It appears the public campaign put on by his former players was exactly what Mark Kilam needed to get his first CFL head coaching job as he was officially introduced by the Edmonton Elks on Monday.
“The thing that stood out the most was the overwhelming amount of support from the players that he’s coached and the lives that he’s touched out there. I went through the interview process and I called players and there was not one candidate that the players were more excited about than Mark,” said new general manager Ed Hervey.
“There’s many coaches we could have selected to come in and coach with experience and all these other things, but for what we need to accomplish in Edmonton right now and moving forward — getting people excited and being able to touch lives and be able to really create that environment where the players feel that someone cares about them — there was no question who was going to get this opportunity.”
Rob Maver, who punted for the Stampeders for 10 seasons under Kilam’s tutelage, got the ball rolling with an op-ed that was published on 3DownNation. Several players, including Rene Paredes, Aaron Crawford, Charlie Power, Alex Singleton, Juwan Brescacin-Jones, Charleston Hughes, Toshiki Sato, and Fraser Sopik, shared the article alongside their own words supporting Kilam’s candidacy on social media.
Some of the players who spoke out remain in Calgary, while others are now with different CFL teams, in the NFL, or retired. Regardless, their message was the same: Kilam was the best man for the job.
“I want to thank all the current and former players for their wave of support,” said Kilam, who became emotional as he spoke. “It’s hard to put into words what that support meant to me. It really just meant everything. It meant that those relationships that we created were real and I just want you to know that I’ve got nothing but love and respect for you guys. I can’t wait to slap hands when I see you.”
Loud self-promotion and backdoor politicking — both of which are common in professional sports circles — feel inherently un-Canadian. It seems fitting, then, that Kilam, a native of Lethbridge and lifelong resident of Alberta, got the job because of a movement that was started organically by outside sources who believe in him.
Maver didn’t write his article because somebody put him up to it. It was entirely his own initiative. The same was presumably true for those who posted their endorsement of the person they watched quietly go about his business for the past 20 years. Kilam doesn’t have social media, indicating he only reads the posts shown to him by his wife or mother.
It was generally believed that Rick Campbell, who was recently fired by the B.C. Lions, would become the Elks’ next head coach. He was hired by Hervey in the same capacity following the 2019 season in B.C. and his father, Hugh Campbell, is arguably the most popular figure in club history, having led Edmonton to a record five consecutive Grey Cups from 1978 to 1982.
For a team determined to honour its history and recultivate a winning culture, the name “Campbell” would have helped bring fans back to an increasingly empty Commonwealth Stadium. The 53-year-old also would have supplied 10 years of head coaching experience, along with one Grey Cup and one Coach of the Year award.
Kilam, who was a finalist for this same job three years ago when Chris Jones was brought back aboard, may have donned red and white for the past two decades, but he spent the 20 years before that bleeding green and gold.
He attended his first CFL game at Commonwealth Stadium at the age of six and first played football at Gilbert Paterson Middle School, whose team wore green and gold and bore the Elks’ former moniker. He wore the same colours in high school at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute and again at the University of Alberta, where he was coached by legendary Edmonton quarterback Tom Wilkinson.
“I can’t wait to put these colors back on. I’m humbled, and I’m grateful for this opportunity. I can’t wait to get going,” said Kilam.
“I know you (the fans) are starving for this program to succeed. Something was taken from you and I can promise you we are going to work our ass off to bring that feeling back. We are going to rep this city, and we’re going to rep these colors with pride, and I’m asking you to give us a chance so that we can prove that to you because that’s who we are and what we’re going to be about.”
If his energy rubs off on fans the same way it has on players — and Hervey, who typically isn’t a rah-rah type of guy — it shouldn’t take long for the local faithful to be won over by their team’s new head coach.
