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The numbers are beyond crazy.

Wally Buono has coached or played in 14 Grey Cup games — winning seven — and has been around the Canadian Football League for only 45 years as a linebacker, punter, assistant coach, head coach, general manager, team president and, now, back for the last hurrah, his final season coaching the B.C. Lions.

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It’s a lifetime for some — a coaching lifetime that will end when this season does. He has won 276 games, more than any coach in CFL history, more than anyone in pro football history except for Don Shula and George Halas.

And not to be the least bit underrated, but probably appreciated, is the fact he has managed all of that as a Canadian, in a league historically dominated by American coaches and American managers.

Buono was an immigrant kid who grew up not speaking English in Montreal. Italian was his language of choice. And he was a kid whose mother cried when he left home for Idaho State University. What kind of decision was that when he had a construction job waiting for him after high school? Who thinks that way?

But he played at Idaho State, then for the Montreal Alouettes in that unusual combination of linebacker and punter, and he followed that by moving from assistant coach in Montreal and Calgary to a head-coaching position that changed his life — and the lives of so many that have played for him over the years.

The Sun had a rare opportunity to have a lengthy conversation with the 68-year-old living legend on Thursday as the unofficial farewell tour continues with a game on Saturday afternoon in Toronto. Here is Wally Buono, unplugged, in his own words.