Argos hop aboard Trestman love train
Marc Trestman is boring, or so the story goes. The Toronto Argonauts coach does not raise his voice, or use colourful language. Linebacker Marcus Ball, a natural leader, makes the music playlists at practice. Why him?
“’Cause he’s the only one who takes the time to find edited rap,” says receiver DeVier Posey. “No one else wants to do it, I don’t want to do it. I’m not making a playlist. ’Cause Trestman ain’t having no cuss words. I mean, he encourages us to pick up lint around our locker, (so) you know there’s no cussing.”
No, Marc Trestman is not exciting. Sure, he went to three Grey Cups in three years as the coach of the Montreal Alouettes, winning two; he has guided the Argos to the Grey Cup in his first year back, despite not being hired until March. He is known as a quiet man, a sober man, a man who demands maximum effort and edited music. Who does that?
“The music, that’s nothing to me,” says linebacker Terrance Plummer, one of more than 40 newcomers to the team this season. “It’s the way he taught us how to love. He taught us not to hate the other team, or worry about them. He’s taught us to love one another.”
Wait, what? He taught you . . . to love one another?
“That’s who he is,” says offensive lineman Chris Van Zeyl. “In a lot of ways, he’s a father figure to these guys. There’s a quote: ‘What you do for yourself dies with you; what you do for others lives on.’ There were a lot of quotes that we got in the early days, but that was the one that resonated.
“And I think that’s the way we’ve become. It’s not a new idea, but I think he’s accomplished it.”
There’s a lot of BS in coaching, like everywhere else, and one example is the idea that coaches at the pro level are invested in anything other than winning. Who believes otherwise? Who thinks of Marc Trestman, provider of dry bromides delivered in a low voice, as love?
“My goal as a coach and my purpose as a coach is to teach a player to be a better teammate, father, brother, husband, whatever it might be,” says Trestman. “That’s my purpose as a coach. I use football, and the science of football, as a toolbox to teach that. That’s why I do it. And if I didn’t have the ability to teach the science of football, I don’t think anybody would listen.
“Whatever you believe in, you have to relentlessly sell that every day. And you can’t worry if 40 players roll their eyes at you, when you know that 20 players are hearing you. You just need to figure out how to send that message relentlessly, so the 21st player will understand what you’re saying, and the next day, and the next day. It has to be every day. And the legitimacy comes with, this guy can help me master my craft.”
“All I know is, I write down what I hear and learn every day from that man,” says Ball, the team’s spiritual leader, and a veteran. “Every day.”
“To get to where I want to go, I have to make sure I’m on it with game plans, and alignments, and structure, and organization,” says Trestman. “It’s all got to work, or the other side of it doesn’t. So to do what fulfils me personally, I’ve got to make sure that when I show up every day, I’m prepared.
“My wife says that once you hit 60 you can say anything you want, and that’s how I feel. It may be boring, but that’s how I feel.”
It’s so old-fashioned sounding, in pro sports. But he implemented rules. Be on time, to the second, because being late inconveniences others. Pick up the tape or towels or jerseys around your locker, because otherwise someone will have to do it for you. No more boom boxes in the locker room, because not everyone might like your music. Tip the housekeepers at hotels, because they could use the help. They weren’t new ideas. But to a lot of players, it felt new.
“It’s a lot of consideration, it’s thinking about others. It’s more than yourself,” says Van Zeyl. “Please, thank you, all that stuff. It’s just common courtesy. (Even in the CFL) there’s entitlement, right? And to look past that entitlement. Just because you think you’re entitled to something, means that someone else is suffering at the other end.”
It really does sound like parenting, right? And that requires credibility, and Trestman, the mousy-looking 61-year-old with thinning hair who stands with a stoop, has it. Ball is the team’s designated speech-giver, a true badass, but when he hurt his ankle earlier this season he texted Trestman and asked him deliver a few of Ball’s words before a mustwin against Winnipeg.
It could have been funny. Players laughed when Trestman introduced the idea. But Ball wrote a hell of a speech, about how much he missed the chance to be playing, how lucky they were. Trestman, the low-key football nerd, Ball’s polar opposite, delivered it.
“Trestman’s reading it, but you hear Marcus Ball through it, you know what I’m saying?” says Plummer. “It was a great moment in our year.”
“I mean, it’s not read with the same volume or passion that usually you would hear from Marcus, but you could feel the emotion in the speech,” says Van Zeyl. “This was something I’ll remember for years to come.”
“I read it in my voice, but I read it with the passion that he gave it,” says Trestman. “I couldn’t do it as well as him, but I did it the best I could.”
That’s Marc Trestman’s message, if you wanted to boil it down. Do your best, be your best. Classic, boring, dad stuff. And here they are, playing for a title, talking about love. Sometimes, the boring stuff works.