Courtesy Montreal Gazette:

Once upon a time, a chubby little nerd came to Montreal with a football team. He had a geeky haircut. Geeky glasses. Geeky clothes. He looked like an assistant junior accountant, a guy who drives a Honda Civic four-banger, visits his mother every Sunday afternoon and can tell you to the penny how much money he will have in the bank on Aug. 14, 2017.

But this chubby little nerd worked his geeky little butt off. Whether he was locked in a windowless office at the Big O or out bird-dogging National Football League training camps, he did it the old-fashioned way: He earned it, trade by trade, draft choice by draft choice.

Within five years, perhaps fewer, Jim Popp had established a reputation as one of the best general managers in the Canadian Football League.

But Sunday in Winnipeg, Popp’s football reputation reached its nadir when, as head coach of the Alouettes, he elected to go for it on a third-and-one gamble. Not a bad decision in itself, except that Popp then signed off on an empty-backfield quarterback sneak - which told the Blue Bombers, the crowd and a national television audience that Marcus Brady was going to run the ball right at the teeth of the Winnipeg front four.

How can Popp and offensive coordinator Marcel Bellefeuille argue that it was the only possible call in that situation? The Alouettes had struggled in short-yardage situations all season and throughout this particular game - with the significant

exception of Kerry Carter, who dynamited his way into the end zone when all else failed. Put Carter in the backfield and you at least sow some doubt in the Blue Bombers’ defence. Will they sneak? Option? Give it to Carter? Pass?

Without any attempt at deception on the Alouettes’ part, the Bombers stuffed it like a sumo wrestler stuffing Häagen-Dazs.

You need not have read Sun Tzu to know that surprise is vital in war, football and street muggings. Last year, the Alouettes were done in by a similar play when Robert Edwards got the ball on the one-yard line with the Als trailing B.C. by 14 points and about to score. The Lions were ready: Javier Glatt and Carl Kidd vaulted into Edwards’s face, he fumbled - and the Alouettes had lost another Grey Cup game.

Obviously, Popp learned nothing from that experience. Once again on Sunday, he showed zero imagination when it mattered most. Once again, he proved that he was not born to coach.

The question with Popp is: Why? Why would a guy who built a long and successful career in a team’s front office suddenly decide that he just had to coach?

The answer, I think, is a combination of a desire to shed the nerdy image and turn himself

Jeremaine Copeland cool, coupled with an insatiable craving for the public eye. Think about it: Any half-saturated Canadian football fan can name a dozen NFL coaches, as many or more in the NCAA and most CFL head coaches.

General managers? If you can name more than three in the CFL and six in the NFL, you need to get a life. In pro football, GMs are guys in starched shirts with collars that are a little too tight, popping ulcer pills while they watch the weekly struggle from a private box somewhere high in a stadium.

Unless they are extraordinarily successful (and even sometimes when they are) football GMs are barely known outside the towns where they operate. (Quick now, name the GM of the NFL’s New England Patriots. You can’t? My point exactly.)

As good as he was as GM, Popp clearly chafed in the background while others (Don Matthews in particular) basked in the limelight. Given a second opportunity to anoint himself head coach, Popp jumped at the chance and the transformation was complete: the shades, the hair, the beard, the Hummer, and TV cameras trained on him often enough to gratify the biggest ego. His entire photogenic family on display in the press guide.

Look, Jim Popp is not the first successful individual to assume that accomplishments in one area guarantee success in another: Michael Jordan thought he could hit the curveball. Roseanne Barr thought she could sing the U.S. anthem. George W. Bush thought he could be president.

Like Popp, they all struck out.

I liked the Popp we knew before he morphed from Honda Harry into Hummer Hank. He’s a knowledgeable, funny, gregarious guy. He knows the sport inside out. He could talk the bark off a tree. He’s open and accessible, and he has done wonders for football in this town.

During his news conference yesterday, Popp sounded like a man who is 100-per-cent sure he will be back as GM and coach. But confidence has never been the man’s problem: if anything, he has far too much.

The one concession he made to the possibility of his human frailty was to acknowledge that “it’s a tough business, guys. It’s a tough business.” It is. Too tough for a man who is not meant to coach.

It’s time Popp let that chubby little nerd out of the closet. Get a haircut, shave, stow the Crescent St. shades. Stop acting like a

20-something hotshot wannabe. Sell the Hummer for parts and buy another four-banger (or, given the five children, a nice suburban minivan.) Go back to the windowless office. Bird-dog the NFL camps. Turn up the talent.

Be what you are, Jim: The best doggone GM in the CFL. And let somebody else coach.