Riders end disastrous Mitchell saga
Signing of controversial player netted only negative publicity for team
REGINA — The Saskatchewan Roughriders bolstered their defensive line Monday by announcing the release of Khalif Mitchell.
The 31-year-old defensive tackle, who was inexplicably signed by the CFL team in late August, never played a game for the Green and White.
That may be the best news of the Roughriders’ 2016 season to date.
“After talking with Khalif we mutually agreed to part ways,” Roughriders head coach, general manager and vice-president of football operations Chris Jones said in a news release.
“After sitting out for over a year we both agreed it would be difficult for Khalif to get physically ready to play in a professional football game at this point in the season.”
Well, duh — shouldn’t that have been obvious from the outset?
Mitchell had not played since being released by the Montreal Alouettes after training camp in 2015.
During that abbreviated stint with Montreal, he was fined by the league for circulating anti-Semitic posts on Twitter.
One day after Mitchell resurfaced with Saskatchewan, the league office saw fit to issue a media release in which it was announced that any further inappropriate comments by Mitchell would result in his immediate release.
The Roughriders’ 1-10 record is ghastly enough. Imagine the firestorm that would have ensued if Jones had activated Mitchell.
His mere arrival in Regina was an indication that the Roughriders, at least on the football-operations side, can be tone deaf.
Jones never, ever should have brought in Mitchell.
The Roughriders didn’t need the backlash and they didn’t need Mitchell. A team does not rebuild with a 31-year-old defensive lineman whose services are so widely coveted that he has not played in a regular season game since 2014.
The entire, avoidable episode was painful to watch — a needless distraction.
On Aug. 31, the Roughriders issued a release to announce the addition of Mitchell at the same time that many members of the Regina media horde were on a guided tour of the sparkling new Mosaic Stadium.
A good-news day was interrupted, and marred to a degree, by the instantaneous backlash that resulted from the Mitchell signing. Why detract from a rare positive narrative during a second successive nightmarish season?
The Mitchell story had an extended shelf life after the league released its announcement the following day.
The Roughriders, who already have enough troubles, invited two days of negative publicity — and follow-ups such as this column — for no justifiable reason.
There weren’t any apologies. There wasn’t any evident contrition. The entire episode was entirely pointless.
Common sense ultimately prevailed, albeit belatedly.
On Monday, the Roughriders announced what should have occurred to them before Mitchell landed in Regina.
From a football perspective, this simply wasn’t going to work. Factor in everything else and why, oh why, did the Roughriders even bother?
“After talking with Khalif we mutually agreed to part ways.” — Chris Jones