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October 11, 2018

Always Part Of It

Wally Buono Calgary Stampeders 1994. John Bradley

Back then, the curly hair was jet black, not snow white.

He wore those clunky glasses that everyone somehow thought were fashionable in the early ’90s.

“Good lookin’ guy, right?” parries the today Wally Buono.

The date was July 19th, 1990.

The quarterback of record for the Red &White?

“Terrence Jones,” answers Buono. “Danny Barrett was hurt (a hamstring pull), as I remember. Very athletic guy, Jones. He ran around and made some plays. We won a close game but I don’t remember the score.”

Pencilled in at middle linebacker?

“(Joe) Clausi. Actually, he was a defensive end from Utah.”

The scoreline, as a further refresher: 30-25 Stamps over the reigning Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders, courtesy of five Mark McLoughlin field-goals.

QB Kent Austin was at the tiller for the green flatlanders.

On – wait for it – Guaranteed Win Night.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,’’ Buono laughs, recalling the long-ago, what-on-earth-were-they-thinking? promotion.

Had the Stamps lost, they would’ve been obliged to pony up 24,818 free tickets to future home games.

So the rookie head coach saved his new employers a nice chunk of change.

“Well,” he teases, “I saved them a pile of dough in a lot of ways during my tenure there.”

Wally would go on to do a lot of winning on that same sideline over the next 12 seasons.

No one could’ve imagined at the time, but that game – following up a 38-38 OT tie in B.C. that marked Doug Flutie’s CFL debut start for the Lions – would in a way turn out to be historic: The first of Wally Buono’s record 93 regular-season coaching Ws at McMahon Stadium.

The significance of the man, what he accomplished and what he established here comes into sharp clarity Saturday, for a game the retiring Buono himself is convinced will be his final coaching assignment at a stadium in which he long held sway.

“Oh, I think so,” says Buono, from the Leos’ practice facility in Surrey, B.C. “If I’m honest, I don’t see us as the third-place team. I see us as the crossover. Just too many variables. I just want to make the playoffs.

“And if our football team plays well over the last four games, we can do that.”

So tomorrow, from the Calabrese Kid, what amounts to a professional arrivederci, Calgary.

Approached by Stampeder President and GM John Hufnagel – one of his two assistant coaches back on debut-night 1990 – on Wednesday about a short in-game acknowledgement, Buono gave his consent.

“I had some of my great years both as a coach and as a person in Calgary,” he says. “We raised our family there. We were there a long, long time, still have good friends there.”

In aggregate, the Buono’s Calgary years yielded 10 division finals, six Grey Cup appearances and three championships.

“Games I remember?” he muses. “The most important ones. The ’92 Western Final. The ’93 Western Final. The ’94 Western Final. The ’95 Western Semifinal and Final. The Grey Cups.

“We always felt the toughest game was going to the Western Final. Whether we went 18-0, 15-3 or 14-4.

The joy of the victories was all predicated on what you were gonna do in the Western Final and in the Grey Cup.

“If you didn’t win it all, you’d failed,” he says. “I don’t know if that means high standards or high expectations. Two different words.”

Saturday for the 7-7 Lions, the implications for playoff participation are huge. In contrast, the Stampeders can clinch first in the division, snare home field and a bye into the West finale.

An annual expectation hereabouts that Buono helped cultivate.

Hard to believe that he’s been gone 16 years now, his West-Coast tenure actually longer than his time in charge here. Yet Calgarians – Stampeder partisans – still think of him as their own.

As, in a way, one of them.

As Wally.

As of 2004, Jones, that QB of record on July 19, 1990, was an English teacher at Marion Abramson High School in New Orleans. Clausi’s whereabouts are unknown.

But Buono, curly hair white as snow and now a three-down legend, is back at McMahon Stadium looking to win another football game, his 141st at the helm of two teams.

One last time.

“Normie Kwong,” he says, “gave me a great opportunity. The good lord blessed me over and over and over again with tremendous support, great coaches, great players and Stan Schwartz.

“I understand the success we had in Calgary was down to a lot of people. To our football ops. Roy Shivers. John Hufnagel. And later, when he got involved from an administrative point of view, Stan.

“You cannot be ingrained that deeply in something and not somehow always be part of it.

“We created a culture back then and John re-ignited it. I’m not sure he hasn’t refined it, improved it.

“So I’ll always be one of them.”