BOB HUGHES WAS A WELL KNOW LEADERPOST SPORTS WRITER IN THE 70'S AND THIS IS A GOOD ARTICLE.
They've come a long way, baby! No doubt about that. As they move towards celebrating their first 100 years, the Saskatchewan Roughriders inch towards Sunday's Grey Cup game against the heavily-favoured Montreal Alouettes shrouded by a quiet sense of determined confidence. They indeed are singing, "We Shall Overcome."
It really wasn't all that long ago when they seemed overcome by one of the worst football organzations the game has ever seen. Nobody ever saw what was coming when the Riders ended the 1976 with a loss to Ottawa in the Grey Cup in Toronto's Exhibition Stadium on a cool, grey November day alongside Lake Ontario. When the sun went down that day, it went down on more than just another day. It went down on an era. It darkened a great CFL dynasty. The Four Horsemen were about to ride through Saskatchewan - Famine, Frustration, Funereal and Futility. The place badly needed to be fumigated. After 1976, the Roughriders would not make the playoffs until 1988. They would not finish in first place in the West until 2009. Talk about droughts! They seemed playing under a permanent flag of defeat.
"It's too bad they didn't have the cross-over (worst west teams make playoffs in the East) then," mourned Rider great Roger Aldag to me the other day. "We might have made the playoffs a few times that way."
But they didn't make the playoffs. Those were terrible times, that stretch from 1976 to 1988. There was the massive rebuilding job handed Ron Lancaster when his playing days ended and he came a head coach with no experience and no help. Lancaster's coaching legacy here was not the two 2-14 seasons endured. It was that he made the decision to rebuild with youth and had he not stuck with rookies Roger Aldag, Bob Poley and Bryan Illerbrun, all Regina Rams, they may never have had the CFL careers they did. There was the Evil Empire of general manager Bill Quinter and coach Jack Gotta, who detested each other in ways I'd never seen in a relationship between a coach and GM. There was the wild era of general manager John Herrera, whose sole goal seemed to be to want to make the Riders into the Oakland Raiders, right down to changing their colours to black and silver.
There was so much bad to those times that you wondered if they would ever escape them. Like great tidal waves, the bad times seemed unstoppable, and were relentless in their force.
Things really did not turn around until Roy Shivers came in as GM and Danny Barrett as head coach. At least, they got the Riders into the playoffs. Before that, there was a spurt of hope when John Gregory was coaching and Kent Austin was the quarterback. They won a Grey Cup in 1989, but soon after they went back into a skid of mediocrity. Not until Shivers and Barrett came in 2000 did the Riders show signs of improving, making the playoffs. Still, they never finished better than third.
In 2007, the Rider organization underwent perhaps the most complete and jarring changes it ever has seen. The executive level of the team was completely revamped. The board, with a chair, was placed at an arm's length distance. Put in charge of the football operation was Jim Hopson, who had played on the 1976 team and was a Regina boy. Unlike Shivers, he totally understood what the Riders were all about here. He was given the title of President and CEO. He didn't waste any time. Shivers and Barrett both moved. Hopson brought in Eric Tillman as general manager and they hired Kent Austin as head coach. Austin had been the offensive co-ordinator with the Toronto Argonauts and he brought with him an assistant coach name Ken Miller, who was well into his 60s.
No organization that I can think of turned things around as quickly as they did. The Riders would win the Grey Cup in 2007. Taylor Field was suddenly boasting one sellout after another. Merchandise sales sky-rocketed. The Riders had become Canada's Team.
Even when Austin suddenly left after one year to take an assistant coaching job in Mississippi, the Riders never missed a beat. They elevated Miller to the head coaching job and in his first year he took them to the Western final. This year, Miller's unmoving support of quarterback Darian Durant, often through some tough times, paid off in a first-place finish, a Western championship and a trip to the Grey Cup game. And, just watching them practice in Calgary, you can see the fun has come back into the game for them. Why, guard Marc Parenteau, an Exit Realty Fusion agent, has become a darling of the Montreal media because he is fluent in French.
And in the process of establishing himself in the two years he's been here, Miller has become some sort of an icon in this province. Quiet, humble, smart, a born leader, a man who never courts the spotlight, Ken Miller reminds of another great Rider coach, Eagle Keys, the architect of the last Saskatchewan Roughrider dynasty.
It brings to mind a poem the great Grantland Rice penned decades ago:
For when the Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks - not that you won or lost -
But how you played the game.
Ken Miller has the Riders playing the game of their lives. One more win, and this season's goal will have been. Indeed, they have come a long way!
It really wasn't all that long ago when they seemed overcome by one of the worst football organzations the game has ever seen. Nobody ever saw what was coming when the Riders ended the 1976 with a loss to Ottawa in the Grey Cup in Toronto's Exhibition Stadium on a cool, grey November day alongside Lake Ontario. When the sun went down that day, it went down on more than just another day. It went down on an era. It darkened a great CFL dynasty. The Four Horsemen were about to ride through Saskatchewan - Famine, Frustration, Funereal and Futility. The place badly needed to be fumigated. After 1976, the Roughriders would not make the playoffs until 1988. They would not finish in first place in the West until 2009. Talk about droughts! They seemed playing under a permanent flag of defeat.
"It's too bad they didn't have the cross-over (worst west teams make playoffs in the East) then," mourned Rider great Roger Aldag to me the other day. "We might have made the playoffs a few times that way."
But they didn't make the playoffs. Those were terrible times, that stretch from 1976 to 1988. There was the massive rebuilding job handed Ron Lancaster when his playing days ended and he came a head coach with no experience and no help. Lancaster's coaching legacy here was not the two 2-14 seasons endured. It was that he made the decision to rebuild with youth and had he not stuck with rookies Roger Aldag, Bob Poley and Bryan Illerbrun, all Regina Rams, they may never have had the CFL careers they did. There was the Evil Empire of general manager Bill Quinter and coach Jack Gotta, who detested each other in ways I'd never seen in a relationship between a coach and GM. There was the wild era of general manager John Herrera, whose sole goal seemed to be to want to make the Riders into the Oakland Raiders, right down to changing their colours to black and silver.
There was so much bad to those times that you wondered if they would ever escape them. Like great tidal waves, the bad times seemed unstoppable, and were relentless in their force.
Things really did not turn around until Roy Shivers came in as GM and Danny Barrett as head coach. At least, they got the Riders into the playoffs. Before that, there was a spurt of hope when John Gregory was coaching and Kent Austin was the quarterback. They won a Grey Cup in 1989, but soon after they went back into a skid of mediocrity. Not until Shivers and Barrett came in 2000 did the Riders show signs of improving, making the playoffs. Still, they never finished better than third.
In 2007, the Rider organization underwent perhaps the most complete and jarring changes it ever has seen. The executive level of the team was completely revamped. The board, with a chair, was placed at an arm's length distance. Put in charge of the football operation was Jim Hopson, who had played on the 1976 team and was a Regina boy. Unlike Shivers, he totally understood what the Riders were all about here. He was given the title of President and CEO. He didn't waste any time. Shivers and Barrett both moved. Hopson brought in Eric Tillman as general manager and they hired Kent Austin as head coach. Austin had been the offensive co-ordinator with the Toronto Argonauts and he brought with him an assistant coach name Ken Miller, who was well into his 60s.
No organization that I can think of turned things around as quickly as they did. The Riders would win the Grey Cup in 2007. Taylor Field was suddenly boasting one sellout after another. Merchandise sales sky-rocketed. The Riders had become Canada's Team.
Even when Austin suddenly left after one year to take an assistant coaching job in Mississippi, the Riders never missed a beat. They elevated Miller to the head coaching job and in his first year he took them to the Western final. This year, Miller's unmoving support of quarterback Darian Durant, often through some tough times, paid off in a first-place finish, a Western championship and a trip to the Grey Cup game. And, just watching them practice in Calgary, you can see the fun has come back into the game for them. Why, guard Marc Parenteau, an Exit Realty Fusion agent, has become a darling of the Montreal media because he is fluent in French.
And in the process of establishing himself in the two years he's been here, Miller has become some sort of an icon in this province. Quiet, humble, smart, a born leader, a man who never courts the spotlight, Ken Miller reminds of another great Rider coach, Eagle Keys, the architect of the last Saskatchewan Roughrider dynasty.
It brings to mind a poem the great Grantland Rice penned decades ago:
For when the Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks - not that you won or lost -
But how you played the game.
Ken Miller has the Riders playing the game of their lives. One more win, and this season's goal will have been. Indeed, they have come a long way!
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