Five notable CFL coaching stints from 1958 to 1990

Dan Hawkins' head-coaching stint with the Montreal Alouettes ended abruptly Thursday with the team electing to ditch him after just five games, but it's not the shortest one in CFL history. Depending on how you define it, it seems likely that record goes to either George Dickson (who Hamilton fired after just two regular-season games in 1976) or John Huard (who had two stints as a CFL head coach without coaching a game, first in 1984 with the conditional Atlantic Schooners franchise that never quite came to be, and then in 1994 when Shreveport Pirates president Lonie Glieberman fired him before the team played a game). Both of those guys make our list of 10 weird and wacky short CFL head-coaching stints, although Huard's included for yet another odd one there. Here's a look at the first five entries on that list, which happened between 1958 and 1990. Part II with the last five is here. A few notes: this is a list based on notability rather than just purely a list of the absolute shortest ones (although it's not far from that), it doesn't count coaches who took over mid-season (as there have been a lot of short stints under those circumstances), and only data going back to the CFL's official formation in 1958 was considered. With that in mind, let's get on to the list, arranged chronologically with each coach's team and record:

George Dickson, 0-2, Hamilton, 1976: Dickson had an interesting college career at Notre Dame, leaving after his 1940 freshman season to serve as a paratrooper in World War II, then coming back in 1946, dropping out to work full-time and returning in 1948 to back up another future CFL figure, Frank Tripucka. After that, he worked as a coach at colleges throughout the U.S., including NYU, Dayton, Notre Dame, USC and Tulane, generally working with the offensive backfield. He jumped to the old American Football League in 1961 with the Oakland Raiders, returned to the college ranks with Oklahoma, then went back to the AFL and worked with AFL and NFL teams through 1975 before getting the Tiger-Cats' job. That didn't go well, though: Dickson had never been a head coach before, and his team lost all four of its preseason games. Things didn't improve once the season started, as Hamilton lost 42-16 to Ottawa and 39-14 to B.C. before general manager Bob Shaw decided to fire Dickson and take over himself, eventually winning the Coach of the Year award after the Ticats finished 8-8 and won a playoff game. There's a superb line about Dickson in this 1977 Regina Leader-Post piece from Bob Hughes on Shaw's award: "But just before Dickson arrived in Hamilton, he got himself married and there was a feeling that he was not devoting all his...ah...energy and concentration to football."

Thomas Dimitroff (Sr.), 1-3-1, Hamilton, 1978: Yeah, those were rough days for the Ticats. Shaw coached them to a 5-11 record in 1977, and the team was bought by everyone's favourite lunatic (Harold Ballard) that offseason. Shaw stayed on as GM, but went out to get a coach. Unlike when he hired Dickson, he chose someone with extensive CFL experience: following an impressive NCAA playing career, a brief CFL one (which ended when he retired after being traded to Saskatchewan with other players in exchange for Tripucka) and an even briefer AFL one, Dimitroff went into the coaching ranks with alma mater Miami University (Ohio), then headed to Kansas State for a year before coming to the CFL and spending four years with the Ottawa Rough Riders as their quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator.

Dimitroff's Riders won the Grey Cup in 1976, so he seemed like a hot coaching prospect. Things in Hamilton didn't work out, though: the team went 1-3-1 under Dimitroff and was outscored by 42 points over that span. After a 29-7 loss to Winnipeg, Shaw fired Dimitroff and stepped in again. Things worked out okay for Dimitroff, though: he'd spend the next four years in CIS football as the head coach of the Guelph Gryphons, then headed back to Ottawa as the director of player personnel from 1984-1986 (taking over as interim head coach in 1986, but going 0-4-1) and then got an NFL scouting job with Cleveland that he held until his 1996 death. His son, Thomas Dimitroff Jr., went on to even greater fame, working as a Saskatchewan Roughriders' scout, then in the World League of American Football, and then in a variety of NFL roles until he landed his current job as the Atlanta Falcons' GM in 2008.

Pete Kettela, 4-4, Edmonton, 1983: Kettela's situation's quite similar to Hawkins, as he was filling the shoes of another very popular and successful coach who left for a job in a U.S. league. That would be the legendary Hugh Campbell, who won five straight Grey Cups with the Eskimos before leaving for the USFL's Los Angeles Express. Kettela had mostly worked in the NCAA ranks (with Stanford, San Jose State and other schools) and the NFL (with Green Bay), and his first CFL job was replacing the legendary Campbell. That's not an easy situation. Still, he had a very good team, as much of the nucleus from those championship squads was still intact in 1983 (including Warren Moon at quarterback), and a 4-4 start was deemed not good enough. His replacement, former Esks' QB Jackie Parker, didn't fare much better that season, though, and the team finished 8-8 before losing in the first round of the playoffs.

Fred Glick, 3-18, Ottawa Rough Riders, 1987-88: Yes, Glick managed to last longer than a season, but his coaching performance with the Rough Riders is still notable. The team went 3-15 in 1987, then started 1988 0-3 (and were outscored 117-60) before Glick was fired. Glick was a famous college and AFL player, but his coaching career was a long ways from stellar. Still, the team didn't improve much once Bob Weber replaced Glick. They finished the year 2-16, the franchise's worst record ever.

Lary Kuharich, 2-7-1, B.C. Lions, 1990: Kuharich had a solid background in the NCAA (with Temple, Illinois State and Cal), the USFL (with San Antonio and Oakland) and the CFL, with Calgary, and he and B.C. general manager Joe Kapp were instrumental in recruiting Doug Flutie, who might just be the best CFL player ever. Still, even with Flutie on board, the Lions went just 2-7-1 before Kuharich and Kapp were both fired. It wasn't all about talent deficiencies, either: the Lions lost their next game under interim head coach and famed former CFL star Jim Young, but finished the year 4-3 once Bob O'Billovich took over.

Part II of this series, focusing on short stints from 1991 to the present, is here.