There already weren’t enough hours in the day for CFL coaches. Now, there won’t be enough coaches.
Riders Head Coach Craig Dickenson told the Sports Cage that he will have one fewer coach on his staff for the 2021 season. A cut to the football operations salary cap necessitated some hard decisions.
“Last year we had 11–10 assistants and myself,” Dickenson says. “With the salary cap for the football operations going down 20 per cent there’s just no way we could keep 11 coaches.”
Listen to Dickenson via the Sports Cage on demand
Losing one coach won’t be enough to meet the new cap. Pay cuts are coming for the staff.
“Everybody knows they’re going to take a little bit of a (pay cut). I’ve had good visits with all coaches and they know…it doesn’t take a math degree or a rocket scientist to understand that we need to get back to playing football, everybody’s got to take a little bit of a cut and we just got to roll up our sleeves and get to work.”
Dickenson and GM Jeremy O’Day chose to reduce the staff by one and cut pay for the rest. In Calgary, the Stampeders let go of two coaches, moved another to strength and conditioning, and kept their pay at the same level as 2020. Two slightly different approaches, but both focused on people.
“We didn’t want to lose anybody, that’s the bottom line. And I’m disappointed that we have to lose even one,” says Dickenson. “But the other thing is, you’ve got to be able to offer guys enough money to support their families. And we felt like if we didn’t lose a coach–or two to be quite honest–it was going to be to the point where we weren’t going to get coaches to come back.
“When tough times come, drastic measures are needed.”
Dickenson says seven of the 10 coaches are confirmed. He’s hoping to announce his full staff by the end of the week.
CFL teams are not allowed to sign players right now, so the roster remains in doubt for 2021. Compiling various reports it appears the team has seven starters under contract for 2021–including QB Cody Fajardo, offensive linemen Brendon LaBatte and Dan Clark, and halfback Loucheiz Purifoy. When the league says ‘go’, Dickenson and O’Day are reach to pounce.
“We hope we get the core group back,” says Dickenson. “We hope we can get as many players back as we possibly can. We know that we may not be able to do that, we know that some guys’ minds may have changed. It’ll be 18 full months since they’ve played football. But we do hope to have the majority of our team back.”
