Leo Cahill, a football coach brash enough to taunt a deity, became one of the most famous sports names of his era in Toronto. He spoke candidly — a bit coarsely, sometimes — and he won a few games while enduring a few legendary losses. He worked for the team four times, in three different roles: Serving as head coach (from 1967-72, and again from 1977-78), general manager (1986-88) and, finally, as the so-called goodwill ambassador, in 2004. Cahill died on Thursday, at 89. For fans of a certain age, Cahill was known as a master of both promotion and commotion. Here, The Athletic explores some of those brash statements, the losses, and the legend of a beloved former coach.
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Talking about money
Cahill quit the first football job he ever got in Canada. He became an assistant coach with the Montreal Alouettes in 1960, but resigned during the 1964 season, later complaining that assistant coaches have “no status whatsoever” in the CFL.
He was an American, born in Utica, Ill., and told the Globe and Mail he would not return to the league as an assistant even if someone offered an ironclad contract worth $80,000 a season. He had been living in Montreal with his wife and children, with a side job in a printing company, and it had been reported he walked away from coaching because he was already wealthy.
“That’s a laugh,” he told the Globe in 1965. “Hell, I have to save up just to get myself weighed.”
Talking about free agent … rugby players?
In October 1967, well into his first season as head coach in Toronto, Cahill left his team’s practice for a rugby exhibition in East York. A travelling English team was playing a local side, and the American was fascinated. (England routed the Ontario team, 33-3.)
“There are several players I would like to talk to,” Cahill told the Globe. “But you know how stuffy these Englishmen can be.”
He told the paper he hoped to send someone from the Argos to England to sign some of the players — with a special note on a wing who scored three tries, as well as the kicker.
“They can run, kick and aren’t afraid of taking a tackle,” he told the paper. “As far as I’m concerned, some of these fellas would be a help to my team right now.”
Talking about god
By November 1969, the Argos were already deep into a decades-long Grey Cup drought. Their fortunes seemed to be turning, though, after they slipped past Hamilton in the East Division semifinal, and beat Ottawa in the first game of a two-game division final.
Cahill appeared at a luncheon before the second game. There were reportedly 700 people in the room as he said the Argos were “physically better than any team in Canada,” and that “it will take an act of God to beat us Saturday.”
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The weather turned, and the field in Ottawa turned into ice. The Rough Riders wore broomball shoes — suitable for ice — while the Argos wore cleats. Toronto lost in a blowout, 32-3.
Talking about getting fired
A year to the month after he guided the Argos to within a fumble of a likely Grey Cup win, Cahill was fired. He had served with the U.S. Army in Korea before he became a football coach, and he seemed to draw on that experience as he put his dismissal in context.
“It’s like being in war,” he told the Globe. “You figure someone else might get killed, but you never think it will happen to you. I knew I was gone last week, but you find it hard to believe you will be fired.”
The Argos would fire him again before the end of the decade. They fired him again in 1978, and he was not happy with the way the team had been covered in the local media.
“I think I know how Jesus felt on the cross,” he told reporters. “This is the most negative city and the most negative bunch of people I’ve ever seen.”
Talking about babysitting
In the late ’70s, when Cahill made his second stop as coach in Toronto, the Argos had reached the peak of their in-stadium appeal. The team was drawing more than 45,000 fans down to Exhibition Stadium.
By the time he returned as general manager, a decade later, the team had lost nearly half its base. Cahill had an idea.
“What I’d like to do next year,” he told The Canadian Press in 1987, “is allow parents to bring kids free of charge and have us act in a capacity of monitoring the end zone seats where the kids would sit.”
Football crowds had become too rowdy for young families, he said. He thought he might ask the team’s healthy scratches to get involved.
“We could have players going over there before the game and saying ‘hello’ and really putting a focus on the area,” Cahill told the news service. “We’ve got to get the younger people coming back to the game.”
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Talking about an enemy
In 1988, Carling O’Keefe Breweries Ltd. sold the Argos to Harry Ornest. The brewery had reportedly pushed to have Cahill hired as general manager in a bid to boost the team’s flagging profile, and now that it was gone, so was his safety net.
Argos president Ralph Sazio, who used to coach the Tiger-Cats, and was a fierce rival of Cahill’s, was the one who ultimately fired him.
“I predicted the son of a bitch would do something like this,” Cahill told the Globe. “I didn’t think he had the nerve to do it based on our performance.”
The Argos had finished 14-4 that season, but lost in the East Division final.
Cahill reportedly yelled at Sazio on his way out the door: “He took me right down the garden path until one month before my contract ran out and pulled the rug out from under me.”
Talking about talking
By March 1976, Cahill was out of the CFL and left waiting for a decision that would never come. He was based in Memphis, hoping the NFL would grant the city a franchise.
He spoke with the Globe on a trip back to Toronto: “When you talk about Toronto, you are talking about the days of Camelot — Probably my most cherished moments as a coach came here.”
There was going to be a charity roast at the Four Seasons Sheraton. Cahill was going to be roasted, with proceeds going to the CFL Players’ Association fund: 1,000 tickets were sold, at $25 apiece.
“It’s gonna be take-no-prisoners time,” he told the paper. “But just remember that the last guy with the microphone always wins. And I’ve got it last.”
(Photo: Frank Lennon, Toronto Star via Getty Images)