It’s been such a symbiotic relationship between a coach and football team. It’s also seemingly a custom-made match of a man’s lunchpail/team-first approach to a fan base which adheres to those same qualities.
So, let’s build on that and begin with what we already know about Mike O’Shea and his accomplishments — there’s a bust of him in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame for his exploits as a player with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts in a star-studded career that spanned 16 seasons. And, fact is, the hall could enshrine him again as a builder now that he has become the winningest coach in Winnipeg Blue Bombers franchise history, with his 103 victories now ranking him ninth all-time in CFL history.
There’s a field named after him in his hometown of North Bay, Ontario and a banner featuring his name flying high outside Alumni Stadium at the University of Guelph. It’s also virtually guaran-damn-teed he’ll one day have his likeness in statue form outside Princess Auto Stadium, joining two men he recently passed in franchise wins in Bud Grant and Cal Murphy.
Here’s another certainty: O’Shea will absolutely cringe if he comes across those opening three paragraphs of this piece, wishing the spotlight could be opened wider to also capture his coaching staff, his players, his family – heck, just about anyone who has helped him push him along this journey.
To reinforce that, it’s worth repeating what he said Saturday night, not long after the Blue Bombers had put the finishing touches on a 26-21 Banjo Bowl victory over the Saskatchewan Roughriders that pushed his coaching record here to 103-68 – one more win than Grant.
“We talked a lot about it already… there’s just so many people that have been here for a huge chunk of it that make it easy every single day, not only to be successful but to come to work just every single day. My wife’s standing right there… my family’s been there for all of it, the 60-something losses that they feel, too.
“It is what it is. Over time these numbers just add up. But I don’t think we’re a numbers-based team, we’re a process-based team. We’ve got a room, a whole basement full of people that are all in on the process and the outcomes just happen.”
Now, while O’Shea will stiff-arm this narrative of his greatness to the ground, the historical significance of it isn’t lost on him as a man who has photos of past Blue Bombers coaches adorning the walls in his office. He is a history buff, a proud Canadian, and someone who will wave both the Maple Leaf and the CFL flags passionately.
And he is absolutely adored in the Blue Bombers locker room as a leader, a role model, a confidante and a father figure to so many.
“Oh man… I could go on about this for a long, long time,” said receiver Kenny Lawler in a recent chat with bluebombers.com. “He’s been one of the most influential, down-to-earth, loving, respectable people I’ve ever been around.
“He wants the individual to reach his potential on and off the field. Me coming in here, I was a knucklehead. There were probably many times Coach O’Shea could have kicked me off the team. But he saw a young, fiery competitor and he wanted me to become my best and he gave me multiple chances to reach my full potential.
“I really believe without Coach O’Shea in my professional career I wouldn’t have made it as far as I’ve had. He wants the best out of you as an individual on the field, off the field, in the community, in your household. The things we learn on the field can directly transfer to our lives and he understands all of that.”
That’s a sentiment occasionally lost when the Blue Bombers speak of their highly touted culture and the cut-and-dried ‘FIFO’ — Fit In Or F— Off’ mantra. That’s a key commandment, sure, but the environment on Chancellor Matheson road is much more than that with the family vibe he’s tried to foster.
“He’s helped me grow as a leader and a person,” said receiver Drew Wolitarsky. “He’s been there for my family a lot. I’ll always be grateful for that. He’s built a great program around himself. His wife does a lot, too, for the families and wives and we all appreciate that. He truly is a players’ coach, and all those qualities make him who he is as a coach and a person. We all respect him so much.
“And it’s infinite learning because it’s infinite possibilities with this game. It’s chess out here and he understands the chess of the game. It’s not, ‘Hey, I’m the knight or I’m the pawn and I go one thing forward.’ He understands the game, so that with each move we make it helps the betterment of the team in trying to win. It’s about football I.Q. and he’s big on that, bro. He pushes you to be a smart player and it makes you a better player because things slow down.”
That infinite learning applies to the head knock, too. And that’s part of what makes this road to 103 and counting so fascinating…
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
O’Shea’s start in football was hardly the stuff of legends. He began playing hockey first in North Bay and didn’t turn to football until Grade 9 with the Widdifield High School Wildcats — after being cut by the junior varsity team.
“I started out as the quarterback, but quarterback was not an important position in Grade 9 football because you mostly just handed off the ball,” said O’Shea in an interview with bluebombers.com back in 2017 when he was added to the CFHOF. “But that’s where I got slotted. By Grade 10 I was a safety. Again, not as much an important position because there wasn’t much throwing and so much happened near the line of scrimmage.
“I think I was the slowest guy on the team. We had a 260-pound noseguard who beat me in sprints.”
He grew six inches before his Grade 11 season and was moved closer to the line of scrimmage as a defensive lineman and linebacker and that’s when he truly started to blossom in the game. The college opportunities grew, and O’Shea chose the University of Guelph after visiting the campus and because they offered the courses he wanted to take in order to pursue his career of choice: he wanted to become a brew master.
A member of the Gryphons Hall of Fame, O’Shea was an Ontario Conference All-Star in his last two seasons and a CIAU All-Canadian the OUAA Defensive Player of the Year in 1992.
His success not surprisingly, was built on hard work.
Much of that came from his parents, including his father, who passed away in 2012. Originally from Barkingside in London, he flew in World War II and then moved to Canada, first settling in Sudbury and then North Bay. His dad worked at Inco, pumped gas and sold vacuums before he and his wife began running a Dairy Queen franchise. O’Shea was there often, proudly boasting, “I’ll tell you what… I can still make you whatever you want and make it perfectly. My dad would be proud.”
One of the Gryphons assistant coaches was Dick Brown — O’Shea refers to him as the ‘legendary Dick Brown’ – and he was the last man to play in the CFL without a facemask. Taking Brown’s advice to improve his foot speed, O’Shea teamed up with a sprint coach for his third and fourth seasons, working with him in the summer rather than head home to North Bay. O’Shea was then selected in the first round, fourth overall, by the Edmonton Eskimos in the 1993 CFL Draft… but then traded to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as part of a deal that netted quarterback Damon Allen for Edmonton.
The CFL’s Most Outstanding Rookie in 1993, O’Shea spent his first three seasons with the Ticats and after attending training camp with the Detroit Lions in 1996, signed with the Argos that same season. He was a cornerstone of one of the most-dominant CFL teams of all-time as the Argos went 30-6 in ’96-97 and won back-to-back Grey Cup championships. He was also named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Canadian in 1999 and won another championship with the Argos as a player in 2004.
He played his last season in 2008 and still ranks second all-time in league history to Willie Pless with 1,151 career tackles — first among Canadians.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ve never seen a more complete athlete in his preparation, his skillset, his intensity for the game,” said Chad Folk, O’Shea’s long-time teammate with the Argonauts, said in an interview in ’17. “I’ve never had a better teammate as it fits my definition of a teammate. It was his selflessness, his taking hours upon hours to sit down with guys to teach them on film.
“With Mike, what you see is what you get, and I’ve never seen him waver from that. He’s a passionate guy about his team, his teammates and doing everything he possibly can to be better.”
BITTEN BY THE COACHING BUG
It was the winter of 2010 and O’Shea was settling into a career in the medical sales field when his phone rang. On the other end, Jim Barker — recently hired by the Argonauts to help rebuild the Argos after a disastrous 3-15 record in 2009.
Barker dumped the previous coaching staff and then began looking to fill out his own crew. It was February, very late in an offseason to be taking on that task, and Barker called both O’Shea and current Tiger-Cats Director of Football Operations Orlondo Steinauer.
“He was making good money,” Barker told me in ’21. “I remember saying, ‘Listen, I want you to come coach and start with special teams. You’ll be making less money, but it’s something that could turn out good for you down the road.’
“I always thought he would be a great coach. When he was on the field, he was a coach. He wasn’t afraid to tell players where to be. Back in those days we had great defences, but we didn’t have the smartest guys. Osh would always get them in the right place.
“He was just that guy who watched more film, he got players together to watch film… he just had that in him. And I believe that as a player, he really loved it. He was such a perfectionist, and it was like in the back of his mind he thought, ‘I don’t want to screw these guys up.’”
The 2012 Argos won a Grey Cup on home soil with O’Shea serving on Scott Milanovich’s staff and his name quickly began circulating when head-coaching jobs began to surface.
OFF TO WINNIPEG
It’s a tale Blue Bombers President & CEO Wade Miller will trot out occasionally. It a cool story, and one that represents his appreciation for the personality and style of the only head coach the franchise has had during his decade-long helm.
Miller and GM Kyle Walters — who had both gone to battle against O’Shea during their own playing days — were to meet with their top candidate in late November 2013 as part of their search for the club’s new head coach following a 2013 season in which the Blue Bombers had gone 3-15 under Tim Burke, who had replaced Paul LaPolice.
“And as he opened the door for our interview he said, ‘Should we put on the face shields for this?’” recalled Miller with a grin in an interview with yours truly in 2021. “He was a professional as a player and he’s always had that work ethic when it came to preparation and an attention to detail.”
O’Shea had just four years of coaching experience then as the special-teams coordinator with the Argonauts from 2010-13, yet in an instant Miller and Walters knew they had found their man. And so, O’Shea — along with his wife Richere and their three kids, Michael, Ailish and Aisling — headed west.
“You don’t need to have a big resumé sometimes to take that step up to be a head coach,” said Miller. “It’s about how you are as an individual, the leader that you are, how you’re going to build and motivate your team and build something that’s long-lasting. Mike’s proven that.
“The players say they’ll go through a wall for him, but it’s really based on the opposite – he’ll go through the wall for them. He’ll run through a wall for each one of these guys, and that’s where the difference is for him as a coach. He cares about each player like they’re his family. He allows each player to be themselves as well, and that’s all a player asks for from a coach. There were lots of other good coaches out there when we hired him. It was just Mike had these other characteristics.”
The Blue Bombers opened 2014, their first season under O’Shea, by winning five of their first six games before slumping to finish 7-11. A year later the club was 5-13 after losing starting QB Drew Willy to injury in Week 7 and in 2016 the club began 1-4 and the critics began braying louder. Still, a foundation had been built and after switching from Willy to Matt Nichols at quarterback, a team that had added Andrew Harris and Justin Medlock in free agency that winter began to blossom. That team then won seven straight and finished 11-7 before losing to the B.C. Lions in the West Division Semi-Final.
We’re certain you know the rest.
Since that 1-4 start in ’16 the Blue Bombers are 89-40, have appeared in four consecutive Grey Cups, winning back-to-back championships in 2019 and 2021. They are three victories shy of posting a sixth consecutive double-digit win seasons — the longest run in franchise history. He has also been twice named the winner of the Annis Stukus Trophy as the CFL’s Coach of the Year, in 2021 and 2022.
“I would say what I appreciate about him the most is this is a game where some head-coaching styles tend to be more abrasive, ‘do-as-I-say’ style where with Mike O’Shea it’s just, teach,” said current Blue Bombers defensive coordinator Jordan Younger. “It’s, ‘I’m just going to show you what you did wrong, show you how you can do it better’ and as long as you are putting the work in and getting better each week, he’ll stay with you.
“That type of loyalty in this game and that willingness to be patient is different. And to his testament, that patience has paid off over time.”
O’SHEA, O’SHEA, O’SHEA, O’SHEA… O… SHEA, O… SHEA
Blue Bomber fans — some fully lubricated, others drunk on euphoria — began gathering at Portage and Main long before the final seconds ticked down in the 2019 Grey Cup, a 33-12 Winnipeg victory that ended the longest championship drought in franchise history dating to the 1990 title.
Fans began singing for O’Shea at the iconic intersection — paraphrasing the ‘Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole’ soccer chant to fit his last name — and the serenading continued through the Grey Cup parade that culminated with an epic celebration at The Forks.
That love affair between a fan base and its coach hasn’t changed, some 10 years later. His legend grows in the locker room, too.
“It’s his personality and his knowledge of the game,” said defensive end Willie Jefferson in conversation last week. “He’s a player coach and he’s been in so many different scenarios you pay attention and listen to everything he says. He’s the kind of coach where you can talk to him about anything, and he’ll have something for you.
“You put that Hall of Fame tag on him on top of him coaching for so many years as a special teams coach and a head coach? There’s a respect there. You have no choice but to listen to him because he’s been in so many big games, coached in so many big games, been around so many great players.”
And, again, all these gushing words will leave the man shaking his head. The attention needs to be focussed elsewhere, after all — both in the here and now and in the big picture.
“Our continuity in general and the big picture continuity we’ve had around here amongst the coaching staff and the players — staff in general down here — that’s the most important,” O’Shea said last week. “I’ve said it before, at some point as a head coach you hope you become irrelevant, that it’s just feeding itself. That can only happen if you’ve got great people around you and it’s pretty evident we have had that for quite some time.”
His humility, clearly, never wavers.
So, with that, we end with this quote from Steinauer, uttered during the Grey Cup Coaches’ Press Conference in 2021, in what might perfectly encapsulate all the aspects that make up O’Shea:
“He’s just ‘That guy’ you want to sit down and have a beer with and just be people. ‘Coach’ is a title. We’re people first and I’ve got to keep it light because I’ll get emotional. That’s the truth. I care about him as a person, and I’m not shocked why he’s up here again.
“He’s just a fighter. Everybody should be proud. He’s true Canadian and what the CFL is about.”