By Arash Madani,
CFL.ca
Eric Tillman had learned his lesson, and paid for it, before.
And despite all the factors that would suggest otherwise, the timing could not have been better and the situation not at all more designed for Tillman’s mark to be put on a franchise continuing to dream for a home playoff game.
A couple of days after Roy Shivers was inexplicably fired in Regina, the 49-year old redhead became the 14th general manager of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
This year, there was no way Tillman was turning the job down.
It has been well documented how he refused the gig with the Riders in 1999.
But what drew few headlines was the last time a team came calling at the man from Mississippi. That was after the 2003 season, two years complete in Tillman’s tenure of helping launch the Ottawa Renegades. The old ownership regime of the Calgary Stampeders had a keen eye on Tillman. They were impressed how the expansion club had reached the seven-win mark after Year 2 and offered the smooth-talking football executive a long-term deal to turn around a club that had then been a joke during the Michael Feterik ownership era.
“It was difficult, very hard in fact, to turn down the offer,” Tillman told me after he said no to Calgary. “But my loyalties were with the Renegades and what we were building in Ottawa.”
Meanwhile, an ownership divide splintered the Ottawa team in 2004 – Tillman’s final year under contract. The ultimatum was given from the top to spend little – even the lunacy of questioning the need for a No. 3 quarterback by upper management (yes, that is a glimmer of how unbelievable it got).
After his contract expired on New Year’s Day, 2005, Tillman found refuge in broadcasting over the last year-and-a-half. And at some points was left wondering what could have been for he and his young family (wife, Francine; daughter Alex, almost 3; son Jack, 1) had the Tillman’s moved to Calgary.
Until this week.
Shivers was shown the door on Monday, and moments later Tillman answered the phone from Riders president/CEO Jim Hopson. In a matter of hours, suddenly, at the mid-way point of the season, Eric Tillman found himself back in the front office of a CFL team.
“I don’t think I would be afforded this opportunity again,” admitted Tillman at his introductory press conference Wednesday.
Shivers lasted six-and-a-half years in Regina.
Hired back in 1999 – after Tillman turned it down, of course – he inherited a miserable carcass of a team. Piece by piece, he and the coach he hired, Danny Barrett, began the re-transformation.
Making Regina an attractive place for free agents to sign; an 11-win season in 2003; a field goal away from the Grey Cup the following year, and finally some on-field respectability for a Riders club that needed it badly.
With the service he put in, and the success that was reached, Shivers deserved better than the treatment of his last few days with the team. Being promptly dismissed two days after a convincing 46-15 win over Hamilton? Fired after a victory, at home, with a re-tooled roster from the off-season now looking as if it is clicking? Shown the door now, instead of before the season, when he and Barrett had reportedly cleaned out their offices?
And how does it look when his successor is named 48 hours after the firing?
Bush.
And we don’t mean Davin.
While it is not the ideal way a new GM wants to take over – at the mid-way point of a 4-5 campaign with possible dissention and the coaching staff, all in one-year deals, feeling they are lame duck – Eric Tillman did not waste any time in saying yes.
He learned his lesson, after all. The timing could not have been better to begin his tenure in Saskatchewan.
Arash Madani is a sports anchor/reporter with A-Channel television in Ottawa
(The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily of the Canadian Football League)
