BARRIER-BREAKERS
BOB DYCE AND COREY MACE SET TO BECOME FIRST BLACK CANADIAN HEAD COACHES IN CFL HISTORY
Corey Mace remembers the game in Toronto well. It was one of the five games he played in the National Football League. He was the only Canadian with the Buffalo Bills.
The Bills were in Toronto when someone decided he would lead the team onto the field. It was his home game, they said.
“It was kind of funny,” said Mace, the new head coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. “I’m from Coquitlam, B.C. I went to Port Moody high school. I played college ball in Wyoming. And somebody announces, ‘We’re in Corey’s hometown, he’s leading us out.’
“The guys who knew me, knew my hometown was thousands of miles away, so we had a pretty good laugh over that.”
Mace is telling that story — and many others — in this very important Black History Month for him and his profession.
Having yet to coach a game as head coach in the CFL, Mace knows he is something of an unknown. But he is also keenly aware that he is one of two black Canadian head coaches — the only two ever in the CFL, after Ottawa’s Bob Dyce broke the barrier in 2022.
“Of course, it matters being Canadian, being black, coaching in the CFL. It matters to me. It matters to many others. I don’t take this job lightly. I don’t lose sight of this at any time,” Mace said.
“I’m not a CFL historian, so to speak. I played in the league. I’ve coached in the league. Now this. There’s a certain pressure coaching in Saskatchewan, coaching in the Mecca of Canadian football.
“But as a league, you have to give the CFL credit. They have been ahead of almost every sport in providing opportunities. I understand that and understand it’s important for me to succeed under these circumstances.”
Bob Dyce never thought he would be a football coach. It was never in his plans.
After playing quarterback as a kid and into college, he figured it was time to go on to the real world and find a career. He found one for a short time and hated it.
Then he coached in minor football and coached in junior football and was with University of Manitoba for seven seasons — all as an assistant coach — in his home town of Winnipeg before becoming an assistant coach with the Blue Bombers
And then, way too quietly, Dyce was promoted to interim head coach in 2022 to become temporarily the first Black Canadian to be a head coach in the CFL in Ottawa.
The real appointment came in the off-season. There wasn’t a lot of noise about it because in the off-season around Canada, there is rarely a lot of noise.
But there should have been when Dyce broke an almost unspoken barrier, becoming the first Canadian Black man to work as a CFL head coach.
The CFL has had some successful Black head coaches over the years, from Pinball Clemons to Orlondo Steinauer to Danny Barrett, and also has had a limited number of successful Canadian head coaches, the most recent being Mike O’shea. Before him, Wally Buono became the standard for all to be compared against.
It was one thing to have a Canadian head coach. Another thing to have a Black Canadian head coach. That combination took too many years to unlock.
“It means a lot to me personally to be in this position,” said Dyce, whose first full season at 4-14 did not exactly go his way. “Being the first, it wasn’t something I initially thought about. But you have to think about it. You think about Black History and it’s happening all the time. We’re living that history. The CFL is a league I’ve watched since I was a kid and, even though I was in Winnipeg, my first football idol was Warren Moon (in Edmonton). You saw that with other quarterbacks, too. That was in me then, it’s in me now.
“And now, people like Corey and myself are getting chances because, I believe, we’ve deserved them.
“I think it’s great to see what’s happening in the CFL. A guy like Wally had the success he had and now you look at the success of Mike O’shea and you understand, Canadians can do this. Not just coaching, but GM jobs as well. Kyle Walters in Winnipeg. Shawn Burke in Ottawa. It’s not necessarily what country are you from — or what colour are you — it’s being able to get the job done.
“I was a quarterback as a kid, and guys like Moon, Danny Barrett, Condredge Holloway, mattered to me. You think of what was being done in the ’70s and ’80s in Canada and what’s being done in the NFL today with quarterbacks. The influence of the CFL has been phenomenal in a football sense. for the sport.”
Mace knew he wanted to coach from the day he realized his playing career in Calgary was over. Football was and is his life. He was planning to return to his college, Wyoming, as a graduate assistant, to learn to coach.
He told John Hufnagel and Dave Dickenson in Calgary that he was going back to the U.S. That same day they offered him a position on their coaching staff. He has been coaching in the CFL ever since.
When the Argos hired Ryan Dinwiddie off that Calgary staff as head coach, Mace followed Dinwiddie to Toronto.
The past few seasons, as defensive coordinator, he ran the Argos defence into what should have been backto-back Grey Cup winning seasons. It was obvious then he was going to be a candidate to coach somewhere as a head man. The question was where.
“Being in the Mecca, I don’t take this lightly,” Mace said. “When Jeremy O’day reached out and requested permission from the Argos, I was excited. The most intriguing thing was football in a place where people care, where people talk about it every day. Every time we played a game against the Riders, whether it be in Toronto or Calgary, you knew half the crowd was in favour of you and half the crowd were Riders fans.
“Now you have to get used to living in that environment, in a province where only one team matters. And I want to make that province proud again.”
Dyce’s rise to head coach is something of a miracle story. His father died when he was seven years old. His mother got dementia in his 20s and, essentially, he lost her. At a time when parents matter so much, Dyce turned to his older sisters for guidance and support.
“Nobody gets to where they are alone,” the 58-yearold Dyce said. “So many people matter along the way.”
And now, from afar, the two coaches cheer for each other: Dyce hoping Mace, 20 years his junior, hits it big in Saskatchewan; Mace hoping for a Saskatchewan-ottawa Grey Cup sometime in the future.
“The league is looking for great men and great leaders,” Mace said. “Guys like Bobby have been around a long time. Us being Canadian, from a colour standpoint, I don’t know why this took so long. But it’s awesome to have three Canadian head coaches in a nine-team league. Two of us black. One of them (O’shea) is already a legend.
“It goes to show the opportunities are there. All you have to do is earn them.”