The e-mail arrived from the south of France in the wee hours of Sunday morning from the long-time radio voice of the B.C. Lions, J. Paul McConnell.
Call it the first of countless tributes to former Calgary Stampeders wide receiver/defensive back/head coach/general manager Jack Gotta, who died Saturday at 83 at a long-term care centre in Cochrane.
“What I remember most of Jocco is that he was maybe the happiest, and certainly the most enthusiastic, football coach the CFL has ever seen,” the retired McConnell wrote from other side of the Atlantic. “A true why-not kind of guy, always happy to see you, always moving.
“He was a great storyteller.”
Talk to any number of Canadian Football League coaches, players and reporters, and they’ll tell you Gotta was one of the most engaging storytellers in the history of the three-down circuit.
That’s mighty praise indeed for a league that has seen the likes of Ron Lancaster, Cal Murphy, and Bobby Ackles, just to name a few of the legends that have passed on in recent years.
“He was almost like a kid himself as a head coach,” says kicker J.T. Hay, who played for the Stampeders from 1979 to 1988. “He just liked to have fun. He liked to joke around. He liked to keep the room loose.”
When Hay missed (and the record book shows it happened a time or two), Gotta greeted him on the sidelines with a smile.
“He was always positive, like, ‘don’t worry about it, we’ll get the next one.’” Hay says. “He just loved everything about football.”
A native of Ironwood, Mich., Gotta broke into the CFL in 1956 as a wide receiver/defensive back with the Stampeders. The two-time all-star jumped to the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1960.
“He was a good-looking, single, tall, Italian,” says sport columnist Bob Hughes, who went on to become publisher of the Regina Leader-Post. “I remember he used to stand outside the old LaSalle hotel on Hamilton Street in Regina. Every pretty girl that would come by, he would hand them his card with his phone number on it.
“It was amazing how many phone calls he would get.”
From Regina, Gotta jumped to Montreal in 1964 where he played one final season with the Alouettes.
The following year, he kicked off his coaching career an assistant with Saskatchewan in 1965 and moved to Ottawa in 1968.
He became head coach of the Rough Riders in 1970, leading Ottawa a Grey Cup victory in 1973.
In 1974, he coached the Birmingham Americans to the first and only World Football League championship. Three years later, he touched down in Calgary as head coach, general manager, and would-be saviour of a Stampeder team coming off five consecutive losing seasons –including an abysmal 2-12-2 stinker in 1976.
“It was way worse than dark,” say Stamps wide receiver Tom Forzani, who played for the Stamps from 1973-83. “It was midnight for the Stampeders. So Jack came in at a time when it was very necessary to have leadership.
“Jack had an outstanding reputation as a winner. So when we heard he was coming, all the players in town were very excited.”
That excitement turned into peals of laughter as Gotta went to work on building a contender.
“One of my favourite stories was when we were playing at home against Toronto,” says equipment manager George Hopkins. “Bernard Quarles was our quarterback, and he had a really rough first quarter.
“Jocco took him aside on the sidelines and looked at him and said, `Bernard, throw to the guys in red.’ ”
Under his direction, the guys in red became respectable again and marched into Edmonton for two consecutive West Division finals (only to fall short against the five-in-a-row Eskimos.)
Tired of losing to Edmonton, Gotta stepped aside in 1980 to concentrate on his GM duties and hired no-nonsense Ardell Wiegandt as head coach.
“Let’s just say Ardell was a drill sergeant for the U.S. army,” Forzani said. “Jack realized the Stampeders needed some discipline, so he went out and got a drill sergeant. That’s just a perfect indication of how he realized what the Stampeders needed.”
The Stamps faltered under military rule, and Gotta stepped back behind the bench in 1982 and 1983. Over five seasons at the helm of the Stamps, he posted a record of 42-34-4.
A three-time winner of the Annis Stukus Trophy for the CFL’s coach-of-the-year, Gotta worked in the television booth in 1984 before coaching the hapless Saskatchewan Roughriders for two years to wrap up his career.
“Jack always had a saying when his teams would get killed,” Hughes said. “And he used that saying probably about 10 to 15 times every year.
“He would come into the dressing room and say, `don’t ask me anything. Just say lightning hit the outhouse.”
In lieu of flowers, the Gotta family asks that donations be made to Alzheimer Society of Calgary.