Kelly Speaks Up About His Relationship With Winnipeg’s Corporate Media

Author: Scott Taylor

November 26, 2009

Scott Taylor's E-Take is sponsored by Wellness Institute at Seven Oaks General Hospital, a comprehensive medical fitness facility that is a place to learn to become well and to stay well. www.wellnessinstitute.ca.

Mike Kelly is a rock-solid human being.  He’s a good, but still unproven, football coach, a great interview and a candid, open guy who wears his big blue heart on his sleeve.

And yet, in his first year as head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, he was vilified by the city’s mainstream, corporate media.

Now to be fair, he didn’t have problems everywhere.  His morning interviews on 92-CITI-FM were always forthright and funny and his efforts with Joe Aiello and Ken Wiebe on the Sunday Night Sports Show on CITI produced some of the best moments of the year in Winnipeg radio.  Somewhat surprisingly, his interviews on The TEAM 1260 in Edmonton and The FAN 960 in Calgary made him a CFL favourite -- outside of town.

However, when it came to Winnipeg’s two local newspapers, the TV outlets and the local radio rightsholder, Kelly had his differences.  And the differences were so great that they resulted in almost daily attacks on his character, attacks that became the No. 1 sport in Winnipeg from June until November.

This past Tuesday afternoon, Kelly sat down with www.hotdoghockey.com and tried to come to terms with the ugly media disputes that ate away at his first year as Bombers head coach.  He’s not oblivious to what went on this season and while he does his best to ignore the constant attacks, he’s still stung by people who have abandoned writing about football in order to ridicule him.

“I believe it all started when I used the term, ‘Control the Message,’ and then told the players not to accept phone calls from the media and not to give out their cell numbers,” Kelly said candidly.  “There is no doubt that upset them.  They (the media) felt I was taking away their opportunity to do their jobs and that’s when I believe it all started.  It started when they all got the perception that I was making their jobs more difficult.”

One of the most contentious issues of 2009 occurred before the season even began.  When former GM Brendan Taman quit the football club, Kelly made what he thought was a harmless remark about scouting reports being “written on napkins.”  Kelly, who will admit he learned more about football by writing plays on scraps of paper than he did in hours of meetings, didn’t think the remark would have any legs.

He was terribly wrong.

“I understand the media’s relationship with Brendan and when I made that off-the-cuff remark that his personnel reports were written on napkins, I didn’t think for one second that it would take on a life of its own,” Kelly conceded.  “I have no problem with Brendan.  I was just being funny, being Mike.  Heck I used to write out all my plays on napkins.  But that’s when the floodgates opened and the gang mentality ensued.

“In the meantime, I wasn’t going to back down from them.  What was I supposed to do, beg for their forgiveness?  That’s not me.  That’s not going to happen.”

What Kelly has never learned is that there is really only one thing that a daily newspaper does well.  In fact, there is no institution on earth that does it better.  Daily newspapers hurt people with a flare that is unmatched.  They’re good at it and when they decide they are going to hurt you, you have no escape.  They will turn nothing into something, even if it isn’t true.  When you get on a daily newspaper’s hate list (see: Stuart Murray, Sam Katz, Taras Sokolyk, Barry Shenkarow and the recent hydro whistle blower), you’re done.  Kelly got on the list and the attacks were relentless.

“Here’s one I still don’t understand,” Kelly said.  “I never once said I was an ‘offensive guru.’  I don’t know where that came from.  I did say, I think quite clearly, ‘I have experience as an offensive coach and that’s where I’ll focus my attention.’  I never once said I was a guru of any kind, but they made it up and hung that one on me.  Oh well, I have learned that no matter what you say or even don’t say, things will take on a life of their own, and that’s why I have to work even harder at controlling the message.”

The biggest “scandal” of the 2009 season was directly related to Kelly’s efforts to control the message.  When he decided to cut off the dozen or so callers to the Mike Kelly Show on CJOB, the media had a field day.

“How could anyone halt phone calls to a live radio show,” they shouted.  “This is unheard of, nay it’s scandalous.”

Wow.

“My point was this: It’s called the Mike Kelly Show.  It’s not called the CJOB Call-In Show.  If my name is on it, I should have some control over it, shouldn’t I?” Kelly said.  “Nothing productive came of that show and that’s why I won’t do it next year.  They didn’t pay me enough money to put up with what I put up with this year.”

“Here’s what I don’t understand.  First of all, there were only about 10 different callers.  It was the same people every week and Bob (host Irving) knew most of them by name.  Secondly, they would call and attack me and I would say something like, ‘How is it in your mom’s basement tonight?’  Well, if I’m in Philly or Chicago or New York, we’d get into a pretty good banter, but here, people just started screaming, or they hung up and called the office.  People believe they can say anything they want to me on a radio program and there are no consequences.  I guess, in Winnipeg, I’m the first guy who ever said, ‘I’m not going to take that abuse.”

“I remember one incident in particular that got me into trouble.  The guy phones and says, ‘If you go 8-10 will you resign?’ and I said, ‘If you don’t meet your sales quota this month will you quit your job?’  Well, all hell broke loose.  Sorry, why is it that I have to put up with public ridicule, but nobody else has to take what he dishes out?  That’s not my job. ‘Must be yelled at on the radio,’ isn’t anywhere in my job description.  There will not be a Mike Kelly Show next year.”

It’s easy to attack Kelly over the team’s record.  When you go 7-11 and miss the playoffs, there will be a backlash.  However, there were plenty of good things, too.

This team was a mess at the end of the 2008 season.  CEO Lyle Bauer knew it and he knew he had to bring in someone with a mop.  Kelly had to rebuild a football team that had become a “group of individuals,” not a team.  And with some intelligent investigation, it would appear he’s done a pretty good job.

In terms of offence, here’s an interesting statistic that you probably haven’t read anywhere else: The Hamilton Tiger-Cats were sacked once every 15.6 passing plays in 2009.  The Montreal Alouettes were sacked once every 18.3 passing plays and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were sacked once every 22.5 passing plays.  Kelly not only rebuilt the defence, he rebuilt the offensive line.  Clearly, this Bomber team is just one quarterback and a couple of receivers away from being a legitimate contender next year.

Meanwhile, keep this in mind: When the Bombers won the turnover ratio this season, they were 7-3.  When they lost it, they were 0-8.  This is a team that must learn to protect the football.

“I learned from Cal,” Kelly said.  “I was raised by Cal.  This was Cal’s creed: ‘You’re only as good as your Canadians and your quarterback.’ If you don’t have those two things, you won’t win.  We fixed the Canadian problem last year and we’ll get even better this off-season (there is more coming from Calgary in the Romby Bryant deal).  The quarterback problem has to be fixed.  That’s my immediate challenge.  Whether it’s Michael Bishop again or someone else (expect the Bombers to go hard after Jarious Jackson if he becomes available), I’ll get that fixed.”

Despite the good things that happened in 2009, when it came to the local media, Kelly’s good will never be confused with the bad.  The bad reigns and until the local outlets get the man fired, the attacks aren’t going to stop.

Which brings us to ground zero.  The day the media mess became truly ugly was the day a young coach with ties to the Bombers was caught taking notes at a Hamilton Tiger-Cats practice.  In a league in which every game is on an HD Compact Disc, from a dozen different angles, a young man taking notes at a practice, became the textbook example of cheating and the media had its opening.

Of course, it also resulted in Kelly being asked the same question – a question he had no interest in answering – eight different times in one media scrum.

“How many times do I have to say the same thing?” Kelly said.  “Look, a 26-year-old kid decided he was going to make an impression.  He made a mistake, but I had nothing to do with it.  So Ross (Hodgkinson) made a public statement and Lyle (Bauer) made a public statement.  So I go into the press scrum and say, Ross and Lyle have addressed that issue, I’m here to talk about football and what did I get?  Kevin Olszewski from CTV, asked me the same question about the kid in Hamilton eight times.  That’s idiotic, but I’m the bad guy.  I was there to talk about football.  Nobody wanted to talk about football.”

And that’s the biggest problem Kelly faces.

There are so few people in the Winnipeg media who can actually talk about football that, ultimately, the only thing they can do is destroy a coach who speaks a language most of them don’t understand.

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