Ben Cahoon | From Mount Royal to the Utah Mountains

(Pleasant Grove, Utah) When the interview is over, Ben Cahoon gets up for a short photo session. He takes a pencil and stands in front of his board. “It’s cool, I look like a football coach!” “, he jokes.

However, the names, numbers and abbreviations that appear there are not game names or player numbers. They are food retailers.

Household names like WFM (Whole Foods Market), Trader Joe’s, Wegmans. Lesser-known, but catchy, names like Stinker (“stinky,” literally), “a chain here in the Rockies,” with a skunk as its logo. What about Kum & Go? “It’s quite a name,” he agrees prudishly. If you haven’t figured it out, feel free to do your research. Ideally not on your work computer.

The most popular player in recent Alouettes history is interested in grocery chains because he now works at G2G, an energy bar company founded by his brother-in-law. “I started in 2018. Casey was pretty much on his own until then. He needed help and I needed a job,” summarizes Cahoon, during a pleasant hour-long meeting with The Press.

A young Cahoon studied physical therapy at Brigham Young University (BYU). So he learned about business on the job. But “I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I negotiated my contracts with Jim Popp myself. It was a little scary sometimes! »

So he invested his all in this job. We feel him proud of the product as he shows us around the factory, especially when we enter the huge refrigerated warehouse. “Our bars are refrigerated because we don’t put any preservatives in them,” he explains. We are therefore not in direct competition with Clif, for example, because we are in different sections of the grocery stores. »

He’s comfortable, but that hasn’t always been the case.

“Retail is a crazy industry, especially the consumer packaged goods sector, CPG. It’s like a foreign language. It took me a year and a half to get comfortable. I’m still learning things. But I love this. You celebrate victories like in sport. »

Finished, the coaching

Let’s talk about sport. After 13 glorious seasons and three Gray Cups with the Alouettes, Cahoon launched into coaching.

In 2011 and 2012, then in 2016 and 2017, he acted as receivers coach at BYU. “My dream job,” he says. And this is where, for the only time in the interview, his gaze darkens.

” I loved it. It was intense, it takes control of your life. I loved teaching, building relationships with athletes. But I hate the football industry because it’s ruthless. Getting fired from my alma mater was really tough.

“It happens so often in sports. In the media, it’s very factual, a sentence in an article. But it completely changes lives. The children change schools. You don’t know how you’re going to get your next check and you don’t know how you’re going to pay the upcoming bills. You’re going through interviews, it’s stressful. It’s very disturbing. It’s hard, but it comes with business. »

To hear him speak, we understand that it will not be tomorrow that he will join his old accomplice Anthony Calvillo, offensive coordinator with the Alouettes.

“It would be phenomenal, I would be in familiar territory. The fans would be great, until we lost three games in a row. There, there is no more loyalty, and the Cahooooooon become boooooh! »

In any case, we feel he is fully involved in his business, less so in football. He says he speaks to Calvillo “a few times a year,” but not since the Alouettes won the Gray Cup. “It’s a beautiful friendship. Even if we don’t speak to each other for a long time, when we meet again, it’s as if we had seen each other the day before. »

He meets his other former teammates through his work. He saw backup quarterback Marcus Brady and Marc Trestman, who now work for the Chargers, in Los Angeles. During a conference in Indianapolis, he reconnected with Brian Bratton, also a pass catcher, incidentally a guy you would want to have as a son-in-law. Bratton is an employee of the Indianapolis Colts.

“I’ve heard from Avon Cobourne and Anwar Stewart too. And I saw Luke Fritz again, his daughter had a swim meet here. »

In his lands

When we arrive at G2G, Cahoon introduces us to his brother-in-law, meeting with two men who obviously know the former Alouettes well. During the discussion, one of them brings up the match of October 11, 2010, when Cahoon captured his 1007^e went on to become the all-time leader in catches in the Canadian League (he has since been passed). The match was completely interrupted, and the commissioner at the time, Mark Cohon, came to give him a plaque on the field.

A folkloric episode, but one which reminds us that football has given a lot to Cahoon. He is today a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and his number 86 is retired by the Alouettes.

But it was not done at zero cost. During the interview, he unfolds his knee slowly, not without grimacing. “I have big operations coming up to keep me active,” he says.

A reminder of his career? “Name a joint, and it reminds me of football. But I don’t regret anything.

“I became an outdoors guy. I don’t hunt, I’m not a big camper, because my daughters are too princesses for that! But I mountain bike, hike and snowshoe. I can’t really run because my knee is in really bad shape. »

As we go out in front of his workplace, he gives us an overview of the topography. “Over there, between the two mountains, is the Sundance ski resort, where there is the film festival,” he points out. Robert Redford lives there. »

Politically too, the family is well anchored here. The father of his partner, Kimberli, is Gary Herbert, governor of Utah from 2009 to 2021. With her and their four daughters aged 17 to 26, he is at home.

“I was born in Alberta, then I lived for a year and a half in Beaconsfield, and my family came here when I was 8 years old. It’s beautiful, a great place to raise your children. We can go outdoors. The crime rate is low. My wife’s family is from here, so we used to come back in the winter. This is my house. »