There’s an old saying: “It’s nearly impossible to be the one after the one.”
This is especially true in sports when it’s time to replace a legendary head coach, general manager or president who led a team through a period of unparalleled success.
On March 1, 2015, Craig Reynolds was tasked with being the one after the one when he officially transitioned from being the Riders’ chief financial officer to their president and CEO following the retirement of the great Jim Hopson.
There’s no question that Hopson oversaw the most successful era of Roughriders football, both on and off the field. Under his watch, the Riders went from a have-not franchise to the model one in the CFL, culminating with a Grey Cup championship on home turf in 2013 and the announcement of a brand-new stadium that would open a few years later.
Nothing lasts forever, though, and someone would eventually have the nearly impossible task of taking over for Hopson.
A decade later, one term has been the buzzword for Reynolds’ tenure as the man in charge of the entire operation: sustained success. It was a phrase Reynolds used when discussing the firing of then-general manager Brendan Taman and head coach Corey Chamblin in the middle of a disastrous 2015 season that saw the team start the year 0-9.
This was the first move that would define the Reynolds era in Saskatchewan. Many — myself included — believed that Taman deserved to hire another head coach after putting together a Grey Cup championship team just a season and a half prior. Reynolds felt differently and wanted to put his stamp on the team.
Reynolds wanted the Riders to be the new Stampeders of that time. He wanted to eliminate the rollercoaster that had defined the franchise for basically their entire existence.
10 years later, have the Riders achieved Reynolds’ goal of sustained success? The answer is clearly no. Since the start of the 2016 season, Saskatchewan has gone 70-67-1. Within that period, the team has finished as high as first place in the West and as low as last.
In the name of fairness, the biggest ‘what if’ of Reynolds’ tenure on the field is what would have happened if Chris Jones hadn’t departed for the NFL following the 2018 season. Whether you liked the guy or not, there’s no question that the team had been growing stronger every year under his watch, culminating in what was still essentially his team hosting the West Final in 2019. If Jones stays, perhaps the ups and downs of the following seasons don’t happen, but we’ll never know.
Things haven’t been steady as she goes off of the field for the Green and White either. After leading the league in attendance for a number of years, the Riders have lost that crown to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. An attendance drop-off was to be expected once the buzz of the new Mosaic Stadium wore off, but they have posted a few all-time low attendance numbers at the facility over the last two seasons.
That’s not to say that the team is in shambles financially. It’s all relative compared to what this market was used to. The Riders still averaged over 27,000 fans per game at Mosaic Stadium in 2024, a number that is still higher than a number of capacities across the CFL. To the team’s credit, they’ve also recognized that things needed to change in order to get more fans through the gates.
One thing that has always been vital to the Riders’ success at the gates has been their connection with the community, which noticeably regressed during the Jones era. Since then, strides were made under Craig Dickenson and Jeremy O’Day, and they’ve continued with current head coach Corey Mace.
2024 was very much a wait-and-see year for the fanbase after back-to-back seasons where their team lost every game after Labour Day and missed the playoffs. I suspect we may start to see a recovery at the gates in 2025.
Some of the issues facing the Riders off the field have also been out of their control. Inflation, especially at the pumps, might affect the Riders more than any other team in the league given that a not insignificant portion of their fan base travels more than an hour for home games.
The best tool for the business of football is to play good football — just ask the Blue Bombers, who were in a far worse position 10 years ago. Their road to the top wasn’t a straight line, either.
After some swings and misses, Mace feels like the right head coach for the team, and O’Day has quietly built the team back to the level of a Grey Cup contender.
I think it’s safe to say that the past 10 years have not gone as well as Reynolds had hoped, but at least now it feels like he may be closer than ever to his goal of sustained success.
