Taman Time

Today (to no ones surprise) the Riders announced that GM Brendan Taman would be retained a given full power over football operations. To me it was the definition of doing the right things, the wrong way.
I don’t think anyone would dispute that our structure last season was ridiculous and needed to be addressed. Even Helen Keller could have seen the problems for how obvious they were. So the fact that the Rider have decided to return to a structure where the GM has full control over football operations (as opposed to having him report through a made up position) and full authority to hire his own coach (as opposed to being forced to sign some bum that nobody else wanted) is a good one.

But while what we are doing is right, the way we are doing it defies logic in so many ways. I’ll preface this by saying that I do not like Taman. I have never liked Taman. I think he is a horrible choice as GM. Just look at this top 10 I made when we first made him GM in name only. I’ll admit that a fair bit of the blame for the mess over the past year plus resides with Ken Miller as he had the final say and vetoed some of Taman’s ideas. But just because Ken Miller was a really bad football operations guy, it doesn’t mean that Taman is suddenly good.

Do I think Brendan Taman is the worst guy we could have hired as GM? No, that would be Danny Maccioccia. But to me he represents the ultimate mediocre at best hire. This used to be a team committed to excellence… and Taman is far from an excellent GM (I challenge someone to try and argue that he is). We are settling for the pudgy girl with low self esteem instead of going after the prom queen. Just ask Sean Connery

And even if you think that Taman is a good GM (you’re wrong but its fun to pretend), it makes no sense to leave him on a one year contract when we need to hire a new head coach. What kind of message does it send to perspective coaching candidates when the man who will hire them might be gone by the end of next season? We are just coming off a gong show of a season and now we can’t even ensure stability past one year and we think that the CFL’s best and brightest will be lining up to come here? Sound logic right there. So if we are really that certain that Taman is qualified to do this job why not lock him up for 3 years and at least make some commitment to our new coaches? It would kill me to live through 3 more years of Taman but this one year GM thing defies logic. We will likely be able to find a decent coach with this set up but I doubt we find an excellent coach.

So I hope you like mediocrity… its Taman’s specialty.