Courtesy Vancouver Province:

The days ahead for the Bob Ackles-less B.C. Lions will be difficult.

The team is trying to regroup from the sudden death of their president and CEO, who suffered a heart attack on Bowen Island, as well as an 0-2 start, and get ready to travel to Winnipeg to play the Bombers on Friday.

There are a lot of issues there, but in the bigger picture, how do team owner David Braley and the B.C. Lions replace an icon?

While Ackles wasn’t very tall, the shoes he left under the desk are awfully big. And they were well worn. The soles and heels had seen a lot of kilometres and were awfully thin from carrying him to this luncheon or that banquet, always beating the drum to get the Lions and the CFL back to respectability in the Lower Mainland.

What’s minor football to do without someone of Ackles’ stature to follow? Where does this leave the Water Boys, a club he started to get Vancouver and B.C. businessmen involved with the team and connected to the football community?

Most of all, who will sit in his chair as president and CEO? How do you find someone who could command the same kind of respect? Who can speak so knowledgeably about what the pending NFL invasion means because he worked for the Dallas Cowboys, Phoenix Cardinals, Philadelphia Eagles and Miami Dolphins for 15 years?

They’re the enemy, and the CFL has lost the one guy who could warn it of the tricks the NFL might have in store for the unsophisticated territory north of the border. There’s nobody else with that kind of inside knowledge. They could hire an American from the NFL, but first and foremost, Ackles was a Canadian. He loved the CFL and the Canadian game, and he was really worried about opening the door to the Buffalo Bills to play preseason and league games in Toronto. Who is going to be the CFL’s Paul Revere?

Closer to home — and it might not even be in good taste to begin speculating, with Ackles’ passing so new and so many trying to deal with their sense of loss — it’s unlikely Braley will rush into filling his position. But I know that Bob believed George Chayka, the vice-president of business he inherited when he accepted Braley’s challenge to come back and turn the franchise around in 2002, was capable of taking over the top position.

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