Wally Buono — a.k.a. Grandpa Football — will tell you the change the new regime brings to the field is easy enough to describe.

Under coach Jeff Tedford, the B.C. Lions will play with a quicker tempo in which the passing game will be emphasized. They will employ a running back/tight end hybrid — an H-back in the football vernacular. The running back, hello Andrew Harris, will likely see more throws and fewer carries. The offensive and defensive lines will be expected to play with a tougher edge.

“The things I see and hear, this is what excites me,” Buono says of the Lions’ biggest hire since, well, Buono was lured away from the Calgary Stampeders 12 years ago. “(Tedford’s) a no-nonsense guy. Everything is business on the field. Everything is going to be done at a fast pace. It’s all about breeding winning.”

Sounds great.

But there’s another challenge facing the new head coach — and the entire organization for that matter — and this one is a little more complicated. Since moving back into B.C. Place in 2011, the Lions have watched attendance decrease every season and by the end of 2014, the disenchantment in the fan base was palpable.

It wasn’t the only reason Mike Benevides lost his job after he succeeded Buono as head coach in 2012 but the deterioration of the Lions’ brand might have been the biggest. Tedford now steps in with a glittering resumé, a reputation as an offensive innovator and a clear mandate to bring about change.

His first season with the Leos begins this week with the rookie camp in Kamloops. You might say the franchise has a fair bit invested in the success of his mission.

“I don’t think it’s drastic,” Buono answered when asked if the Lions are losing their place in this market. “People want to see an exciting brand of football. It was nobody’s fault but we didn’t play an exciting brand of football (in 2014).

“People are more ‘wait and see’ than ‘I’m not interested’. That’s a different thing to me. We have to go out and do our jobs and it’s not just putting a product on the field.”

More to the point, it’s about putting the sizzle back in the Lions. And that’s where Tedford comes in.

The former CFL backup, who morphed into one of the NCAA’s most successful coaches during a decade-long stint at Cal, represents a radical departure from the Benevides/Buono tandem and, for the Lions, that is a significant development. Buono and Benevides arrived together in 2003 — Buono as the head coach and GM, Benevides as his first lieutenant — and while they enjoyed significant success together, a certain staleness seemed to creep into the Lions’ den last season, Benevides’ third as Buono’s hand-picked successor.

Or maybe it was the injuries that plagued Travis Lulay throughout the 9-9 campaign, which ended with a catastrophic 50-17 playoff loss in Montreal. But, whatever the reason, Buono and team president Dennis Skulsky determined the status quo would be a difficult sell in 2015 and, because Buono wasn’t about to fire himself, that left Benevides as the fall guy.