Year in the Northern League and the hockey Moose, 2009 American Hockey League President’s Trophy winners. Both franchises are beautifully operated and both play in gorgeous venues. It became painfully obvious this week that private ownership is the only way for the Bombers to go.
In fact, what happened on Thursday — as a result of what happened throughout in 2009 — was proof that David Asper’s arrival as a private, accountable franchise owner can’t occur soon enough. Fear has reigned on Maroons Road for far too long. It’s time to bring the Bombers into the 21st Century.
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