It's been just under five years since the Toronto Argonauts won the Grey Cup, but ever since, the team has struggled to consistently challenge for a championship.
Last season, the Argos finished 5-13 (their worst record since 2009) and in the offseason, they made some massive personnel changes by bringing in Jim Popp and Marc Trestman to run and coach the team.
The two were in Montreal for five seasons and during that time, they made it to the Grey Cup game three times and won two titles.
Both will be attempting to replicate the success they had in Montreal here in Toronto and Argo fans are very excited to see the on-field product with Popp and Trestman running the show.
Sunday, Toronto fans will get their first look at that on-field product as the Argos host the Tiger-Cats.
Now, most fans know about Popp and Trestman's football pedigree and background, but we wanted to find out more about them as people so fans could get to know them on that level:
Luca Celebre: Music is such a big part of the locker room, you were both head coaches, what do you think of the music players play now in the locker room?
Marc Trestman: Well, I think, you know, that's a great question. Players have eclectic taste, everybody has different tastes, so I think that you have to allow them to experience the things that help them get ready as long as it doesn't hurt the players around them and their preparations. Even for the most part in the locker room, players are on headsets because everyone has different tastes. That can evolve into players deciding that they want to play music, but they have to organize the genres, so everybody experiences the music that they like without distracting them from practice or the game. And then there’s the issue of censoring music, and there's a lot a different people from a lot of different background, so censorship is important because where some music may be the norm for some players, other players it's not, and everybody has to be respected. The bottom line is the cornerstone is that they have to have respect for the other people, so it can be a complicated issue, but it also can be fun, and we try to make it as fun we can and as light as we can as opposed to being certain rules that just distract you from your daily goals of winning.
Jim Popp: I think Marc hit all the points, there's nothing really to add to that. I think it's important that, as Marc said, the headsets are there. Everyone has a different taste, and unless you can get everyone on the same page, it's very difficult to play one element of music because I think everyone can relate to music and what gets them going, whether they're playing a game or lifting weights or going for a run.
LC: What kind of taste in music do you guys have?
JP: I'm pretty diverse. I like music; I like all kinds of music. I listen to it this day. I can’t' say, or I start to understand as I age, my parents used to go "How can you listen to that?" I'm starting to get a little bit of that. I like all bits, and I get a wide range of music in my house from the different ages of my kids. But it's always been an important thing to me, and to this day I listen to a very wide range of music.
MT: Yeah, I'm the same, I'm a musician's son, so I've grown up listening to everything from classical, to hard rock, to Luther Vandross, Keith Urban, Lee Ann Womack and LeAnn Rimes. It goes the complete spectrum, and I love all music and I love lyrics. I listen to just about everything from Frank Sinatra to Barbra Streisand to everyone in between.
JP: I'm the exact same way. Different elements from anything my parents listened to to what I listened to as a teenager. I'm from the south and I never thought I would've cared for country, but as I aged I realized the roots of southern rock and how much of it was country and today's pop country. I'm a huge fan of Keith Urban because I love electric guitar. I've grown up a huge fan of different elements of music that my brother and sister, who are 10 and 7 years older. I was ready to go to a Neil Diamond concert the other day, Elton John, to whether it's Drake.
MT: I was going to mention Drake and Shania Twain. We got to make sure we know where our music is coming from.
JP: The funny thing for me, as a teenager, I never knew or realized until I was getting older that a lot of the music that I was listening to was (made by) Canadians. They were producing the music that was being pushed down into the States and I was like well, they're Canadian. I had no idea that was interesting thing for me.
MT: I told my kids we were out having lunch with Drake today.
LC: I know players have pre-game rituals and superstitions, do you have any pre-game rituals or superstitions?
JP: Probably more when I played than I do as a general manager. Marc may not be this way, but I think when something goes right and you did something well, you try to mimic it sometimes. It doesn't always work, but I try my best to stay away from that, but as a player I surely did a lot of that.
MT: I have some, but if I mentioned them they wouldn't be superstitions anymore, so I'm going to leave that, too.
LC: You mentioned playing football, I know you both, what was your favourite memory playing football?
JP: For me as an athlete, football, but I played all kinds of sports. What gave me the most enjoyment, as much as I loved playing sports and personally the battle for yourself and to play well, was to see the enjoyment the other people got out it. They'd come tell you you did well, and whether that made you feel good, but it made me feel good that people enjoyed, whether it was the game as a team or they enjoyed you personally, I get great enjoyment out of that, and I do to this day, whether I'm playing but watching other people have success that you have some part of , and it not that you have to have accolades for any of it, it's just the fact that you see the enjoyment people get out if it. It's fascinating, I don't even know how to describe the walk into a stadium and hear people cheer for you and yell to know their happy. It's just a great feeling.
MT: It’s been so long ago I don't really remember, but I do feel the same way as Jim. Playing brings people together, it brings your family together, makes people happy and proud. It's more about what's happening around you. That's what playing the game really does for you.
LC: When you're coaching, have you applied anything that coaches from your past when you guys were playing growing up said to you and you kind of preach that to your team now?
JP: I think, and Marc said this earlier, coaching with whatever experiences you, whether they're great expanses or not the greatest, you learn something from it. you take a piece of it. It's a learning situation and you just try to carry those learning moments over to everybody else. So as a coach, Mark can speak tens time about it but.
MT: No, you can take a pieces of you are as a coach is what you've experience through adversity and success that makes you are what you are today because it's constant, it's fluid, it's constant learning. That's really it. Everybody and everybody and everything in the past (makes) who you are today, whether it's a player or a coach, a support staff person, a mentor -- they all impact you.
JP: It works both ways. Even every different experience I've had for temporarily stepping in as a coach makes me a better general manager in all kinds of aspects and with players. Even just that helps understand coaches much better if I never did that, because I really understand what they're going through, and it gives you a much better view of the whole game.
LC: Since you started coaching and managing, is there something you've evolve that you're surprised about? Maybe it's the game of football or the locker room dynamic or the culture of football, is there something that you can speak to that's changed that's surprised you?
JP: There's always change. The game evolves, people evolve, the athlete is different than they were 10 years ago, the game constantly changes if we don't stay on top of it.
MT: We're coaching millennials now. That's a whole different environment. 10 years ago, 12 years ago the technology wasn't there that it is now. There's a learning process as a teacher which is really synonymous with being a coach. Who is listening to you, because millennials are living in a different world than we grew up in certainly, but even guys who are 40, 45 years old grew up in. We got to understand what we're dealing with and there's a learning process there to understand what triggers the proper responses for guys who are born between 1980 and our players now.
LC: What's the hardest part about coaching millennials?
MT: Social media is a big part of that. The addiction to your phone, which, we're all addicted to your phones, is creating an environment where there's opportunity to feed that addiction, but also focused on football on a daily basis. That's a fine line to make sure to not only be focused on it, make decisions when you press send that don't hurt you or your team. Those are challenges that we never had 10 or 15 years ago.
JP: There's so called answers to everything with a push of a button, and when you're trying to get the point across or teach. Instead of getting people or finding a way to get people to listen because they also feel they have the answer already. Some of it’s entitlement. There's a lot of that going in this day and time, but people are people and if you captivate them and get their attention, everybody wants to learn. They want to know what they do right and wrong. You just got to find a way to sick into them. I have those challenges with a wide range of kids that you're like "every one of them is different, they find their own ditch and you have to find a way to communicate with each and every one of them."
LC: What is your favourite football movie?
JP: There's so many. I don't know. For the fun of it, and I always go back to the older movies, but I loved The Longest Yard. The elements of that, but all these different movies that have come out, I always find that it's hard when you're in the sport of football. There's elements of the things you just don't buy into that a person that's not in it may, and then there's other elements that are just fantastic that you enjoy. I love concerts, I love movies, I love to come away with my own views, so I don't know if I really have one that just sticks out and says that's the greatest one ever. For the entertainment value and the laughs, The Longest Yard was pretty good.
MT: What was the one Al Pacino was in? (Any Given Sunday). I thought that was a good one.
LC: What's a hobby you have an interest in that might surprise fans?
JP: Well, I'm an avid golfer, but I don't get to play golf. I can go 3-4 years without playing golf hardly. I learned as a kid and I get hooked, but my passion for golf is an escape. I love the beauty of being on a course. I love the mental challenge that you set for yourself. Just to get away it's peaceful to me. You get your frustrations out, it's something that no matter if you play good or bad, you always know you could do better, and it's that challenge next time that makes that enjoyment. But I get just as much enjoyment of going out and shooting a basketball, and I'm using sports, but what's happened for me every time, and obviously when you have children, all of a sudden there's things that aren't always as important and it's more important to watch your own kids and get out there and try to do as much as you can with them. That's a passion, and as much as we're away from our wives, (you) make sure you have that relationship with your wife.
MT: Because of the nature of the business, it's hard, but I probably spend more time walking my dogs that I do anything else in the off-season. That's how I relax.
LC: Obviously the Argos have had not seasons that fans have wanted them to have the past couple of years. What can fans expect from the on-field product this season?
JP: I think we all want to do great, but these are unanswered questions for us. What we do know is we were brought here for a reason: to build a team that the city is proud of and that gives us chances to do great things, and those are challenges for Mark and I. That's a fun challenge. We're going to do everything we can to take what we've done in the past that where we had success and try to instill that here. It's hard to win, and that's what people need to understand. There's a lot of things that go into winning from top to bottom. That's the fun challenge, and we'd like nothing more than to have an extremely successful team right off the bat.
MT: I think our fans should expect what we have to expect out of ourselves, and that is when we walk off the field as Jim said that we were a discipline team, we played with passion, we played relentlessly; and we were a team that every fan, every player and every player's family can be proud of. If we do that, things will go right for us. We'll be headed in the right direction, so we should expect that early on. Playing with passion, playing with discipline, playing with a respect for the game should be something that we (Jim and I) should expect. We expect it; we would like our fans to expect it as well.
Be sure to tune in to TSN for Toronto versus Hamilton Sunday at 4pm ET.
