Friday, November 21, 2008

Bleeding Tricolour: Sheahan wins coach of the year

Andrew Bucholtz, who's down at the Vanier Cup for The CIS Blog (cisblog.ca), is covering off the story that Queen's Pat Sheahan has won been named Canadian university football coach of the year.

Apparently, this site is being run by drunk monkeys -- honestly, it did feel like Simon Fraser coach Dave Johnson had a pretty strong case. Regardless, Sheahan's team had a great season, and considering his 20-plus years in university coaching, it's long overdue.

Those are wantkvetch that his team did not win its conference -- it's a pain that never ends -- should recall that the nominations are made before the OUA semi-finals. That might be an issue on a conference level, but good luck getting anyone to take decisive action.

Greg Marshall at Western probably would win if the selection was made long after the end of season, which is the custom in the CFL. (The reason the CFL gives out the coach of the year award, is because long ago, it gave all the football writers across the country a reason to get together for an all-time piss-up -- a rite that's fallen by the wayside when media consolidation means one paper covers the Grey Cup for an entire chain, boo hoo, Terry Jones.)

Point being, this was fully deserved for Sheahan, based on the way the way the process works. Going 8-0 took very good coaching.

St. Francis Xavier's Terry Chisholm received the Gino Fracas award as assistant coach of the year. Chisholm was Paul Carty's position coach at St. FX when the Kingston native became a star running back in the Atlantic conference in the 1990s.

Related:
Sheahan named Coach of the Year (Andrew Bucholtz, The CIS Blog)

4 comments:

Dennis Prouse said...

There's that Eastern media bias showing again. :-)

Here's a radical idea -- how about tying the award not just to wins and losses and/or turnaround seasons, but also to graduation rates and grade point averages? We are, after all, talking about student athletes, so there should be a strong emphasis on coaches who make it a priority to improve graduation rates. To me, the coach of the year is the guy who went out and won the RIGHT way, i.e. winning games while at the same time ensuring that more of his players are actually completing their degrees.

sager said...

That's a hell of an idea, Dennis.

Anonymous said...

Take it up with Carleton's Old Crow Society. The award is decided upon by a committee made up of members of the Old Crows. They donated the trophy and decide upon the criteria.

Anonymous said...

With the criteria being what it is, that is to say mostly being based on turn around seasons, then Greg Marshall got screwed out of this award.

Marshall last year had a regular season record of 4-4 last year and raised it to 7-1 this year. Sheahan went from 6-2 to 8-0 this year, you do the math.

And don't get me started on the playoffs, Sheahan has been a post-season joke since that big win in the Hammer 3 years ago.