HERVEY SAYS HE HAS MUCH TO LEARN FROM LIONS BRASS
Buono, LeLacheur both support league’s emphasis on promotion and accessibility
Wally Buono gets it.
Rick LeLacheur gets it.
And now Ed Hervey — like it or not — will learn to get it.
“I have an experienced coach in Wally who I can bounce ideas off,” said Hervey, the B.C. Lions new general manager, here at the CFL winter meetings.
“The best thing about coming to the Lions is that I can now bounce decisions off Wally. I have the opportunity to learn things I didn’t quite learn in Edmonton.
“There have already been a couple of situations where I was going in with decisions I was going to make and Wally gave me a quick, ‘Have you thought about this?’
“Normally I’d go in and steamroll and make things happen. His experience gave me a different approach on how to handle a situation that required a softer touch.”
Hervey won’t discuss his firing by the Eskimos.
“I won’t get into the details, but it absolutely didn’t have anything to do with football,” he said of being forced to leave the place where he hoped to remain all his life.
“Edmonton is a very special place for me and had been for a long time. I’ve always cared about that community and always cared about those people.
“Having some time off and having some reflection has been a good thing. And again I have to give some credit to Wally because he’s helping. More and more, I realize that we’re very similar in a lot of ways. He just handles things a lot differently in ways that I never thought that it was possible to have success in the business.
“I think I’ve been provided with a real opportunity to grow in this sport and grow in this league, I couldn’t ask for a better mentor to work with.”
And it’s the same with LeLacheur, who is the Lions’ CEO and president, down the hall.
“I’ll give Rick this credit. Rick was the only person to look me in the eye and tell me that I was wrong about the live mic episode two years ago.”
Hervey allowed Eskimos’ head coach Jason Maas to avoid using the live mic during a game after every other coach in the league had done it. He basically told rights holder TSN to take a hike and created a major negative story that took on its own life for the final two weeks of the season.
“Rick was the only one to explain to me the dynamics. He gave me the right advice. Rick basically said he’d be putting his foot down, that it was a bad move on my part.”
Hervey was getting the same advice from the media. He didn’t listen.
Hervey was fired by the Eskimos the year after winning the Grey Cup. It was all about control of the rest of the operation that he allegedly tried to seize from (Esks’ president and CEO) Len Rhodes combined with his incredible lack of ability to understand the needs of promotion, media access and having a user-friendly organization.
LeLacheur, who served as president of the Eskimos from 2002-11, continued having a relationship with Hervey after walking away from the game due to health issues.
“We’d meet for lunch once or twice a year after I retired and we’d talk about things. I told him he was wrong about some of the things he would do and that we needed all the promotion we could get. What happened between him and Len Rhodes, that’s between them,” said LeLacheur of his successor who fired Hervey with the backing and/or urging of the board.
There’s no doubt that some of the stuff Hervey managed to get away with in allegedly attempting to run almost every aspect of the organization from top to bottom he would never managed to get away with if LeLacheur were still president and CEO.
With LeLacheur and Buono surrounding him, he has two guys who get it more than most people in the league.
Buono has had an open dressing room policy with the media for his entire career. And now the CFL has a strong commissioner in Randy Ambrosie who values promotion and access and being user-friendly for fans.
Getting fired as G.M. in Edmonton and having a year out of the game to think about it has taught Hervey a few lessons.
Hervey said having had the week here for the CFL meetings definitely completed the transition and that he’d be driving out of the Rocky Mountains as a B.C. Lion.
“I don’t hold any ill will,” he said.
“Regardless of what happened, I know that I left Edmonton in better shape as far as football was concerned and I feel good about that because I care about the organization so much.
“I mean, all last year I was rooting for them. I wanted to see Jason Maas go to the Grey Cup and win the Grey Cup. I was cheering for the players I helped bring into that organization.”
Now maybe not so much.