Smart Coach of the Year changes include less candidates, time shift, sponsorship

The CFL's coach of the year award is getting a makeover. The league announced Thursday that the Annis Stukus Trophy will now have two finalists, one from each division, instead of three, and that it will be announced as part of each season's Shaw CFL Awards ceremony during Grey Cup week rather than at the traditional standalone banquet the following spring. The coach of the year ceremony is also getting a sponsor, as the CFL's signed a multi-year deal with Canadian investment firm AGF: the award will now be known as the AGF CFL Coach of the Year, and AGF will launch a companion AGF Community Coach of the Year Award next year to recognize financial advisors who volunteer as amateur coaches. The finalists announced this year aren't that suprising (Ottawa head coach Rick Campbell and Edmonton head coach Chris Jones), but the format change is quite notable, and from this corner, it's for the best.

The upsides to narrowing the finalists are substantial. Yes, it's nice to recognize three coaches each year, but this is only a nine-team league, so honouring one-third of the league with a nomination seems a bit much. Bringing this down to one representative from each division also fits with the process used for the league's other major awards (finalists for which were also announced Thursday), and it means that even the loser still gets the honour of being the coach of the year for his division. The geographic distinction means it won't always be the most two deserving finalists (for example, last year saw Montreal's Tom Higgins (a 9-9 record, and fired early on this year) thrown in with Calgary's John Hufnagel (15-3, the eventual winner) and Edmonton's Chris Jones (12-6); Higgins would have been a finalist instead Jones under this system), but that's okay, as everyone still gets a chance to compete in the pre-finalist round.

Combining this award with the rest of the player awards also feels like a good change, especially from the timing standpoint. Now, the voting will be done and the award will be announced before the Grey Cup instead of after it. Too often, the coach of the year has simply gone to the Grey Cup champion; the last non-champion to win was Toronto's Jim Barker in 2010, and before that, you have to go back to Higgins in 2005. Handing out the award before the Grey Cup lets voters make their decisions based on a regular-season body of work, not just a small sample size playoff where anything can happen, and it should maintain a little more suspense. It's often hard to argue with choosing the guy whose team wins it all; now that we don't know who's going to win it all, it's a little more interesting to debate the various candidates.

There are also benefits to putting this together with the player awards from a logistical standpoint. Having a separate Coach of the Year banquet (usually held in the spring in the city that would host the Grey Cup that fall) was nice, but it created substantial travel, accomodation and other costs, and led to some awkward moments with timing as well. This was perhaps most pronounced in 2013 (the award for the 2012 season), when Hufnagel left the banquet before the winner was announced to catch a flight. It's easy to see why Hufnagel thought he could leave, as he didn't have the best regular-season record (his team was 12-6, compared to fellow nominee Mike Benevides' 13-5) and he didn't win the Grey Cup (his team lost to eventual winner Scott Milanovich's Toronto Argonauts, who were only 9-9 in the regular season), so even making him attend seemed a bit off, but his early departure still spurred criticism and prompted an eventual apology. Removing the third nominee and rolling this event into the player awards should avoid anything like that in the future.

By combining this with Grey Cup week, many of the people needed for this award (both the coaches and the CFL staffers who put the banquet on) will already be there. The league also now doesn't need to set up a separate banquet, and there shouldn't be any costs here that weren't already in place for the player awards. Yes, rolling this into that ceremony will take away a little of the coaching award's special significance (and reduce the offseason media coverage the CFL gets; however, the award itself may get a little more attention from being handed out in-season), but it's producing a more interesting award, and hopefully doing so at a much lower cost. That seems like a win from this corner.

As per who wins? Both Campbell and Jones are strong candidates. Both led their teams to divisional championships, with Jones' Eskimos going 14-4 (and beating Calgary on head-to-head record) and Campbell's Redblacks going 12-6. Campbell's team pulled off a bigger turnaround (+10 wins from a 2-16 debut season last year; Edmonton was 12-6 last year, so they only gained two wins), but Jones' was the more dominant in the regular season (and the Eskimos were +125 in point differential, while the Redblacks were only +10). The pick here would probably be Campbell, given how few expected Ottawa to even make the playoffs in their second year, much less win the division. However, Jones has an excellent case as well. It's going to be interesting to see how the voting plays out, but there's one clear winner already; this format change. It should do a lot to make the coaching award more interesting, more relevant, and easier for the league hand out. From this standpoint, that all seems positive.