The first all-Black management team in professional football dealt with criticism and mediocrity
“What do I think of? I think it was a job well done, particularly with all the shit I went through.”
Shivers also acquired the quarterbacks who won Saskatchewan’s two most recent championships: Kerry Joseph in 2007 and Darian Durant in 2013.
Inducted two years ago into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, Shivers is being enshrined this weekend into the Roughriders Plaza of Honour, appropriately alongside Durant. It’s also fitting that the Roughriders are playing the B.C. Lions on Saturday, because Shivers still rues a 27-25 overtime loss to B.C. in the 2004 Western final, a crushing defeat which kept his team from getting to the Grey Cup.
Hired on reputation by then-Riders president Bob Ellard, who didn’t know his new GM was Black, Shivers arrived in Saskatchewan to replace Alan Ford in the waning days of 1999. Because of his ability to stockpile Grey Cup-winning rosters with B.C. and the Calgary Stampeders, Shivers had been the CFL’s first Black general manager with the short-lived Birmingham Barracudas in 1995.
He took over a Riders team that had fallen on hard times financially, posted a fifth straight losing season (although it somehow qualified for the 1997 Grey Cup) and had a pitiful player list that even his blue vocabulary couldn’t properly describe.
“I was just telling the story about the (University of) Texas coach, Steve Sarkisian,” said Shivers, recalling his initial assessment of Saskatchewan’s quarterback depth. “In our first meeting we’re calling all the names, his comes up and I say, ‘F***, he can’t play!’ We cut him. Now he’s making $10 million a year. He should give me half of that. No s***!
“We went over that whole roster and there was a running back I liked (Mike Saunders), but he had a bonus coming. We’re figuring out financial stuff, so I called (Ellard) and he said, ‘You can give it to him. Good kid.’ So we gave (Saunders) $15,000 and never heard from him again.”
Shivers brought along a Black head coach, B.C. Lions assistant and CFL journeyman quarterback Danny Barrett, making them the first all-Black management team in pro football. Shivers often said he wouldn’t have been able to face his late father if, given a management opportunity, he didn’t pull along another Black man.
Shivers ultimately made peace with Hopson. Never one to mince words, Shivers still bristles when talking about Tillman, former Riders president Tom Shepherd and legendary Leader-Post columnist Bob Hughes.
Although the relationship started congenially with Rider Nation when Shivers and Barrett took over, as the team flat-lined there were rising complaints that the franchise was too committed to signing Black players and wearing black uniforms. It was ugly racism, uncalled for and wrong.
“I kept telling Danny and everybody, ‘We’re gonna keep f***ing around here and get fired, then somebody is gonna come in and win the Grey Cup with our team,” said Shivers. “It happened.
“The only thing I’ve got going for me is my honesty. I’m not a millionaire, but if you ask me a question, I’m gonna give you an answer.”
The Regina Leader-Post has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe.
With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark leaderpost.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.