LAKE FOREST, ILL.—Lots of coaches have football smarts. Lots of coaches have championship resumes. Marc Trestman has both.

He’s also one of just five who have been a head coach in both the NFL and CFL — joining Bud Grant, Marv Levy, Hugh Campbell and Mike Riley.

“I’m pulling for him,” says Levy, best known for winning two Grey Cups with the Montreal Alouettes and leading the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowls. “Great coaches have the ability to teach and the ability to lead. Great leadership isn’t getting them to follow you; it’s getting them to join you.”

Trestman, head man of the Chicago Bears, knows the difference.

“Our job is to use football as a toolbox to grow men,” says Trestman. “That’s what it’s for. Football teaches us how to be a part of a community, to be selfless, to be interested in the whole more than yourself.

“People really want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Football is a great platform to do that. . . . They don’t want to be alone. They want to be with others. They want to be with others doing something that fulfils them. The only way they can is by working to fulfil others, to serve others.”

While he is in charge of the Bears, Trestman is not above serving his players. The most recent example involves Henry Melton. The defensive tackle blew out the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the team’s third game of the season against Pittsburgh. It was bad news for the Bears. It was particularly bad for Melton, who is in the last year of his contract, his career in jeopardy.

Some coaches would have shrugged. An unofficial slogan in the NFL, after all, is “next man up” when someone gets hurt. It’s not a league designed for nice guys.

But it was Trestman who made sure Melton got home safely that day. And it was Trestman with Melton and his mother the morning after while they waited for the test results, which revealed he would miss the rest of the year.

“We had a player hurt,” says Trestman. “It wouldn’t matter if he was the first player on the team or the 53rd. He had a significant injury and he was hurting.”

That was the message he delivered to the Alouettes for five years, winning the Grey Cup in 2009 and 2010. (Nice guy that Trestman is, he brought six CFL assistant coaches with him to Chicago.)

He’s had early success in the NFL. The Bears have been one of the better clubs at 3-1 heading into Sunday’s home date with the New Orleans Saints. Should they keep it up, Trestman’s journey is well worth watching from north of the border because any success he has in the U.S. could have a direct effect on the coaching ranks in Canada.

The Toronto Argonauts are the reigning Grey Cup champions and head coach Scott Milanovich worked as Trestman’s offensive co-ordinator in Montreal. Could he be the next to head south? The NFL is a copycat league, after all.

“There’s no question about that,” says Riley, former head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and San Diego Chargers, now at Oregon State. “You watch trends in the NFL. All it takes is some success in a transition like that to spark other people’s interest.

“If there’s one good coach that has come in from the CFL, teams will be thinking: ‘Maybe we should check out who else is coaching up there.’ ”

TRESTMAN DIDN’T have to worry about learning the American game when took over the Bears — he’d spent 17 years as an NFL assistant — but he did have to learn the 12-man, three-down, bigger-field Canadian version when the Montreal job opened up.

“I think Canadian football is much harder to coach,” says Trestman. “The rules are very intelligently put together. It’s a great game. There’s more thinking that goes on because of the timeouts and the changes of possession. I think it’s a thinking man’s game up there.”

It is telling that the Bears’ star quarterback, Jay Cutler, had a say in Trestman’s hiring. A former QB himself at the University of Minnesota, Trestman had been the QB guru Cutler sought out before going pro. Careful what you wish for: Trestman quickly sat Cutler down and went over video of everything he was doing wrong.

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Trestman offered no special treatment. In return, Cutler has treated the coach well: He’s off to the best start of his career, despite a tough loss last week against Detroit.

“Trestman was even-keeled: ‘Time to go back to work. It was one game,’ ” Cutler said of his coach’s reaction to the loss. “Win, lose, Trestman is even-keeled. He concentrates on just a few things. He concentrates on getting better each day and doing everything to win football games.”

The Alouettes miss him as much as the Bears love having him.

“He’s the best coach I’ve ever played for,” says Als slotback S.J. Green. “He helped transition my career. He helped me become a pro and learn how to be a true professional. The type of guy he is, it rubs off on others.

“His philosophy: If you could win today and basically take advantage of today and make the most of the opportunity of that day, then you’re setting yourself up for success tomorrow. He just cares about life. He cares about people and what’s going on in their life.”

Bears receiver Earl Bennett says his team sees the same things in Trestman that the Alouettes found so appealing.

“He’s totally different. A lot of guys are buying into how he’s coaching,” says Bennett. “Every man, play for the man next to him. At the end of the day, you can look at the guy next to you knowing that he did the same for you.”

TRESTMAN LOOKS to his family for support. He had a deal with Montreal to live in Raleigh, N.C., with his family half the year. This time, his wife Cindy and two daughters, Sarahanne and Chloe, moved north to Chicago. After his first win, he had a private moment with them plus his mom and dad, who flew in for the game.

“I was terribly happy for my wife, who has been on this crazy journey with me for all these years,” he says. “I was happy that my father could see his son be in that position, coaching his first game in the National Football League.”

Trestman insists he was long ago at peace with the notion that he might never land his dream job, an NFL head coaching position.

“We loved coaching in Montreal,” says Trestman. “We loved everything about it. Then this happened. We just tried to embrace it, enjoy the moment, coach this team the same way we coached up in Montreal. It hasn’t changed. Still sending the same messages and coaching the same way.”