Edmonton Elks’ president Victor Cui is openly contemplating personnel changes in an attempt to pull his organization out of a historic tailspin, but the man in charge of football operations does not appear to be on the chopping block.
Speaking to TSN and assembled media after his team’s 37-29 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Thursday night, Cui was frank about the need for change.
“That is always something I think about, good or bad actually, because that’s my job. I’ve got to make those tough decisions,” he said. “It’s also discussions that I’ve had with Coach (Chris Jones) and our assistant GM, with Geroy (Simon). Let’s be honest with ourselves, let’s put our egos aside, and really understand what does it take to win? What are we going to do?”
That question is more pressing than ever after the Elks’ 20th consecutive home loss, which matched a North American pro sports record that has stood since 1953. The defeat also marked the first time an Edmonton football team has opened the season 0-6 since 1938 — 11 years before the current CFL franchise was founded.
At least in the short term, the answer is unlikely to include moving on from Jones, who has served as the team’s general manager, head coach, and defensive coordinator since he was hired in December 2021. With so much responsibility tied up in one man, a mid-season firing would be highly impractical.
“What maybe some people forget about our business is that with a nine-team league, making dramatic changes in your football operations midseason is very difficult,” Cui explained. “Because it’s not like you can take from somebody else’s organization, so you have to kind of balance where you are in the season. What kind of changes can you realistically do?”
Beyond Jones, the Elks currently have nobody on their staff with the head coaching experience to seamlessly assume an interim role. Even if they did, Cui warns of serious financial ramifications based on the CFL’s current football operations cap.
The executive denied reports from multiple sources that Jones’ contract is structured as four separate one-year deals, which would allow the team to escape a firing unscathed. Instead, he insists the commitment is for a full four seasons and that a coaching change would “absolutely” hamstring the organization.
“Of course, that would hamstring any business,” he insisted. “Those are the financial things that we have to think about.”
The Elks are still paying out the contracts of their previous management group, former general manager Brock Sunderland and head coach Jaime Elizondo. The pair were fired following a 3-11 season in 2021 that was mired in controversy, forcing the team to be stingy with their future hirings and save money by giving Jones multiple responsibilities.
“I think him wearing multiple hats has helped us because we’re working with less money with our salary cap. Because if you remember in 2021 when we made these massive changes in the organization, we’re still carrying that severance for multiple years,” Cui noted. “We’re essentially working with half a million dollars less than every other team. That’s the fact of our business. How that impacts our operations, (on) multiple levels of the quality people and coaches and all that kind of stuff that we can hire.”
Jones was a bandaid for that problem, returning to the team that he coached to a Grey Cup victory in 2015 and saving the team from paying three separate employees. However, the 55-year-old has gone 4-20 in his first two seasons and hasn’t found a viable quarterback.
With the team no closer to breaking out of their slump, his contract isn’t the only financial concern. The Elks lost $3.3 million amidst slumping attendance in 2022 and Cui acknowledged that another deficit is expected if the team can’t turn things around, though he could not predict how large the losses would be.
“It’s hard to say at this point. We’re a third of the season into our home (schedule). Without a doubt when our performance is poor like this, casual ticket sales just get hard. It doesn’t matter what you do, because it’s hard to attract fans into the stadium,” he said. “I think we’re doing a great job with our team by making the experience good for families and children and affordable and we continue to do that. But ultimately the product (on the field) has also got to play a role as well.”
The team reported a paid attendance of 21,173 on Thursday night but only a small fraction of that were actually in the stadium. Given their budgetary constraints as a community-owned team, Cui is quickly running out of ways to lure locals into a venue that hasn’t seen a victory since October 2019.
He still believes Jones is the man to break that streak but the team has lost the benefit of the doubt
“I can say that Coach has this reputation where maybe some people wrongly judge him as having a big ego. I’ll tell you, he wants to win and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to win and it’s not his ego that’s in the way on this,” Cui insisted.
“We’ve got a young team, and there’s all these reasons that we could say why we’re not winning, but we’ve got to win. That’s it. We’re a performance-driven organization and a performance-driven business, and our fans in Edmonton expect wins. I expect wins, our coaches and our players expect wins, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
The Elks next visit the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Thursday, July 20, before hosting the B.C. Lions on Saturday, July 29.
