This year's nominees are head coaches Marcel Bellefeuille of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ken Miller of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and Marc Trestman of the Grey Cup Champion Montreal Alouettes.
The event has a special connection to Edmonton: the city hosted the CFL Coach of the Year ceremony from 1966 until 2004, and the winner receives a trophy donated by the Edmonton Eskimos Alumni in honour of the late Annis Stukus, a former head coach of the Eskimos and the British Columbia Lions.
"It seems fitting that we're here in Edmonton because the Eskimos organization has always symbolized excellence, and this year's nominees for Coach of the Year are all a tremendous credit to our league," said Mark Cohon, Commissioner of the CFL.
Friday's Coach of the Year luncheon is the final event of CFL Congress, an annual three-day meeting of team and league staff that kicks off Wednesday evening with an opening session hosted by Cohon.
Most of the working sessions are private, a chance for employees to share best practices on things such as ticketing, finance and game day operations.
As part of Congress, the CFL's rules committee will hold its annual meeting over Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.
One of the topics that will be discussed is the league's 'shootout' overtime format, which Cohon asked fans to submit feedback and suggestions on early this year.
"Some of our most exciting games last season, including one of our playoff games, were decided in overtime, and that prompted some informal discussion among fans about our format," Cohon said."We decided to turn those chats into specific ideas from our fans, which have a tremendous knowledge of our game."
Fans sent in more than 2,000 rules suggestions with three-quarters of them focused on overtime.
Many want to see the current "shootout" format kept and suggested some tweaks, while others want it replaced with an additional period, such as five or ten minutes of traditional play.
Any recommendations made by the rules committee would still require approval by the CFL's Board of Governors later this Spring.
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