The Board of Directors for the Saskatchewan Roughriders pulled the plug on Roy Shivers' 6 and a half year experiment today. . . actually, it was on August 18th, before the Hamilton trouncing. The decision was unanimous.

As can be expected, RiderFans is going nuts. I can imagine that Riderville is going nuts too. The arguments run both ways and they are good arguments. I'll summarise those against the BOD's choice.

1. Bad Timing. It's not a good idea to eliminate your chief talent getter just before NFL training camps finish up. Traditionally, the CFL teams pull in some 'not quite' players from the NFL cuts to fill some gaps in their teams.
2. Right message, wrong guy. Why get rid of Shivers? This is all Danny's fault!
3. What? He was a success! The Riders have been to the play-offs four of the last years, two of them to the Western Division Final. Had McCallum not pooched a kick we would have gone to the Grey Cup.
4. Oh. My. God! Here comes another Al Ford. No explanation necessary, all Rider fans remember the Rider teams during Al Ford's tenure as GM. (I won't defend Al Ford here, that's for another post.)
5. The BOD's tried to involve themselves in a football decision, Shivers told them to stick it . . . Good for him!

Now then . . . my rebuttals.

1. The BOD's have said that a new GM will be in place before the end of the week. The name being tallied about the most is Eric Tillman. Tillman can most certainly pick up where Shivers left off. For that matter, Shivers was in Saskatchewan for most of those NFL training camps, so apparently you don't need face time to evaluate NFL cuts . . . just contacts. Anyone the BOD's hires can do this as well.
   The fallacy that Shivers was the only person capable of recruiting players in the CFL is just that, a big lie. Edmonton, BC, Montreal and Calgary have proven that with a consistency that Saskatchewan can only envy.
   In the off-season, aside from losing a bunch of free-agents and retirees the only major signing was Kerry Joesph and Jason Armstead . . . from a folded Ottawa team. Had Ottawa not folded, would we have a new quarterback and a good receiver? I don't think so.
2. In Jim Hopson's presser today, he iterated that the BOD's feel they only have two employees. One is Roy Shivers, the other being Jim Hopson. If that truly is their mind-set then they couldn't fire Danny. (See #5 for a bit more about this.)
3. Success in Saskatchewan, just like everywhere else, isn't being better than you were seven years ago . . . it's being better than you were last year. Roy Shivers has brought us up from horrible to mediocre but he has not taken us any further.
4. To all the change resistance folks . . . jump off a plane, would ya. Not all change is bad, not all GM's are Al Ford. Wait and see. We knew where we were going with Roy. We've been down that road and it didn't get us anywhere. It is time for new blood, maybe a new direction.
5. There are rumours, started by CBC during the game on Saturday, that Roy had been told to get rid of Barrett. Shivers refused to fire Barrett. Hopson categorically denied that this happened.
   I don't know what is true about this, but we know a few things:
   
   1) Shivers has not fulfilled his job requirements in 6 of 7 years.
   2) The BOD has access to records of attendance and we are down this year big.
   3) We are at 4.5 million in payroll.
   4) The Salary Management System comes in next year and a lot of salary (read: veteran players) will have to be dumped.
   5) 35 players are in their option or free-agent year and no significant movement has been made regarding contractual negotiations.
   6) Roy was not going to be here next year.
   7) The next three games are against weak sisters, all in the eastern division.
   
   Now, given all of that, and an employee that flatly refuses to do what his bosses tell him . . . well, no manager in a business can afford to have that kind of relationship with their employee. The bosses had to be the bosses and Roy Shivers had to be told to get lost.

Now, we will have a new GM by the end of the week. His first job will be to evaluate the head coach. Danny Barrett will either motivate his players and start winning consistently or he will not and he will be gone after the Labour Day game.

Except Danny Barrett has no power to win games, so that means that either the players realize that the SGEU job security is gone and they respond or they simply quit. The players know the saying, 'you can't fire the whole team, so you fire the GM/Coach'. They know the fans are calling for blood, they see the empty seats. I hope they respond to this with the skills and capabilities that we all know they possess.

Cheers,
lance

Others on the Rider news today:
CanadianRules.ca, Accidental Deliberations

Posted at: 19:39 | Comments (2) | [riders] | G