Rick Moffat
CFL.ca
In the glory years of the Steel Curtain when his father worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a nine-year old boy once roamed the training camp fields with a little notepad collecting signatures. Mean Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Jack Hamm. Swann and Stallworth were rookies that year, but they signed too.
This time of year, the Autograph Hunter returns to Steeler camps. His hair, still boyishly long but now striking silver. He still hopes for signatures. On contracts. For future Alouettes.
Jim Popp still has that Steeler notebook.
“My Dad and his good friend Bud Carson would say, get me all this Steelers stuff and the players would ask ‘Hey kid, what’s your favourite team?’ ‘Miami!’ I’d tell them. I wouldn’t back down. Even though I had all the Steelers gear, I loved the Dolphins.”
Since Roger Taillibert’s Olympic Debacle turned the Big ‘Owe’ into an omnipresent financial black hole, architects have rated lower than politicians and sports reporters on the credibility scale in Montreal. But as a CFL G.M, Popp has painstakingly tried to build a permanent monument to success called the Alouettes.
He deserves an honorary PhD in Architecture.
Meet the Jim Popp you don’t know. With a new contract extension through 2014, he’s as anxious as ever to confront his critics.
Grand-standing GM on the sidelines during games?
“They used to take shots at me for that. Well you know what. I’ve never had a box and never even been asked if I want a box,” the winningest GM of the decade fires back at anyone who cares to listen.
“I’ve had one coach make an issue of me being on the sidelines because I talked to the players. I think it was after a spitting incident. I told them ‘stop that s*** and be professional.’ But I’m there on the sideline because coaches and staff come to me and if I can help, I do.”
A heartless Axe-Man? “We never cut Mike Pringle. Mike asked to be released. Was bringing Lawrence Phillips my most controversial move? That’s the media view. But it was a 3-year process. Mr. Wetenhall (owner Robert) hoped we’d have Pringle AND Phillips together in the same backfield. Don (once-the-winningest-coach-in-the-CFL Mathews) fell in love with Lawrence’s talent and Don had butted heads with Mike before. But the move was never to get rid of Mike.”
Great GM but disaster as a coach? “Three times I’ve been head coach—only because the owner asked me. I never self-promoted. I never suggested getting rid of someone to get the opportunity. The first time in 2001, the truth is I tried to get Don Mathews to come in for the playoff run. We couldn’t get him until 2002.”
Bold and audacious, Popp points to what some say was his most self-indulgent year with the team as his finest.
“I feel my best work for this organization was 2007. I told Mr. Wetenhall before that season began that some foundational stuff needed to change. We couldn’t get it all done. Not everyone wanted to listen. I still believe if we’d have won that yard (a failed 3rd and 1 gamble in the Eastern semifinal loss to Winnipeg 24-22) we’d have been in the Grey Cup that year.”
“I told everyone in the room after that game that we’d all be in the Grey Cup the next year. Some people may have campaigned against me, but I cleaned up a lot of things that had to change, that 2007 team was the foundation that Marc Trestman has built on.”
He’s the Existential G.M. – I Win therefore I Am? The Als don’t win BECAUSE of Popp. Some including the owner suggest they exist because of Popp. That in the financial wreckage of the Jim Speros bankruptcy, Popp paid the bills.
POPP THE STEALER: Popp’s best deal? Getting Future Hall of Famer and all-time rushing king Mike Pringle as a throw-in to the deal that for years was never even recorded in the official CFL Guide book.
“I had no idea what we were getting…we swapped a DB for a receiver and Sacramento said ‘you have to take Pringle too.’ He was third on the depth-chart when we started the season and Don didn’t go to him until Game 3 or 4. He still could have rushed for 2000 yards, but Week 18 we were playing on a slippery field and Don pulled him in the 4th quarter to save him for the playoffs.”
POPP THE HEALER: Anthony Calvillo spurns offers from Saskatchewan to be the starter, so he can recover from his Tiger-Cat inflicted shellshock and mentor with Tracy Ham.
POPP THE BLENDER: Let me suggest as experiments in team-building go, Popp’s finest year may have been the ‘96 Als. The All-American Stallions, Grey Cup champs, find exile in Montreal and have to stir in the radically Canadian muscle quota. Welcome to the ratio, eh?
No the architect is not perfect.
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY: NFL All-pro Wayne Crebett. Popp cut him after giving the under-sized Hoftra receiver a tryout camp workout. The free agent did well but the Baltimore coaches were desperately seeking a lanky speedburner. Aren’t they all. “I still have the scouting report. Maybe if he came to the CFL he’d have been a Cahoon or Dressler-type for years and never gone NFL.”
