The legacy of Ted Goveia: the CFL’s best-kept secret
Photo courtesy: Bob Butrym/RFB Sport Photography
Danny McManus wasn’t formally introduced to Ted Goveia until they were both hired as assistant general managers with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers following the 2013 season. They had different backgrounds — Ted was a longtime CJFL and U Sports coach who had four years of CFL experience with the Toronto Argonauts, while McManus was a Hall of Fame quarterback and a household name across Canada. Regardless, they had the same goal: to fix an awful football team. The pair ended up being a perfect match.
“I think he was interested in learning the game from a player’s standpoint and I was interested in learning the game from a scout-coach-front office guy’s standpoint, so it was mutual. We were picking each other’s brains to help us down the road. He’s very bright — a masterful mind that knows football in and out. I probably learned more about football after my playing career than I did while playing just being around him,” McManus told 3DownNation via telephone.
“I thought I knew what evaluating a player was when I was playing because I was looking at defences all the time, but I was more scheming than I was looking at players’ abilities or their skill sets. Ted got it deeper. He’d say, ‘I see this guy playing in our league, but maybe he’s not a cornerback, maybe he’s a SAM linebacker,’ or, ‘This guy is a running back, but he’s got good hands — let’s see if he can run some routes with the waggle.’ He always wanted to see what we could get out of a guy who could make our team better and that was fun because it was always kept you on your toes.”
McManus spoke on the phone with Ted virtually every day during their 11-year tenure together with the Blue Bombers, so much so he said it made his wife jealous. They also spent a lot of time together in-person, including stints in Winnipeg during training camp and expanded practice roster, free agent workout camps in the U.S., all-star games in January, and NFL training camps in July and August. A lot of the travel was done by car, which McManus called “windshield time.”
Ted was famous in league circles for having the worst travel luck of anyone — he always seemed to encounter the most cancelled flights or lost luggage.
“If anything could go wrong on a trip, it would usually happen to Ted in some form or fashion, so I always tried not to travel with him as much as I could,” said McManus with a laugh. “I’d always say, ‘Let me meet you somewhere because I don’t want any of that bad luck falling off on me.’”
Ted sometimes made cryptic social media posts like, “United 1, Ted 0.” That was his way of letting friends around the league know that he’d suffered yet another travel mishap with one airline or another.
According to McManus, Ted could also be his own worst enemy on the road. With his mind constantly focused on winning football games, it could be hard to tackle the basic logistics.
“He’d lose his passport about every other trip. I don’t know how many pairs of glasses he went through, just leaving stuff all over the place,” he said. “I always had what I call ‘Ted time.’ If I wanted to leave somewhere at 11 o’clock to get to wherever we were going, I always gave Ted 10:30 because I knew he might have left something up in the room or gotten a phone call when he was supposed to jump in the shower. His classic was always, ‘Hey, I need a coffee before we go anywhere.’”
Tom Flaxman, who got his first CFL job this year when the Tiger-Cats hired him as a national scout, originally met Ted in 2001 when he was playing for the Mississauga Warriors of the Ontario Varsity Football League (OVFL) as a high school student. Ted, who was in his first year coaching at McMaster University at the time, often attended the team’s practices.
“He wasn’t trying to recruit any of us when he came out to the practices,” said Flaxman. “He just wanted to be around youth football and community football and develop young players — that’s who he was, even at a very early age in his coaching career.”
When the recruitment process began, Flaxman noticed that Ted operated much differently than his competitors. There was no fawning, kowtowing, or sycophantic praise — Ted gave it to players straight whether or not they wanted to hear it.
“Ted always was very transparent, very honest — somewhat direct at times — but I really appreciate the honesty and transparency. He always did it in kind of the Ted Goveia humorous way and it made you feel really good, even though he was telling you things you really needed to hear. That was the big thing about Teddy — he wouldn’t always tell you what you wanted to hear, he told you what you needed to hear,” said Flaxman.
“It’s definitely something that I learned from him and I really tried to apply to my own style when I got into coaching and started doing a lot of the recruiting in U Sports.”
When it came time for Flaxman to commit to a school, the choice was easy — he wanted to be at McMaster with Ted. The Marauders won 33 straight regular-season games and three consecutive Yates Cups while Ted was on campus.
“He’s still probably the best special teams coach I’ve been around — the way he was able to communicate and teach, but also motivate and really get the most out of everybody,” said Flaxman. “Everybody wanted to play for him, they’d run through a wall for that guy — our special teams unit certainly played like that. We were pretty good on teams back at that time. He did a great job with that side of it.”
The coaching never stopped even after Ted left for UBC in 2005. Flaxman started his own 17-year U Sports coaching career in 2008, which included stops at Acadia University, the University of Toronto, Western University, McMaster, and Queen’s University. He continued to seek advice from Ted throughout his various stops, particularly during his two-year stint with the Varsity Blues as Ted was in Toronto at the same time with the Argonauts.
“He knew the Xs and Os were important, but it was really the relationships that meant the most to him and that’s the kind of teams that he tried to build, whether it be at the U Sports level or later in his career at the CFL level. He wanted to build a true team and a true culture within the unit and he was great at it,” said Flaxman.
“I think you see that a little bit with our team this year — we’ve been able to build a real team atmosphere here around Hamilton and it’s been a really special place.”
Dwayne Cameron, who now serves as a U.S. scout and the director of Canadian scouting for the Calgary Stampeders, met Ted while they were collegiate rivals in the OUA — Cameron at Wilfrid Laurier University and Ted at McMaster. He and Cameron rekindled their friendship when they both entered the CFL for the first time in 2010 — Cameron with the Tiger-Cats and Ted with the Argonauts. A passionate sailor, Ted took Cameron and Cameron’s son, Greg, on a three-hour boat ride on Lake Ontario before a game in 2012.
There were people who rose to the CFL through U Sports before Ted but many of them ended up back in the collegiate ranks because they couldn’t find sustained success at the professional level. As someone who went to the CFL and rose to the highest level of player personnel, Cameron considers Ted to be a groundbreaker.
“(To get hired in the CFL) you either have to be American or — and we see this every year — there’s a half-dozen newly-retired players that are just given jobs. Whereas Ted, he got in the CFL in 2010. He was already 40 at that point in time. He had already spent 15 years coaching before somebody would give him a job,” said Cameron.
“We won three Yates Cups at Laurier, we won a Vanier Cup at Laurier, we had first-round draft picks coming out of Laurier. No one from the CFL offered us jobs — no one — but they would go take a guy from Bowie State in Maryland, they’d give that guy a job. Ted blazed the trail. Ted led the path. He’s the one that opened the door for the rest of us.”
“I mean no disrespect to anyone else — I’m sure there’s someone else who made the jump at some point — but in terms of myself and my relationship, Ted was the guy that I looked at and was like, ‘I want to follow his path. He’s proven to me that this can be done, and so now I want to do it.’”
Vince Magri, who is now a pro scout for the Buffalo Bills, played at McMaster and met Ted when he returned to the school a few years later as a coach in 2012. Where it not for Ted, he may never have realized it was possible to pursue the career he has today.
Photo courtesy: Bob Butrym/RFB Sport Photography
“Ted definitely is and should be remembered as a trailblazer,” said Magri. “As a U Sports player, you never really thought about player personnel as a potential career. You knew there was an avenue to be a pro football player, you knew there was a profession in coaching, but you never really knew about front office opportunities. When you thought of it, you probably thought that was more likely an American position, even in the CFL.”
“When Ted would come through McMaster as a scout with the Argos, then seeing him elevated to director of player personnel — where he’s in charge of not just Canadian players, but American players, scouting the NCAA, scouting the NFL, and having contacts south of the border as a Canadian who came up through the entire Canadian system — it opened my eyes to the fact that there may be a possibility to do this as a career.”
Magri was hired by the Argonauts as their video coordinator in 2013 and shared an office with Ted and Chris Rossetti, who has also gone on to the NFL. Once a quarterback at the University of Guelph, Rossetti is now in his fourth season as the director of pro scouting for the New York Giants. Magri, meanwhile, became Toronto’s director of Canadian scouting in 2014 after Ted left for Winnipeg before ascending to his own role in the NFL.
“Sharing an office with Teddy was awesome. He was a mentor to me — he would always show us not just what he was doing, but why he was doing it, why he was negotiating a certain way with an agent, why he was looking at certain players,” said Magri.
“He wouldn’t just tell you to do things, he would explain why. He would take the time to take you under his wing and try to teach as much as possible. It helped, too, that we had some shared experiences with me being a McMaster guy and him having coached there — we knew a lot of mutual people. We kind of came from a similar background, both former O-linemen from a similar landscape. I can’t say enough about that year, the amount of things I was able to learn from him, and it continued.”
Though they worked together for only one year, Magri and Ted maintained a friendship for the next decade — even as their teams competed in two of the most recent Grey Cups.
“We saw each other on the road all the time,” said Magri. “We would text all the time. We’d always call each other after drafts and kind of compare and contrast. We’d jaw at each other and we’d talk about other picks around the league. We always stayed friends.”
Ryan Rigmaiden, who is now the general manager of the B.C. Lions, first met Ted in 2013 while attending the Shrine Game. Chris Jones, who was on staff with Ted with the Argonauts at the time, was a mutual friend and the three of them met up for drinks. Ted mentioned that he played the guitar and Rigmaiden, also a passionate guitarist, immediately perked up.
“We just instantly became friends,” said Rigmaiden. “It was a really cool, lucky thing of two like-minded guys in the same league competing against each other, and that grew to common respect. It was awesome. I liked him immediately and we had so much in common that I just knew we were going to be great friends.”
Rigmaiden was in his first year with B.C. at the time but joined the Blue Bombers as their director of college scouting in 2018, a stint that lasted three years. He initially negotiated with higher-ups Wade Miller and Kyle Walters and got the sense that they weren’t going to be able to agree to terms on a contract. Ted intervened and the two sides ended up striking a deal to bring Rigmaiden to Winnipeg.
“That room that we had was truly special because it was Ted, Danny, and myself. The work that we did in Winnipeg was just the epitome of grinding. During training camp, we had a windowless room in the bowels of the stadium — we called it ‘the dungeon.’ We’d be there at 6:30 in the morning and stay till sometimes eight or nine o’clock at night. We just grinded and grinded and grinded.”
Ted’s birthday was June 2, which was awful timing for a CFL personnel guy. Training camps are often still in full swing around that time, demanding long hours and time spent away from loved ones. There can also be heated disagreements about which players should be kept and which ones should be sent home.
During Rigmaiden’s first year in Winnipeg, he and McManus decided to buy Ted an ice cream cake to celebrate his birthday. The team was in the midst of a long, hard training camp and the pair thought it would be funny to get something unconventional written on the cake. “Happy birthday!” wasn’t going to cut it.
“There’s a young lady working at the counter and I told her what we were doing. I’m like, ‘Can you write, “Go f*** yourself” on this cake?’ She just starts dying laughing, and she’s like, ‘Yeah, absolutely,’” said Rigmaiden.
“We presented the cake to Ted and he just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He takes a picture with it and he posts it on Facebook. I couldn’t believe he did that. He was making fun of himself and how goofy this birthday was.”
Ted was clearly very fond of the cake and the photo he took with it as he reposted it to his Facebook page for his birthday in 2022.
“Thanks for all the birthday messages and calls,” he wrote in the caption. “This is still one of my best presents of all time — thanks to the boys in the Peg and of course the talented staff at Dairy Queen. I appreciate the kindness.”
That was Ted’s sense of humour — dry, witty, and self-deprecating.
“Ted was a funny-ass dude,” said Cameron. “I’ll tell you what we’re all going to miss — those of us who sit at the end of the 40-yard dash at the combine, it’s never going to be the same again. I promise you that and it doesn’t matter whether you ask (Redblacks assistant director of U.S. scouting and football operations) Phil (Moreau), (Alouettes assistant GM) P.Y. (Lavergne), (Lions assistant GM) Rob Ralph — it doesn’t matter who you ask. The finish line at the 40 might have been the funniest spot that any of us would experience throughout a 365-day calendar year, and it was always the same dude telling the stories.”
Photo courtesy: Bob Butrym/RFB Sport Photography
“He was a great storyteller. Things that you wouldn’t believe happening, they only happened to Ted,” said McManus. “His facial features when he was telling a story, his perfect pauses when he put them in there. You’d hear his opening line of, ‘Hey, do I have a story for you!’ and you knew it was gonna be good, so you just sit back and you take it in.”
“Teddy did it with humour,” said Rigmaiden. “He made you laugh when you were going over things and he challenged you to be better. I can’t say enough about him as a scout, having a terrific eye for talent, but the human factor of Ted was maybe the greatest thing.”
Relationships between personnel people and player agents can be complicated given the nature of the business. Agents are tasked with squeezing every dollar they can from teams on behalf of their clients, which can lead to tense negotiations. Personnel people can be sour when an agent signs a key player to a rival team and agents can get angry when teams refuse to pay what they believe their client is worth.
It would be understandable if Fred Weinrauch, who represents more CFL players than any other agent in the league, had a contentious relationship with Ted but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The negotiations weren’t always easy but the pair maintained a strong friendship.
“Ted and I had a lot of battles over the years on contracts, he was a tough negotiator. You’d get the deal done with Ted and it would be fair but he’d make you work for it,” said Weinrauch. “The nice thing about Ted, though, was that you could always separate the work and the person. You’d battle on a contract but then he’d crack a joke and you’d go right back to being friends, which is rare. He was just a good person.”
Ted was a coach at UBC when Jim Mullin started doing Canada West television broadcasts in the mid-2000s. Mullin came to practice one day armed with a notebook and a laptop and Ted spotted him in the stands almost immediately and climbed the stairwell to introduce himself. The two remained close friends for the rest of Ted’s life.
“The thing that I quickly learned about Ted was he understood how all the parts connected around a successful football program,” said Mullin. “You needed that megaphone to get the message out about your program — not just to bring fans in, but to get philanthropy contributing, build energy around the program, and get buy-in from the administration.”
Mullin became the president of Football Canada in 2019, a role he held for five years. Not long after he was elected, he asked Ted if he’d consider joining the board of directors. It would have been understandable if Ted declined — he was working tirelessly for a championship CFL team at the time — but he instantly agreed, wanting to give back to the game. He served a three-year term, then agreed to come back for an extra one-year term.
During this time, Mullin stayed overnight in Ted’s basement suite in Burlington for a Football Canada trip, an arrangement designed to save the organization some money. He went out on the back porch one afternoon and heard a high school marching band start to rehearse in a field no more than a half-kilometre away. When the ensemble finally wrapped up their rehearsal almost two hours later, Mullin complained about the noise.
“I said, ‘Man, that must drive you crazy.’ (Ted) goes, ‘No, it doesn’t — that’s a high school marching band. The reason the high school marching band is there is because it’s a byproduct of the football team and the two support each other. When a football game comes around, the marching band’s there and makes it a bigger event. It’s a great thing.’”
Ted sometimes took his work outside just to listen to the marching band play. A lifelong lover of music, he enjoyed the ensemble and the spirit it provided to the local community.
“He saw how all the parts came together,” said Mullin. “He saw how the football team needs the band, the band needs a show, and all of that needs to come together to be a central focus in the community. He approached Hamilton-Burlington that way. He approached the football community that way. He approached Canada that way.”
Mullin’s tenure at Football Canada ended in a less-than-optimal way, though he feels he was successful in passing the organization off to competent leadership that can usher in a new era of success with the Olympics on the horizon for flag football. Were it not for Ted, he fears things may not have worked out.
“He was a rock for me and — behind the scenes — a rock for the organization. I think if it wasn’t for some of his words and some of his efforts, the organization could have been in a very, very bad place,” said Mullin. “It’s not about passion for Ted — it’s about integrity with this guy. He has integrity with the way he engages with people, with the way he asks questions, with the way he tries to understand the path that people are on.”
“At the end of it, I even apologized to him for the amount of time that it took up and he said, ‘No apology necessary — we had to be there doing that job to make sure that the organization moved forward in the proper direction.’ When he committed to things, Ted committed to things. He didn’t do half measures in regard to football.”
Cyril Penn, who had yet to turn 25 at the time, volunteered at the annual College Gridiron Showcase in 2021 and noticed Ted and McManus sitting in the front row meticulously taking notes. The native of Sonoma, Calif., who now resides in New York City, didn’t recognize the logo on their clothing but was impressed by how diligently they worked.
Weeks later, on a flight out of Alabama following the annual Senior Bowl, Penn and Ted ended up seated across the aisle from one another. The aspiring personnel man introduced himself to Ted before settling in to watch film of the game. The pair ended up talking about the event and watched some of the film together, hitting it off and staying in touch.
Penn was a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at the time and their football team had a Canadian linebacker on the roster. Ted requested information on the player and Penn provided it before asking if the Blue Bombers had any internships available. Winnipeg hadn’t previously taken on interns in the scouting department but Ted went to the trouble of having a role created just for Penn.
Winnipeg sent Penn to five NFL training camps with the promise that he would be up for a job if he did well. In 2022, he was hired as a U.S. national scout with the Blue Bombers before being promoted to the role of assistant director of player personnel in 2024.
“Ted went out of his way for me in a way that no one else has, and really gave me my break,” said Penn. “He was not only always scouting players, but scouting coaches and scouting people. The way he puts it is he scouted me out. He saw me doing the work and showing up to the events, and said, ‘That’s the kind of guy that can work in our organization,’ and sort of went after me.”
It’s common for people to network with higher-ups with the goal of future promotions in mind. Ted liked to do the opposite, wanting to know which unproven commodities could learn and grow within the right organization. Particularly when visiting the U.S., he also used these interactions to ensure people knew all about three-down football and the CFL.
“Everywhere you go, you would see Ted networking down, trying to talk to every single intern in the building, trying to share some wisdom with them. He liked to talk to people, he liked to diffuse things with humour, and he was so memorable to everyone,” said Penn.
“He liked to speak with people as much as possible, not only to get a sense of who they were and connect with them and grow his own understanding of different people’s roles at different organizations, but also to talk to people that didn’t know about the Canadian game, about the CFL. He told me, ‘The more you talk to people, the more you can grow our game, and that is extremely important.’ Wherever he went in the U.S., he was essentially a walking billboard for Canadian football, the CFL, and, for most of the time I knew him, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.”
Photo: Ted Goveia/Facebook
With the help of Ted, McManus, and more, the Blue Bombers certainly became a team worth talking about. After two tough years to start a new era in Winnipeg, the club went 95-45 from 2016 to 2024, earning eight straight playoff appearances, winning nine playoff games, reaching six West Finals, making it to five Grey Cups, and winning two CFL championships.
Football is always a collaborative effort but Ted played a huge role in recruiting championship-level talent to the Blue Bombers. Among the players with no previous CFL experience who became key contributors in Winnipeg were Kenny Lawler, Jackson Jeffcoat, Deatrick Nichols, Brady Oliveira, Marcus Sayles, Janarion Grant, Chris Streveler, Maurice Leggett, Drew Wolitarsky, Redha Kramdi, Drew Desjarlais, Tyrell Ford, Kyrie Wilson, Brandon Alexander, Lucky Whitehead, Taylor Loffler, Jovan Santos-Knox, DeAundre Alford, Liam Dobson, Casey Sayles, Tanner Cadwallader, Ontaria Wilson, Evan Holm, Nick Hallett, Shayne Gauthier, Demerio Houston, and more. The list goes on.
“The reality is Ted ran that (personnel) department, so whether it was his guy or whether it was my guy and he agreed with it — or Danny’s guy or whoever — Teddy made a lot of really, really good decisions that are directly responsible for the success of that Winnipeg dynasty. That’s what made it work is the ability to trust your other scouts in the room and make the best decisions possible,” said Rigmaiden. “All the Canadian success of draft picks there, I would venture 90 percent of those were Teddy in terms of foundational pieces.”
In 2021, the same year he met Penn, Ted reconnected with Jennifer Martin, a friend from his days at Assumption High School in Burlington.
Martin was out sailing with friends when she recognized Ted working on his boat as they pulled into the dock. The former classmates were Facebook friends but hadn’t spoken in 30 years. They shared a glass of wine and a long conversation and soon became a couple, remaining together for the rest of Ted’s life.
In professional football, it can be tough to balance work life with a personal life. Ted was able to accomplish this by taking Martin on the road with him whenever possible.
“He brought me everywhere,” said Martin. “He brought me on his road trips, we traveled across Canada and across the U.S. He always made me a part of his work and traveling life because he was gone so much.”
After the 2024 season, Ted achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a CFL general manager when he was hired by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He’d previously come close to taking other GM jobs but this seemed like a perfect fit. The Tiger-Cats were his local club and the favourite team of his late mother, who would call Ted on game days when he was with the Argonauts to proudly say, “Oskee Wee Wee!”
At the age of 54, Ted had finally made it. After 30 years in football, which included three Yates Cups and three Grey Cups, he was a CFL GM.
“(The Tiger-Cats) kept him hanging. It was quite the interview process, long and tiring. It was hard for (Ted) because he’s quite the negotiator and he was negotiating for himself. He’s used to negotiating for everyone else,” said Martin. “We were so happy that we got to stay home — we didn’t have to move. He got his dream job in Hamilton where he always wanted to end up. His reaction was a bit of amazement but he felt like he earned it.”
Two of Ted’s first hires in Hamilton were Flaxman and Penn, the latter of whom became the team’s director of player personnel. It wasn’t hard for the burgeoning scout to leave a Winnipeg team that had gone to five-straight Grey Cups because he wanted to be with Ted.
“I would have followed Ted to any team because Ted was a star, he was my guy, he was my mentor,” said Penn. “I knew that if I was around Ted, I was going to keep learning and growing — not only that, but that I was going to win because wherever Ted went, you knew he’s going to do whatever it takes to win, and he knows how to win.”
In April, only four months after being introduced as the new GM in Hamilton, Ted was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer. One of his first calls was to McManus.
“He definitely was going to battle it as much as he could, and in that conversation, he said, ‘I’m determined to win at this as well,’ and he was going to fight it head-on and get all the treatment that he needed,” said McManus. “The comfort I could give him was, ‘Anything you need, buddy — you need me there, you need me anytime, call me.’ That was the only kind of support that I could give him.”
McManus, who considers Ted his brother, ended up staying with him in Burlington for a time. He drove Ted to radiation treatments in Hamilton, providing the two longtime colleagues with some much-cherished windshield time.
“I always told him, ‘Every day, you’re winning, buddy. Every day, you’re winning — just keep winning,’” said McManus. “Even when I saw him (two days before he died), I mentioned that to him: ‘You’re winning, keep winning.’”
McManus said that Ted had a positive demeanour throughout his treatment. Their conversations remained on football unless Ted wanted to discuss his treatments or his illness, which was rare as he mostly wanted to focus on other things.
Martin was a rock throughout the process.
“Jen took great care of him,” said McManus. “You talk about a person stepping up? She did a wonderful job a I thanked her 1,000 times for taking care of Teddy.”
“(The Tiger-Cats) hooked him up with the team doctor right away. They were there every step, they visited in the hospital. They just treated him like family since day one,” said Martin. “I was very thankful that he was with the Ticats when this happened because we’re family to them. I’m family to them. They’ve helped me take care of everything. It’s just been unbelievable, really, the support they’ve given me.”
When he received word of Ted’s illness, Rigmaiden thought of the old photo of Ted with his expletive-adorned ice cream cake. He had some t-shirts made with the photo printed on the front and when he, Ted, and McManus eventually got together for a visit, they took a new photo wearing the t-shirts.
Photo: Ted Goveia/Facebook
The Lions paid tribute to Ted in a game against the Blue Bombers earlier this year and TSN showed this photo on the broadcast. Though the text was small, the word “f***” was legible and left completely uncensored. Seven years after it was purchased to celebrate Ted’s birthday, the ice cream cake made national television — obscenities and all. Ted watched it on TV and thought it was hilarious.
Cameron visited Ted three weeks before he passed away. Holed up in his home in Burlington, Ted, who didn’t care for being in hospital and chose not to enter hospice care, was still thinking about football.
“The first thing he said was, ‘I miss being there (at the stadium),’” said Cameron. “This is a man that’s battling to try and extend his life, and he knows ultimately that’s not going to work, but yet all he’s thinking about is he misses being in the building with the guys. That’s just who he was.”
Mullin visited Ted’s home twice after his diagnosis — once in May and once in August. He marvelled at how effectively Ted was able to manage the Tiger-Cats despite his ongoing treatment and all the ill-effects that accompanied it.
“He was dealing with pain — tremendous pain — and with that pain, you can lose track of things,” said Mullin. “When the phone rang and it was from the Ticats and it was an athlete or somebody on staff, it’s like nothing happened. He could bear down, he could focus, he could have those conversations.”
“He tried till the very end to keep working,” said Martin. “That’s all he wanted to do when he got diagnosed. He didn’t want to travel, he just wanted to work. He wanted to finish doing everything that he was trying to do.”
“When I first started dating him, his best friend said, ‘You know Ted’s already married, right?’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, he’s married to football.’ That was true — football always came first, but I loved that about him. I loved his work ethic. I loved his drive, his want and need to make everything better. He was amazing.”
Though she’s unsure if it was an “official” engagement, Martin became Ted’s fiancée sometime this summer.
“When Ted found out that he had less time — he wasn’t able to continue chemo — life kind of changed at that moment. We knew there was no time left. He was given his last few weeks or months, they couldn’t be sure,” said Martin.
“Ted was laying on the couch, he wasn’t feeling well. He looked at me and he said, ‘How would you feel about marrying me?’ We both cried and I said, ‘I would love to marry you.’ He said, ‘You would!?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ But we didn’t have enough time, so we didn’t. We didn’t have the time to do it.”
With his Tiger-Cats first place in the East Division standings at 8-5, Ted died during the early morning hours of Friday, September 12. He was 55 years old.
“To me, it’s absolutely tragic that the man is not going to get the opportunity to enjoy (being a GM) even for one year. He’s not going to get to see it through, but look where this team is now. This team hasn’t been over .500 in what, four years? What’s different this year? Ted Goveia is different,” said Cameron. “It starts at the top. Ted brought in good people. He wanted to make sure they were football guys who are like-minded, who are grinders — guys who are going to work their butts off because that’s what they love to do.”
“Ted is an icon,” said Weinrauch. “He’s done it all at every level — CJFL, U Sports, CFL — he’s coached, done personnel, everything. He’s got a complete resume. The only thing missing was the GM job and he got that this year and built a great team. If he’d had another few years, he would have ended that Grey Cup drought (in Hamilton). His team might even do it this year.”
“With Ted, there was no purpose to get recognition for it. The purpose was to win. If you win enough, that recognition comes to you,” said McManus. “People saw it with what we’ve done at Winnipeg and gave them that opportunity at Hamilton. You can ask some of the Hamilton guys that I spoke with — the whole thing they say to me is, ‘I wish I would have hired him sooner.’”
“Ted was almost like a Renaissance general manager because he could see all the pieces. That’s one of the things that (Tiger-Cats CEO) Scott (Mitchell) discovered, I think, once he had hired Ted. The feedback that I got from Scott was he just shook his head and said, ‘Why didn’t I do this six years ago? This is the guy,’” said Mullin.
“(Ted would have made the Wall of Honour in Hamilton) and it would be as much for his record as it would be for how he brought elements of the community together in that stadium for those 10 events every year, and how he connected with people in that community. A lot of people have a singular focus and lose sight of the things that are important. Teddy saw it 360 and I think that’s what made him such a unicorn.”
“As a young Canadian guy from Toronto trying to carve a way out into a profession that’s pretty tough to get into, Ted really showed out there for us and was always a mentor of mine from when I started coaching all the way till he hired me here in Hamilton,” said Flaxman. “His phone was always on. He took a lot of pride in trying to mentor young coaches, trying to give young coaches an opportunity to grow in the game and open up some doors that were maybe not open for Canadian guys coming up.”
“Unbeknownst to him, Ted was a mentor to us (U Sports guys). We had similar aspirations, and so we were kind of chasing his path, chasing his success. He had a goal of becoming a CFL GM — and I make no bones about it, I have the same goal and aspiration — and so I’ve always tried to pattern my process (after Ted),” said Cameron. “His legacy is going to live on through a number of us.”
Ted wasn’t just a mentor to personnel people, but even to those in adjacent professions — some of whom were even his senior.
“It might sound a little weird because I’m a little older than Ted and we were on opposite sides of the aisle in a way, but he was like a mentor to me,” said Weinrauch. “He taught me a lot about the business and about football and he was very impactful on me as a person. We talked constantly. Him or I would be driving and it’d be like, ‘Hey, I’m killing time, you got an hour?’ We’d talk for hours and often about more than football. We did that for each other all the time.”
“(Ted) probably is the funniest guy I’ve ever met,” said Magri. “It wasn’t just that I’ll miss, it’s also the football talk. You could call Ted at any time of the day, any day of the week — if it was football-related, especially — and you could talk ball with him for hours. He loved the game, he understood the game, and his sense of humour was second to none. Anytime you can combine football talk with his sense of humour, it was the best.”
“I’m going to miss the stories,” said Flaxman. “I’m going to miss having Ted to go to, a guy that really supported me so much. I would not be in this position if it weren’t for Ted — he hired me, obviously — but I wouldn’t be where I am in my career if it weren’t for Ted Goveia. I don’t know where I’d be. I don’t even know if I’d still be in the profession.”
“He was really a second father figure for me,” said Penn. “He had all the answers and advice and wisdom about anything football or otherwise. (What I’ll miss most is) just the ability to give him a call. If you talk to Ted and you’re in a crisis, and he’s in your corner, he’s going to help you figure it out.”
“I think everybody can count maybe two or three people that intersect their lives that are great friends,” said Mullin. “He’s one of them and I feel like I’m just lesser now that he’s not on this earth.”
“He’s an ambassador for football in Canada,” said McManus. “I think football in Canada is a lot better today because of the efforts that Ted did on daily basis.”
“If there’s a silver lining in all this, I’m glad that people are learning about my friend Ted,” said Flaxman. “He was a really special man, and he really had an incredible impact on the Canadian game, especially at the U Sports, CJFL, amateur level. We wouldn’t be where we are as a sport in this country without Ted.”
“I miss his laugh, I miss his smile,” said Martin. “He was my best friend.”
Though he’s no longer with us, the secret’s out: Ted Goveia is and will always be a Canadian football legend. His legacy will live on in those he mentored, recruited, coached, and won championships alongside.
In a way, one might say that Ted will never truly be gone.
Photo courtesy: Bob Butrym/RFB Sport Photography
