Calgary Stampeders: CALGARY (April 25, 2015) -- The year was 1990 and the Calgary Stampeders were a franchise in transition.



Under head coach Lary Kuharich in 1989, the Stamps had posted a respectable 10-8 record and finished second in the West Division but the season ended like every other season in the 1980s as Calgary was unable to win a playoff game.

So general manager Normie Kwong made a change, turning the coaching reins over to Wally Buono, one of Kuharich’s assistants in 1989. Buono’s first staff included no fewer than three men who, a quarter-century later, will be CFL head coaches during the upcoming season — John Hufnagel (Calgary), Jeff Tedford (BC) and Tom Higgins (Montreal).

Tedford and Higgins had been fellow of assistants of Buono under Kuharich with the Stamps in 1989 while Hufnagel, two years removed from the end of his playing career, was living in Calgary and working in an unrelated field when he got the call from Buono.

Buono made his head coaching debut while the other three men would eventually get their own CFL teams in the coming years, starting with Higgins in Edmonton in 2001 (and later Calgary and Montreal), Hufnagel in Calgary in 2008 and Tedford this season in Vancouver.

Tedford’s CFL head coaching debut is on the horizon but Buono, Hufnagel and Higgins have a combined 423 regular-season victories and eight Grey Cup titles as CFL bench bosses.

The only staff that can surpass that was Hugh Campbell’s group of coaches during the Eskimos’ dynasty years. That impressive collection of football knowledge included Don Matthews, Cal Murphy and Joe Faragalli and those three men along with Campbell combined for an incredible 469 wins and 11 Grey Cups.

It’s remarkable that three assistants on Buono’s first staff went on to become CFL head coaches, and it was only the beginning.

In 1991, Don Sutherin was hired by Buono. Three years later, he was head coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. The following year, George Cortez joined the Calgary staff and, like Sutherin, went on to be head man for the Ticats.

So to recap, in Buono’s first three years as Stamps coach, no fewer than five of his assistants became head coaches.

The total increased to eight by the end of the Buono era in Calgary, with Danny Barrett, Jim Daley and Mike Benevides all joining the club.

To take the exercise one step further and add another generation, three of Hufnagel’s former assistants — Corey Chamblin in Saskatchewan, Chris Jones in Edmonton and Rick Campbell in Ottawa — are part of the current CFL head coaching fraternity.

Buono has made a lasting impression on the CFL coaching world, and while he's since moved into the executive suite as a General Manager, his tree continues to grow.