How to succeed in business, CFL-style

Some say football builds character. Others maintain the game simply reveals it. Here’s another suggestion: Football is a good primer for business excellence.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Canadian Football League have been the stepping stone for several highly successful entrepreneurs and the anecdotal evidence suggests linemen, particularly offensive lineman, prosper in the business world.

“I think there is something to that,” says Ian Troop, CEO of TO2015, the Pan Am Games organizing committee. “The O-line guys have to think a lot in their position. It requires great timing and teamwork. ”

Troop passionately wanted to be a Ticat after the team drafted him in 1981, but a serious knee injury killed his dream.

But his experience under coach Tuffy Knight at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he starred as a guard, was a highly useful backdrop to his business studies.

Troop has run companies in Canada, the U.S., Poland and Mexico and his particular skill at marketing and branding was the key to his selection as Pan Am CEO.

And he still goes to Ticat games, shunning a spot in the executive boxes for seats in the stands.

Former Ticat running back Julian Radlein says he was “stunned at how much is similar” between football and business when he launched his SymbiAudit company in Vancouver.

He says the company applies principles of sustainability to a business model, incorporating economy, society and environment in the decision-making process.

“You bring a team mindset to the business which is a lot like football. And you’ve got to make it fun, like football, to keep people motivated.”

He jokes that his own nature is to be a bit of a bulldozer in pushing his ideas, but has learned that just as there are times on the field when giving way to a teammate nets the team a better result, there are times when he sits back and lets the rookies in his office lay out their ideas and dreams.

“They don’t all get adopted but some do and that adds to the team feeling,” adds Radlein, who played in Hamilton from 2003 to 2008.

Leo Ezerins, a stalwart linebacker with the 1986 Ticat Grey Cup champs, notes Canadian boardrooms are filled with former players.

And he agrees with Troop – many of the heavyweights on the O-line have shot to the top.

“They tend to have a better education and they spend so much time together.”

He jokes that the hours at the team’s dining table alone (O-linemen are notorious trenchermen), meant a lot of discussion about life after football.

But overall, the big boys up front form a business all-star team. Three large lads made it right to the CFL’s highest office, after all.

The late Jake Gaudaur went from the trenches with the Ticats to commissioner of the league. So did Doug Mitchell, father of current Ticat president Scott Mitchell, who played for B.C Lions. And defensive end Bill Baker, known as The Undertaker with Saskatchewan in 11 CFL seasons, was at the helm for a time.

The late Ralph Sazio also moved from hard-nosed line guy to building winners in both Hamilton and Toronto.

Ezerins, who now runs the CFL Alumni organization, cites John Forzani as a classic example of the offensive lineman who went on to business riches.

He runs The Forzani Group Ltd., Canada’s largest sporting goods retailer, and is part owner of the Calgary Stampeders, where he played for seven years.

Hamilton’s David Braley has a pigskin pedigree behind his business acumen. The owner of the B.C. Lions and Toronto Argos was a lineman at Westdale Collegiate and McMaster University. He also owned the Tiger Cats, briefly.

Meantime, David Sauve took a Harvard education and time with the Cats to a successful career as owner of Tim Hortons franchises and, most recently, a boutique townhouse development in Hamilton.

Brian Hutchings, a Ticat back in the late 1980’s, showed his stripes early. He supported McMaster Children’s Hospital then and is now Commissioner of Community Services for Niagara Region as well as advising the Trillium Foundation.

Even so, quarterbacks like Hamilton’s Bernie Faloney (construction) and Ottawa’s J.C. Watts (United States Senate) did pretty well, too. Troop says the common denominators are pretty simple:

“You have to be tough-minded to play football, for a start. And it’s a game that relies on a lot of precise executions by a lot of people – a higher level of execution than a lot of other sports. So you are dependent on those 11 other guys.”

That sense of meshing skills transfers well to the business environment, he believes.

Troop adds the ratio of preparation to actual play is a good template for business planning – it requires patience some other sports do not.

There’s also a downside for football players lured into business for the wrong reasons, Ezerins offers.

“It can be a trap. A player might get recruited because of his profile in the community as a quick fix to help a business in the short term, not as a long-term relationship.”

Moreover, he points out, an environment where your colleagues (players) have your back day-in, day-out is unique.

“It can be a jungle in the business world. In football you have a depth chart where you know the other two players who want your job. In business, you don’t always know.”