The other day I mentioned to a friend of mine — a Western alumnus — that I had interviewed Greg Gary, the coach of the University of Toronto football team. The friend quipped: “Did he explain why his team is terrible?”
Of course, my friend had no idea that the Blues had just finished the season 4–4 and are a tiebreaker away from the playoffs. By Western standards, that’s not very impressive, but for a U of T program that has been mired for years in winless seasons, a 4–4 finish is a great sign for the future.
I spoke with Gary after the season was over to discuss the present and future of the Varsity Blues football team. A couple of things that I learned surprised me: big, burly football players are scared of Toronto, and Gary loves to take advantage of market inefficiencies à la Billy Beane.
The Varsity: How are you today?
Greg Gary: A little fatigued; it was a long season. We got to where we needed to be, but we would have liked to get that one more win.
TV: What kind of offense do you run?
GG: We tried to be a power run team at first, but we didn’t have the personnel for that — you need big linemen for that, running backs that run down hill. I would say we are a spread team. We like to spread the field with five-receiver looks. We try to attack teams schematically, where they are weakest.
TV: With this new offense, you have guided the Blues to their best record in years. Other than instituting a new offense, what kind of influence did you and your coaching staff have on this team that the previous coaching staff didn’t?
GG: Tough for me to evaluate a previous staff — what they did and didn’t do — with respect to the staff that I’m currently working with, but we have done some things differently. It would extend as far back as the athletic director, president, and dean. [The university has] given me the tools needed to [be successful]: strength and conditioning program that’s year-round, a defensive coordinator that’s probably the number-one guy in the country, and a coaching staff that keeps trying to get better… Everyone has bought into the idea of having a high-performance football program.
TV: Some critics might point to the schedule getting easier at the end of the year, and that your wins came against weaker teams; how do you respond to that?
GG: You gotta play your schedule. They were teams that we were supposed to beat, but we beat them in a way that says where we are at as a program. We had 50-point performances from our offense, our defense did its job, and generally we were successful in establishing that we can compete against these teams now.
TV: Why does the University of Toronto have such a tough time attracting players, even though it’s located downtown with just about any sort of entertainment a university student would want?
GG: Academics. That’s where you start and end… There aren’t a lot of athletes who have done well enough academically in high school. The pool of players that can play in the OUA is fairly large, but for us it’s already reduced. Out of a hundred players, there are probably 25 that could play for the University of Toronto. I’m not a big process guy. Attracting players, that’s going to be a result of winning. Players are going to come here if they believe they have a chance to be successful. Also, the downtown thing — the kid from Sudbury, outside of the GTA, they grow up with a fear factor.
TV: Fear factor? Football players are scared of Toronto?
GG: Where did you grow up?
TV: I’ve lived downtown all of my life.
GG: That’s a totally different thing; they don’t see it the way you do. We try to tell them that the University of Toronto is fairly insulated. We just need to get them on campus, and then they can see for themselves.
TV: Considering your issues with recruiting (academics, the fear factor) have you looked into alternate recruiting methods?
GG: We are an athletes-first program, but we’re also a player-development program. First thing we want is a guy who runs fast and is strong, and hopefully he’s had some success in high school… Our recruiting process [that all of the teams use in the OUA] is overrated… Sometimes we look at overdeveloped players, and those are considered the blue-chip players. I like to find players that are really good athletes, have strong skill sets, can move well in space, etc., and then develop them. Unfortunately, in university it’s hard to get a basketball player to see his options as a football player. What you want to do is find a football player who isn’t jumping off the page as a blue chipper, but you find out they play other sports and say: “That’s our guy.”
TV: One more question: I would be remiss if I didn’t try to get you to make some sort of prediction. Do you see U of T being able to compete with Western, McMaster, etc., in the coming years?
GG: The next jump is Ottawa, Windsor, Guelph; we need to win those games. Then we can look at the well-established schools like McMaster, Queens, Western. The next 3–4 years we will be back at the top of the heap with those teams competing with them consistently; I really do believe that.
