Ex-CFL coach Riley comes full circle in San Antonio
As head coach of the CFL’s San Antonio Texans, Mike Riley presided over two press conferences and exactly zero games. “We lasted a month,” Riley said with a chuckle. He was working here as head coach of the San Antonio Riders of the World League of American Football. In 1992, the league suspended play, ostensibly for a couple of seasons, according to Riley, but he was too young to wait around for his next paycheque, if indeed another was forthcoming. So he came up with a proposal for Riders owner Larry Benson. “He was really upset when they suspended play,” said Riley. “I took him out after they made the announcement. I said, ‘Larry, the B.C. Lions are for sale, why don’t you buy them and let’s go to Vancouver?’ He went on a mission. He didn’t buy the Lions, but he was granted the first CFL franchise in the states. “We went to Toronto, had a press conference, came back to San Antonio and had a press conference. I hired a staff, we were going to work. I was going to coach in the CFL again. We were going to be the San Antonio Texans. We got about a month in and the Benson family came to me, not Larry, but the middle brother, and he said, ‘Mike, what exactly has Larry told you?’” Riley knew this wasn’t going to end well, just soon. “They said we’re not going to do this again. It lasted a month. We had T-shirts. We did our press conference at the Alamodome, which was just being completed. We were in hard hats when we did the press conference. That was the closest I came (to coming back to CFL).” The Bensons pulled the plug prior to the 1993 CFL season. Riley quickly found a job at the University of Southern California, went on to coach at Oregon State and Nebraska and with San Diego in the NFL. At age 65, he is back here with the Commanders, who begin play in the Alliance of American Football on Saturday as they play host to the San Diego Fleet. San Antonio did eventually get a CFL team in 1995, when the Sacramento Gold Miners relocated and became the Texans. With quarterback David Archer at the helm, they went 12-6 under head coach Kay Stephenson. But the CFL’s U.S. experiment failed and the Texans were one and done here. “It is a crazy road,” said Riley, who is happy to finally be coaching in the Alamodome, almost three decades after he thought he would.