You can watch Ted Goveia introductory press conference at noon
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After the press conference I was mildly impressed
He seems to have a really good head on his shoulders and the fact that he grew up coaching Canadian football. Starting in the Burlington minor System.
Also impressed me. And he was smart not the camper when he was asked about Danny
So weâll see how this goes. But I think Hamilton did a fairly decent job finding a GM
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There was a reason Winnipeg has been so successful the last several years and itâs due to having solid Canadian content on the roster and TG was a big part of assembling that.
Continuing to build on some of the pieces we already have here will take this team a long way.
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Excellent press conference. Hopefully Ted has great success in his tenure here. 
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âWhen I was a kid, the minimum wage was $2.85,â Goveia, from nearby from Burlington, Ont., said at his introductory press conference inside the Ticatsâ locker room at Tim Hortons Field. âI saved my money to come to as many games as I could.
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His first order of business is to talk with the teamâs 34-year-old incumbent quarterback, Bo Levi Mitchell. Goveia wants to stick with Mitchell because of the progress the two-time Grey Cup champion exhibited under head coach Scott Milanovich in 2024.
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I watched the Press Conference.
Definitely got the impression that he was speaking from the heart . . . very passionate about football.
Seems like a very smart guy. Not sure how many opportunities he has had in his career to stand at a podium like that, in front of the media and conduct a Press Conference. I suspect not too many . . . and yet at the very end of the event, he deftly avoided a pointed question about recruiting Danny McManus to join him in Hamilton.
Goveia was also media savvy enough to not take the bait when he refused to lay out a timeline for the Tiger-Cats ending their Grey Cup drought. Instead he referred to all of the hard work that needs to be completed to hopefully contribute to a result like that.
Unfortunately, while avoiding the âGrey Cup timelineâ question, he allowed himself to proclaim an oft-repeated fallacy:
âThe goal is always to win the last game.â
Another flawed version of this statement, is:
âOnly one team wins their final game of the season.â
Of course this is not true. Both the Calgary Stampeders & the Edmonton Elkimos managed to win their final game of the 2024 season. And then they promptly returned to the locker room the next day to pack up their things to go home. If the Hamilton Tiger-Cats were good enough to defeat the Ottawa RedBlacks in the final Week of the 2024 schedule, no one on this Forum would have concluded that they had achieved their goal for the season.
Of course Ted Goveia knows this. The simple truth is the ONLY goal is to win the Grey Cup each year. In attempting to get âcleverâ with the media, by clearly stating the one mantra that most GMâs would willingly proclaim, he ended up pooping the bed. But that is OK. We will forgive him for that one. I am not sure why he was unwilling to state the obvious, but we know that he means well. I have no doubt about that.
The one other area where I believe he mispoke, was in responding to a question about the first step in the process of leading this team to the Promised Land. Ted Goveia went into some detail in describing how he needs to do a deep dive on the roster, and in order to be fair to the players, he is going to reach out to every player on the roster to speak to them personally, âin an attempt to make those tough decisions early & build from there.â
At no point did Ted mention sitting down with his Head Coach, Scott Milanovich, and other key members of the staff, to discuss their evaluations of each player.; I am sure that they have completed that process. Once again, I am going to give Ted Goveia the benefit of the doubt and assume that he just failed to articulate that key piece of the process.
At several points, Goveia mentioned that he is very process driven, and that he contributed to developing the processes the Winnipeg Blue Bombers use. There is no way that the Head Coach, Mike OâShea, did not have a large influence on those decisions. Same thing in Hamilton, Scott Milanovich & Ted Goveia, have to be âon the same pageâ in terms of navigating the whole process of evaluating the roster together.
I am confident that Scott Milanovich will be very involved in this process; Ted just failed to articulate this fact in the Press Conference. He knows that a GM cannot just deliver a bunch of high quality lemons to the Coaching Staff and instruct them to go out and produce some lemonade. What if the Coach does not like lemonade??
So, I will repeat that I have every confidence that the Coaching Staff will be integrated into that process, even though Ted made it sound like he alone will be making those tough decisions.
Let the tough work begin; there will be a lot of paddling happening, out of sight, below the surface of the water, in these early daze.
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You might be the only person to NOT equate the âlast gameâ to be the Grey Cup.
âYou play to win the gameâ after all.
As for HIM talking to all the players - whatâs wrong with that? He hanât been a member of this organization, so he isnât immediately aware of everything about every player on the team. I think this comment is about him taking ownership of the pending decisions - whatever they are - as the General Manager of the team.
For the first time in MANY years, there is a clear chain of command with this team - Ownership > Pres of HSG > Pres of Football Ops > GM > HC > Coordinators > Position coaches > Players. There have been far too many years, IMHO, where the âGM by committeeâ and âeveryone gets a voiceâ and âHead Coach with extra titlesâ and âCoordinators and Assistant HCâ bogged-down the decision-making process.
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A lot to unpack here, but I just want to touch on two things.
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A timeline stated means nothing. Zero. Less than that actually (5 year plan, anyone??). There are way too many variables (injuries, finances, pandemics wiping out seasons) and he knows that. If you take care of the steps, the results happen. He knows that. Besides, the aforementioned 5 year plan is ridiculed incessantly here because it wasnât reached. The last time a timeline was given, it wasnât met. As I said, a mentioned timeline isnât worth anything.
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donât you think part of the âdeep diveâ would include talking to the coaches about the players? Ultimately, he has to decide the roster, itâs on him so itâs good he wants to get to know everyone. But just because he didnât mention the coaches, doesnât mean it isnât part of his process. He said âdeep-diveââŚwhich is all encompassing.
Of course, Iâm sure you knew this and just âfailed to articulate thatâ in your post.
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pandemics wiping out seasons - The other 8 teams dealt with the same problem. It all comes down to âtalentâ how to attract it and how to recognize it and how to retain it.
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I was going to respond to Justdeweyâs post with pretty much the same points that you made, so no need for me to duplicate it, so Well Done. 
I appreciate Deweyâs detailed posts but here he is almost making Goveia seem like some sort of narcissist that will rule with an iron fist. To me it seemed like the Bombers success came from a well structured collaborative effort on the GM front between Walters, Goveia, and Danny Mac, with significant input from Coach OâShea.
I would fully expect Goveia to carry over this âCollaborative Teamâ philosophy here to the Hammer. Whatever tactics that helped the Bombers to achieve 5 straight Cup appearances will most certainly be employed here, and Coach Milanovich will undoubtedly, also be instrumental in player personnel decisions.
I think for 2025, we finally have the people and managerial structure to steer this team towards a winning culture.
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New scouting and player personnel positions are filled:
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