Before his inaugural season at the helm, Redblacks head coach Bob Dyce has already made CFL history and broken ground for aspiring Black coaches — including those on his staff. (By jfreysam)
“YOU CAN’T BE WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE”
Of the 70 head coaches employed by CFL teams since 2000, just 11 have been Black. What’s more, Black coaches have lasted just 2.36 years in the job on average during that span. The league currently has two Black head coaches: Hamilton’s Orlondo Steinauer and Ottawa’s newly minted bench boss Bob Dyce.Steinauer has been at the helm in Hamilton since 2018, but Dyce’s appointment is a fresh and noteworthy one.
Roy Shivers, who in 1995 made history as the first Black GM in all of pro football with the CFL’s Birmingham Barracudas, had been named GM in Saskatchewan in 1999, and with his subsequent hiring of Danny Barrett, the Riders had formed the first Black GM and head coach tandem in league history. Soon after, they promoted another notable former player in Richie Hall to defensive coordinator, making the staff one of the most diverse in the league at that time.
Dyce explains that while he was always aware of his standing as one of the few Black coaches wherever he was, he was also fortunate to be surrounded by acceptance. He says he never faced overt inequalities in his career. But those barriers still exist. “Whether I’m the special teams coordinator or I’m the head coach, it is my desire to do a great job and be successful and work with a group of people to be successful,” he says. “Whether I’m leading a team or I’m leading a unit on the team, that is what I’m striving to do and that’s what I put all my energy into.”
Taylor understands the importance he holds as a Black coach in a league still dominated by white ones but, like Dyce, it’s not something he often concerns himself with. “I don’t always get to see how impactful it can be until I speak to someone who’s trying to get to where I am,” he says.The son of a Canadian mother and Barbadian father, Taylor learned many hard truths from his dad, who moved to Canada with his own parents at six years old and was no stranger to discrimination.
“I’ve been very lucky to be surrounded by people who are pro-equality,” Taylor says. “I was a young Black kid from Montreal and [McGrath] still kind of took a shot on me and I felt he didn’t see that race, that colour. He just saw a kid that could become a good coach.” “I know if I do what I’m supposed to do, things will go the way I want them to go,” he continues. “It’s a very internalized way of dealing with it but it can be mentally taxing if you spend a bunch of time worrying about having a shorter leash or having to perform at a certain level or else you’re not going to get another opportunity.”
“It’s tough because you don’t want to walk around angry, you don’t want to walk around worried about it, thinking about it,” Jones says. “I think you see a lot of guys that have probably stayed in Canada for that reason, because you don’t feel it as much here. That’s not to say it’s not here, as well, and things happen. But it’s definitely a different feel [in the United States].”
“It’s unfortunate. I think about it now, I knew that I was determined to play quarterback and not be shackled or anything. It did in a way hinder me because I wasn’t able to show everything probably that I could do but I started opening that up a little bit in college more,” he says. “The thing is they really just didn’t have many guys that looked like me playing in the NFL. I thought I might get a chance to go to camp somewhere.
In 2009, two years after hanging up the cleats, Jones put on the headset as the quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. From there, he spent the decade that followed quietly navigating his way through the ranks before an unexpected promotion while in Montreal.
He also noted that Dyce’s hiring was significant in that he was the winning candidate for the job, rather than simply the next-up in an interim role.
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