By Steve Milton

He won't even have to change cities to make his next stop.

The Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

It's an oversight that Bob O'Billovich isn't already in the national pigskin shrine, but that's certain to be rectified over the next couple of years because Obie has been, and is, everything that an icon of the three-down game should be.

The hall celebrates its 50th year in Canada in 2013 just as O'Billovich, 72, celebrates his. And his has definitely been a hall-of-fame half-century, highlighted by breakthroughs and innovation, resurrection and competitive dominance.

His CFL career will technically draw to a close Monday with his official retirement as the Tiger-Cats' vice-president of football operations.

But a football man's career is never really done. You cannot remove the game from his blood because his heart wouldn't have much left to pump. So hopefully we'll still find him in the fourth row of the stands at daily practice, wherever that's going to be, verbally connecting the issues of the present to the events of his past and wryly dissecting things which most of us cannot even see. Holding court, but never in kingly or dictator-like fashion.

One of the great joys around Catland the past five years - make that four because the very talkative Obie, shifted upstairs from general manager last year, was mostly isolated from the media by the rest of the front office in 2012 - has been talking football with the guy who:

oversaw the introduction of the run-and-gun into the Canadian game;

coached Toronto to its first Grey Cup championship after an unspeakable 31-year drought;

was the personnel architect of powerhouses with dynastic traits in Calgary and B.C.;

played in a Grey Cup himself and;

came to an on-field floundering Ticat franchise and built a competent football office that is full of future GMs and, quite frankly, is now able to proceed without him.

While he was a significant contributor, as coach, GM, or player personnel director, to championship teams in Toronto and Vancouver, O'Billovich's stewardship in Hamilton played to decidedly mixed reviews.

The Cats never really came near the Grey Cup in that time, and didn't develop a single quarterback of note.

They aren't much closer to untangling the traffic accident in the secondary than they were when O'Billovich arrived. But he and his scouts were also responsible for landing the terrific triplet at linebacker and detecting impact players such as Marcus Thigpen and Chris Williams. And despite a slew of injuries to tailbacks, Obie kept up a steady supply of replacements, most of them gems.

The real legacy, though, of O'Billovich's formal tenure with the Ticats has been the restoration of legitimacy to the on-field program. It is a tribute to him, his work and his reputation that the Ticats were actually overestimated at every level of the CFL during the past half-decade, ultimately disappointing because expectation was so high.

In the wake of the Bob Young revolution, as business, marketing and sales divisions were shored up and redesigned, football ops was still surfing on the seat of its pants. It was the last department to receive a serious, experienced makeover, and O'Billovich's arrival was the cornerstone of that.

The Cats still haven't won a Grey Cup since most high school kids were in diapers but they at least threaten, they entertain (on offence and special teams and you could say the defence has been entertaining … if you like that sort of comedy), and they have become a destination of choice for quality free agents.

Plus, O'Billovich introduced to the franchise a distinct philosophical mantra which swings the balance of any tricky personnel decision, now or in the future. Anyone who has worked in football ops will go to their graves chanting "Better is better."

And therein lies the central and interesting dichotomy of Bob O'Billovich.

"Better is better" symbolized that there has always been an iron football fist clenched inside the velvet glove knitted from the wool of Obie's human warmth, his deliciously-mimicked, instantly-recognizable voice and his folksy narratives of 50 years in Canadian football. One of the reasons Scott Mitchell hired him was for his cold judgment and decisiveness, far more prevalent behind closed personnel doors than the average fan would ever suspect.

O'Billovich is a longtime member of a unique subculture: American football players who came here to play and then stayed, embracing and enhancing a game and a country which was not originally theirs. Obie, Ron Lancaster, Angelo Mosca, Dick Shatto, Sam Etcheverry and scores of others - fewer now but including the likes of Anthony Calvillo, Pinball Clemons, and Orlondo Steinauer - are the Voluntary Citizenry of Canadian Sport. They appreciate, and often see deeper into, this country more than a sizeable portion of our native-borns and O'Billovich has been among the generals of that army.

O'Billovich, like a great number of football people, is a man of faith. He doesn't sell that faith like a product as so many in sport do, but neither does he ever deny it. And it's clear that faith has helped him and his wife Judy through the difficult times; the premature loss of Obie's younger brother Jack; the death of their daughter-in-law Cam just nine months after she gave birth to their grandson Quinn, whom the couple is helping to raise.

It says a great deal about who O'Billovich is and how he's comported himself around Hamilton that in a city prone to knee-jerk reaction, he is rarely indicted for his years in double blue despite his lack of Cup success here. He was voted the Argonauts' all-time coach, for crying out loud, and nobody here was crying out loud.

That's because even the hardest fans, the worst Argo-haters, the most self-pitying subscribers recognize this: despite its still-nagging shortcomings, this franchise, just like this league, is a lot better off for having had Bob O'Billovich in it.