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“One of the most memorable moments I had in sports was during the 100th Grey Cup in Toronto,” former Argos QB Joe Theismann said, taking a break on the 15th hole of a round of golf at a country club in Florida.
“We were all together. We were looking at film, studying the Grey Cup game and Leo came in and surprised us. All of a sudden, boom, there he was, talking to us with that grin on his face. He should be in the hall of fame for his smile, if for nothing else.
“If you look at pictures of Leo, imagine that Cheshire Cat with that grin. That’s Leo. There was always something going on behind those eyes. He was always thinking about something, that next move, that next acquisition. He was a great ambassador for the CFL.” ...
“He’s the greatest promoter Canadian football has ever seen,” said Paul Woods, an Argos historian who is currently working on a book about the Grey Cup-winning 1991 Argos squad. “I don’t think there’s anyone else that’s come even close to being able to sell the game and build up buzz and excitement for the team, the league and so on.
“He was just a master at getting attention and really arguably the peak periods of the Argonauts being in the sporting consciousness were both with Leo there.”
Cahill was a master recruiter and at a time in football when the CFL could offer comparable contracts to the NFL, he lured some major U.S. talent to Canada to come play for him. Theismann, running back Leon McQuay, safety Tim Anderson and defensive lineman Jim Stillwagon, to name a few, were All-Americans as college players and suited up for the Argos, thanks to Cahill. ....
“He trusted us to be men. We never had a lot of rules; not that they would have mattered to this group, but Leo knew that right away,” Theismann said. “I think Leo felt more like the ringmaster of a circus at times than he did the coach of a football team.
“We did have a group of characters. It was at a time when society was changing. You had the bell bottoms and the big lapels and the seersucker suits. You had the draft dodgers, everything that was going on at the time. A lot of guys went to Canada to avoid the draft.
“So you had all the signs, the love children and everything else. It wasn’t just a time in football. It was a time in society that was very unique. Leo was the perfect coach in that period of time.”
“One of the reasons I became a fan, partly was because my dad was an Argos fan, but they were a cool team,” Woods said.
“I once described them as the first adult males that I ever saw that had long hair. I grew up watching the Beatles and Ed Sullivan. I wanted long hair from the time I was seven years old, but adults weren’t wearing long hair. Then all of sudden the Argos had Mel Profit and all of these guys with hair sticking out of the back of their helmets and they just looked so goddamn cool.
“I just loved the look of the team and the feel. They had a swagger about them and I think that was because of the way that Leo was. Leo had that impish grin. Sometimes he could look sarcastic and he could be smoking a cigarette on the sidelines.
“He seemed to embrace the notion that he wanted iconoclasts, he wanted guys that wore turtlenecks instead of ties and wore big mustaches and had long hair and partied and all that stuff.
“It was the first sports team that I was aware of that being a rebel and being a wild person was not only allowed but encouraged in a way. Later we saw Charlie Findlay and the Oakland A’s and all that but I think the Argos were three or four years ahead of that stuff.”