A coaching stint far odder than Dan Hawkins’—from a legendary AFL and CFL player?

The Montreal Alouettes' decision Thursday to fire head coach Dan Hawkins was notable for how little time Hawkins received. His five-game stint in charge puts him amongst the shortest-tenured head coaches in league history, both from the CFL's early days and in the last few decades. Hawkins has since taken plenty of flak from Alouettes' executives and players, as well as media types both nearandfar. However, his head coaching stint is far from the oddest, shortest or most disastrous in history.

Depending on how you define it, the shortest tenure belongs to either John Huard (who twice was appointed as a head coach, but never got to coach a game in those stints) or George Dickson (who the Tiger-Cats fired after just two games in 1976), and there are plenty of contenders for the most disastrous (but the ten guys on our lists of short tenures are good places to start). The oddest, though? There's one excellent contender for that that didn't make either list, as it comes from a coach who took over midseason, and we didn't consider those for the list. His tenure's so bizarre that it deserves its own post, though, as it may represent the only case of a coach winning a game for his team, but then losing it by forfeit thanks to pencilling his own number in the lineup. Making things even more odd, the man under discussion here is famed CFL and American Football League quarterback Frank "Trip" Tripucka.

Tripucka's well-remembered for his playing abilities, as he shone as a quarterback at Notre Dame, serving as a backup to Johnny Lujack during the undefeated 1946 and 1947 campaigns of the Irish, then leading them to a 9-0-1 record in 1948 and earning an All-American nod. After that, he spent four seasons in the NFL with the Detroit Lions and Chicago Cardinals before heading to Saskatchewan to play for the Roughriders. He played there until a 1958 trade sent him to the league's other Rough Riders in Ottawa, but returned to Saskatchewan midseason in 1959 as a head coach, taking over from George Terlep (who was fired after an 0-8 start). For six games, the Roughriders muddled along under Tripucka, winning one game and losing five. That's when things really got weird.

By the end of the Riders' 14th game, all three of their quarterbacks were hurt and unavailable for further action. However, while the East Division only played 14-game schedules at this point, the West Division played 16-game campaigns, so Saskatchewan had to find a quarterback to play their last two contests. This was made more difficult because of the roster composition rules of the time. Canadian football was wide open to American players until Winnipeg became the first Western team to win the Grey Cup in 1935, doing so with a roster that featured eight imports. That led to teams competing for the Grey Cup having to field all-Canadian rosters until 1946, when five were allowed.

After various changes, 1959 saw 12 imports allowed (out of a 29-man roster) in both the West and East. The problem for the Riders was that they'd already met their quota of imports, though, and the rules of the time froze the roster after the 13th game. They couldn't even have gone out and grabbed a Canadian quarterback from the college or junior ranks. Thus, team management elected to start Tripucka—although it meant forfeiting the games. As this piece (PDF) from the Professional Football Researchers' Association illustrates, that made the late-season 1959 Roughriders the pro football team with the lowest chances of success ever:

Of course, Saskatchewan was still given the loss thanks to Tripucka's presence (and the "13th Import" reference is funny in and of itself, considering what's happened to the Riders with 13th men since, both positive and negative). Still, it made sense for them to tab Coach Tripucka even with the forfeits; they weren't going to the playoffs even if they won both games (the next-worst Western team was 8-8 Calgary), it kept the attendance up, and the Riders actually found more on-field success than they might have if they'd tried to switch another player's position. It proved a spectacularly odd end to Tripucka's career as a CFL head coach, though, and one that may have kickstarted the next famous phase of his career.

Following the season, Tripucka went off to the newly-formed AFL, joining Frank Filchock in Denver. Filchock was Tripucka's old coach in Saskatchewan, and had just been hired as the first head coach of the Denver Broncos. He offered Tripucka a job as an assistant coach at first, but sent him in as a quarterback in the preseason. Tripucka soon won the starting job and would play for the Broncos for four seasons, throwing the first TD pass in AFL history and becoming the first U.S. professional quarterback to throw for 3,000 yards in one year. When he hung up his cleats in 1963, the team retired his #18 jersey, which stayed retired until he told them they could bring it back for Peyton Manning (a move Manning was honoured by). That's a fitting conclusion here, really: the coach who played and led his team to a win that was a loss had his jersey retired and un-retired. No matter what stories come out about the Dan Hawkins saga in Montreal, it's going to be hard to top Tripucka's time in Saskatchewan as the CFL's oddest coaching stint. After all, the current Alouettes never had to forfeit a game...