Greg Knox leaves the Blue Bombers for McMaster, showing no compensation works

It's a fact of football life that when there are better openings out there, under-contract coaches are going to jump at them. The CFL has attempted to regulate this during this offseason following the kerfuffle over Chris Jones, Jason Maas and Noel Thorpe switching (or in Thorpe's case, unsuccessfully trying to switch) jobs, insisting that compensation will now have to be agreed upon in advance before guys move for a promotion within the league, but what they haven't been able to restrict is movement either into or out of the league from other levels such as CIS. The latest chain reaction was set off by Hamilton Tiger-Cats offensive coordinator Tommy Condell suddenly resigning to spend time with his family in early April, which then led to that team grabbing McMaster head coach Stef Ptasek to replace him, and now McMaster has named Winnipeg defensive backs coach Greg Knox as their new interim head coach. This makes sense for the Marauders, and it's potentially a good career move for Knox, so this move is highly logical even though the Bombers will now have to replace Knox late in the game. If this had been an intra-CFL move, though, it likely would have been banned unless the teams agreed on compensation.

Knox looks like an excellent addition for McMaster. For one thing, he's highly familiar with the program; he spent eight years there as their defensive coordinator, including during their Vanier Cup win in 2011. He worked at McMaster from 2006 to 2012, then went to U of T in 2013 as DC, then returned to Mac as DC in 2014 before joining Winnipeg as linebackers' coach in 2015. He also has substantial playing experience (he won the Vanier Cup as a DB with the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks in 1991, then spent seven years in the CFL as a DB, and was a two-time CFL all-star and won two Grey Cups). He's shown good coaching skills off before, and the combination of his playing and coaching experience and his familiarity with the program should help the Marauders significantly. This is perhaps as good of a hire as they could have made even with a lot of notice at the start of the offseason rather than in April, so AD Glen Grunwald deserves a lot of credit for managing to bring in someone like Knox at such a late stage (and with just an interim tag, even, making it easier to change things up if this doesn't work out).

While this is a bit of a blow for Winnipeg, though, it really isn't that bad. For one thing, the team already has an impressive coaching staff in place, and defensive coordinator Richie Hall has both played DB and coached DBs in the past, so it's not like they're suddenly without knowledge on that front. If the team does elect to bring in another DBs coach, that shouldn't be that terribly hard, either; there are plenty of capable coaches out there (admittedly, less than there were at the start of the offseason, but there's still a good batch), and adding a positional coach to a staff late in the game is much less difficult than adding a head coach or coordinator (as the positional coach largely has to focus on his own job and his own players; there are some scheme and philosophy overlaps that have to be discussed, but not as many as there are at the coordinator level).

That's another reason why these moves aren't to be feared; the cascade effect of leaving for promotions means that each replacement usually comes from a lower level than the previous one. For example, Jones left for a HC/GM/VP role, but Edmonton only had to replace a HC, and Ottawa only had to replace an OC after Edmonton grabbed Maas. Thus, the latest-in-the-year moves are usually the least problematic. It's possible that the Bombers could even grab someone else from the CIS level (likely a DC or DBs coach) to fill Knox's slot, and then that team could likely replace from within by promoting someone further down the totem pole. Of course, that could have happened in the CFL too (they could have grabbed a team's assistant DBs coach or other defensive assistant) before the new compensation policy, but that policy means they'll likely go another route. (This could be one great side benefit of the CFL compensation policy; it might make teams look harder at talented coaches from the CIS ranks than they did before, back when they could easily grab guys from elsewhere in the CFL.)

It still shouldn't be too hard for the Bombers to replace Knox, but the Condell-Ptaszek-Knox carousel illustrates how letting coaches leave for promotions can be a positive for everyone involved. Ptaszek now has a more prominent role, as does Knox, and both look to be a good fit in their new situations, which happened thanks to the lack of a CFL-CIS compensation policy. The more restrictive new CFL rule might have kept everyone unhappy in their current places, and forced replacements to be hired from only the pool of unemployed coaches. It's a good thing that doesn't pertain to coaching moves between CIS and the CFL.