CFL demi-god Bob O’Billovich, who played for, coached, and managed multiple teams, will be inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame in 2015. The Toronto Argonauts, who O’Billovich coached to their first Grey Cup in 30 years in 1983, released the information last night.
Coach who Ended 30-Year Grey Cup Drought to be Inducted to Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2015
Toronto – The Toronto Argonauts Football Club would like to congratulate former Head Coach and General Manager, Bob O’Billovich who will be inducted to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, in the Builder category, in 2015.
The winningest coach in team history, O’Billovich is best remembered as the coach who ended the Argonauts’ 30-year Grey Cup drought. Toronto took home the Grey Cup in 1952 then reappeared in the game twice before finally winning it in dramatic fashion in 1983 under O’Billovich’s guidance. The announcement was appropriately made during Grey Cup week in Vancouver since the Argonauts won the 1983 Grey Cup over the B.C. Lions 18-17 at B.C. Place Stadium. The championship parade that ensued days later in Toronto choked Bay Street with thousands of excited fans.
He served 11 seasons as the Argonauts’ head coach amassing 172 career wins (the most in team history). During his time, ‘Obie’ earned two CFL Coach of the Year awards (1982 & 1987), five East Division titles and led the Boatmen to three Grey Cup appearances. In 2007, he was named the head coach of the All-Time Argos team.
O’Billovich was hired by the club before the 1982 season and he turned around a team that had finished with just 2 wins the year previous. He immediately led them to an impressive 9-6 season, and a Grey Cup appearance. The Double Blue stormed to 12 wins in 1983 en route to the club’s eleventh championship. He coached the Argos to three more winning seasons, including a 14-win campaign in 1988 (which is still the second-most total wins in a season ever by an Argos team).
He left Toronto following the 1989 season and returned to the sidelines part way through the 1993 season. He was named Argonauts General Manager and Head Coach in 1994 before relinquishing his head coaching duties in 1995. He continued on as G.M. but ultimately returned to the sidelines to close-out the ’95 season, his final one in Toronto.
Bob O’Billovich has become part of the lore of the Argonauts over the past 40 years. He is even credited as the person who gave Hall of Fame player Michael Clemons the nickname, ‘Pinball’. As the story goes, O’Billovich was observing Argos practice in 1989 when Clemons was a rookie on the squad. O’Billovich watched his moves and declared, ‘that guy moves like a pinball.’ The name stuck and the rest is history.
Over a CFL career that spanned 50 years, O’Billovich served in varying capacities in the football offices for the Argonauts, B.C. Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Saskatchewan Roughriders, was a coach in Toronto, Ottawa and B.C., and a player for the Ottawa Rough Riders (1963-67).
Raised in Butte, Montana, he was a tremendous athlete who starred in basketball, football, baseball and track while attending the University of Montana. He was named the University of Montana Athlete of the Decade (1960-70), and in 1993 he was inducted to the Grizzly Athletic Hall of Fame. Following his playing career with the Rough Riders, he coached men’s basketball at both Carlton University and the University of Ottawa.
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