Mike O’Shea is going back to his college days to build a staff for his first professional head coaching job.

Sources tell Sportsnet that the Blue Bombers will hire Queen’s defensive coordinator Pat Tracey to run Winnipeg’s special teams. An announcement is expected soon from the CFL club.

Tracey, a former player at Guelph, was a coach on the Gryphons staff during O’Shea’s decorated playing career at the university. He left Guelph to join the Gaels staff in 2000, first as special teams coordinator in Kingston, before moving to the defensive side of the ball. His units routinely have been among the best in CIS football.

Winnipeg’s former special teams coordinator, Kyle Walters, now the Blue Bombers general manager, was Guelph’s head coach before joining Paul LaPolice’s staff in 2010.

With the hiring of Tracey, it’s becoming clear that O’Shea has some autonomy to pick his staff. There were questions, in the aftermath of the Wade Miller hire as team president, of whether or not the football operations department would deal with interference from above.

But, early in this off-season anyway, the Guelph alumni duo have constructed the front office and coaching staffs the way they’ve seen fit.

Winnipeg is still in search of a defensive coordinator. Sources indicated a hire there is not yet imminent.