Braley was a breath of fresh air for the Lions, team executive says
It's a time of mourning, grief and remembrance, but George Chayka has never been happier that he was wrong.
It was 1997, and Chayka was five years into his time with the B.C. Lions. His first year was spent under the “kooky” buffoonery of owner Murray Pezim, who drove the team to bankruptcy and the league basement in 1992. Bill Comrie bought the last-place club from the CFL, but sold it three years later to another eccentric owner, this time Nelson Skalbania.
The Vancouver-born businessman's checkered history includes multiple bankruptcies, buying and folding the Montreal Alouettes — further enraging a fan base with the tone-deaf verbal shrug of “it's not like I raped a nun” — and winding up in jail for theft. But that was after driving the Lions into receivership yet again.
Chayka's lukewarm opinion of the newest owner, David Braley, therefore was understandable when he bought the team in 1997. He had never met the man, and all he knew of Braley was the attention-grabbing Hamilton Tiger-Cats' “Buy a ticket. Feed the Cats” season-ticket campaign.
Chayka fully expected Braley, who owned the Ticats from 1987 to 1990, to be another flash-in-thepan owner who would sit in his box waving foam orange claws and saying all the right things. He didn't envision the Hamilton-raised businessman to become the Canadian football team's icon, one that has been publicly and universally celebrated since news of his death Monday at age 79.
“I was thinking of this yesterday,” said Chayka, the Lions' vice-president. “You go through a whole array of memories, situations and what you remember about a person, and first impressions. The first time that I met him, I honestly thought after spending the day with him when the announcement was made … I thought to myself, `He might last three years, maybe four years.' And, here we are 23 years later. It was just total, total commitment and dedication to the league. His love and passion for the Lions, caring about the franchise, I never saw that right at the start.
“I'd say after about five years, and I thought, `Boy, he could be here longer than I am.' I could see the determination that he had in making the franchise successful.”
When Chayka got the call Monday from Braley's son that his dad had died after a long period of declining health, it fell with the same hammer thud as the one he had fielded 12 years ago. Chayka said it was eerily similar to when his phone rang with the news that Bob Ackles had died. His first call then was to Braley, who took the news while in his pool, aborting his swim to pick up Chayka's call.
“I knew that (Braley) wasn't feeling well, but just didn't expect it so suddenly. It was definitely a surprise,” he said. “It kind of took me back a little bit to when I got the call that Bob (Ackles) had passed away. A similar type of situation. It threw (Braley) for a loop when I gave him the news.
“Your mind, it's a little bit in shock, and then you start to think about what the future is going to be, how are we going to deal with this, and what the ramifications are. There's all kinds of thoughts that go through your mind in a situation like that, but shock is the first thing and then it's getting control of the thought process and looking at it from an analytical standpoint.”
In the immediate future, there will be no changes for the Lions. Operations will continue, just like they have since the unexpected resignation of general manager Ed Hervey. The Braley family will first have their time to mourn, and then the estate and probate will have to be calcified before any decisions about the team's future can be made.
“I don't think there's any doubt that he felt it was time to sell, but I think deep down it may have been difficult for him to come to grips with selling the club. He had an emotional attachment to the club.”
The same reason that some have been critical that the team hasn't been sold is the same reason that the Lions have been around for so long.
“He always referred to himself as the caretaker of the franchise,” Chayka said. He said, `I'm the caretaker. You guys are running the club, but I'm the caretaker of the franchise, not the owner.'
“You have to have a passion, you have to have that love and he told me this … a lot of times, you've got to have deep pockets to be an owner of a professional football team.”