CFL Coaches: A Pictoral Essay

Well. Here we are. Only two coaches left. The most difficult, and the easiest.

First, let me just say that I haven’t an appropriate photograph for the first coach (who is, coincidentally, the most difficult coach to find a celebrity lookalike for). The Montreal Alouettes are an excellent team, and have earned every inch of their Grey Cup playoff spot against the Riders. To be completely honest, if I were the sort of person who was prone to doubt, I would be by way of thinking that Montreal will be going home on the airplane with an awful lot of silver.

So. Marc Trestman is the coach of the Montreal Alouettes. He is lean and springy and he has this amazing smile. Seriously, if you’ve ever heard the expression “…has a smile that lights up his/her face”, you know what I mean. Here, I’ll show you.

Marc Trestman:	And here, Marc Trestman smiling

And do you know who he looks like? Can you see it in those two images? It’s a bit of a trick question, because there are only a select few people who are going to be able to see it. It’s not an optical illusion…would you like to guess? Go ahead. I’ll wait….

…

…

Okay, no, I’m not waiting. Marc Trustman looks **just like a less good-looking, slightly off VIPER PILOT!!!!**

“Doubleyou tee eff?” you’re thinking, if you’ve no idea who Viper Pilot is. Well, see, I haven’t asked his permission to put his photo on my bournal, and the photo that I do have that looks most like Marc Trustman is a Very Old Photo. But you have to trust me. Dude looks like Viper Pilot.

There’s also something Very Strange going on with Marc Trestman’s eyebrows, which make him look a little like Guy Pearce from one of his seminal roles:

Felicia, from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

His Nibs doesn’t see it, but the minute I saw Marc Trestman’s eyebrows, I thought of RuPaul and some of the most wonderful and FABULOUS drag queens around. I don’t know if maybe it’s a congenital thing, or maybe if he just has naturally FABULOUS eyebrows. But if you look at the pictures of him smiling, you see his lovely, sensitive eyebrows.

I’m not saying that Marc Trestman is a drag queen.

Although I just now had a really really good idea (TUO, quoting Stuart McLean, would say, “no, cenobyte, you had a *different* idea”). And my really really good idea is that all of the coaches of the CFL should do a drag show to raise money either for charity (more likely) or to help Ottawa or Halifax start up a CFL team. And, on top of that, a players’ drag show would also be awesome. I mean, with all the spandex in those change rooms, they have to be halfway there anyway.

I mean really. Are you with me here? Marc Trustman kind of has fabulous transvestite eyebrows. Maybe it will help to see him side-by-side with Felicia here:

Marc Trestman (note the eyebrows)	Felicia, from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Coincidence?
I THINK NOT!!!

Now.

This is the moment you have been waiting for. How do I know? Even though you don’t know because you don’t know what it is that you’re waiting for? I know because I *do* know what it is that you’re waiting for, and I can tell you that this will be the most shocking and amazing thing you’ve ever seen. You’re going to sit in your chair, with your eyes bugging out of your head, and you’re going to gasp: “how could I not have KNOWN this?” Then, when it’s over, you’re going to say “Thank you, cenobyte, for opening my eyes to the wonders of…” …oh wait. That’s starting to sound like a date I went on in 1994. Nevertheless, you will be amazed.

But before we get there, my friend Rob (who has not lost his marbles yet) thinks that the coach of the Calgary Stampeders looks like actor/musician/douchebag Billy Bob Thornton. They both have that rugged outdoorsy-type look to them, don’t they? They both wear ball caps. They both wear sunglasses, and although I’ve no desire to know whether they both have matching chest hair, I can see a certain resemblance there. I really like Billy Bob Thornton, in spite of his douchebaggery with former King of Spain-turned CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi. I’m not sold on the comparison with this CFL coach, though. But that could be because I know The Truth. But hey. Give the kid a break.

DK has suggested that Calgary’s coach looks less like a douchebag and more like a famous rodent. I must admit, there is no small amount of groundhoggery going on with Hufnagel’s …slight…overbite… I’m relatively certain that if you popped a little wee Calgary Flames jersey on this little fellow, and outfitted him with a set of headphones and a couple of oddly trained CFL officials (see cenobyte’s “CFL Officials School” series), and I bet you’d have a fairly good likeness. Still, I think this comparison still has a long way to go.

I’m not sure you’re really ready for this, but….

Once upon a time, there was a Western Canadian football team called the Calgary Stampeders. They were very popular with some people from Calgary, although it was always unclear why. You see, they played a pretty good game of football, and they’d won the Grey Cup a few times, and they looked *awfully* debonair in their red and black uniforms. But that wasn’t their secret. Really, their popularity, nay, their *success* has been due to only one thing.

And that one thing is that their coach, a so-called “John Hufnagel” is actually not who he says he is. The truth of the matter is that the Calgary Stampeders are the team they are for one reason and one reason only:

Alice Cooper is their coach.

Is this really mild-mannered John Hufnagel, coach of the Calgary Stampeders?	Or is **Alice Cooper** their real coach?

John Hufnagel?                                           or                      Alice Cooper?

That’s right. And this year?
SCHOOL’S OUT…FOR EVAR!!!

Go ahead. Just *try* and not see Alice Cooper every time you see John Hufnagel from now on. In fact, just for you, this is the only image in the entire series that I Photoshopped (badly, I might add):

THUS ENDETH THE LESSON!!!