PICKING UP THE PIECES
OSEG CEO/president Mark Goude gets candid about Redblacks’ disappointing season
It’s been one disappointment after another during the 2019 CFL season as the Ottawa Redblacks have sputtered their way to a
3-12 record.
After going to three Grey Cups in four years (winning in 2016), the Redblacks have especially struggled since winning their first two games of the regular season.
Once the team’s season wraps up Nov. 1 at home against Montreal (they play in Hamilton Saturday, then in Toronto the following Saturday), the Redbacks will have to untangle what’s been an on-field mess and figure out how to fix their problems long before the 2020 season begins. First up, deciding what to do with GM Marcel Desjardins and coach Rick Campbell, who both have one year remaining on their contracts.
Postmedia sat down with Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group president and CEO Mark Goudie for a Q and A session Wednesday.
Q You’ve been active on social media talking about the Redblacks and the disappointments. What’s happened with the team this 2019 season?
A I think we had the perfect storm of a whole bunch of pieces. Maybe we had high expectations and maybe an unrealistic view of ourselves coming out of three Grey Cup appearances in four years. We lost some key free agents, which is well documented, we lost our OC (offensive co-ordinator Jaime Elizondo, who quit in April) at an inopportune time and we had a whole rash of injuries. It’s hard to put each of those things into their bucket and put the per cent that it affected this year into perspective.
Q Fans will ask why the team didn’t sign Greg Ellingson or Trevor Harris or William Powell (or SirVincent Rogers), there are circumstances other than money, but is there a simple answer to why things have gone wrong?
A I don’t think there is a simple answer, particularly this year where a whole bunch of things didn’t go right. I know people are looking for a sound bite, they’re looking for one throat to choke, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. What I take from this season is all of us need to figure out what lessons learned do we all have — starting with me, what does my role with the team need to be going forward? Is it different than it has been? It’s a conversation I’m having with Marcel, what do we learn about ourselves in these periods of adversity that help us be better presidents and GMs and coaches going forward? Those are the conversations that will continue. When you look at it, we’ve got probably some unfortunate personnel decisions in terms of both guys we lost and guys we brought in that weren’t able to do the job. There are probably some coaching decisions we wish we had back, particularly when we got on the losing streaks. Then there’s the other bucket — that bucket has the OC leaving and it has the injuries and the other stuff that didn’t go right. It’s been a tough year all around.
Q Has the general manager been accountable for what’s happened?
A It’s an ongoing conversation. All of us are going through a self-evaluation phase, Marcel’s no different. He’s a pretty introspective individual to begin with. We’ll talk through if we had to go back through last off-season, what might we have done different. If we had to go through this, what might we have done different? Going into next year, what does that tell us?
Q Are the GM and coach safe for next season? Will they be back?
A It’s a question I’ve been dreading. People judge your words, specifically by what you say.
Rick is our coach and Marcel is our general manager. What we haven’t done is sit down and go through and dissect the year. I’ll wait a couple of weeks to do that with Marcel. And Marcel will be doing it with Rick as well. My expectation is both of those positions will be back next year.
Q Are you happy with the job your coach and GM have done this year?
A No. But that goes for the rest of the organization. That goes for me, that goes for our players, that goes for our coach, that goes for our general manager. Our expectation is to be perpetually competitive — they know this, I know this. That’s what the expectation is from our OSEG partners. Our base needs to be 10-plus wins, a winning record at home and to host a playoff game. That’s our minimum expectation. We didn’t meet that this year. I don’t think any of us can claim we did the job we’re here to do.
Q Is it a tough sell on the season-ticket base for next season when at least some of the prices are being raised?
A To be determined … a little bit. We haven’t had a season like this. Our first season, it was expected we weren’t likely going to the Grey Cup. Most of the games that first season were competitive. What we’ve tried to build here is something that isn’t just about football. It’s about the experience, it’s about the Game Day, it’s about the emotional attachment to a community of RNation. We’ve got a good reminder this year we need to continue to invest in innovation. We need to be deepening our market and deepening the emotional attachment people have to Redblacks football. Winning helps, of course it does. We measure our fan engagement at every game — everybody that buys a ticket gets a survey to tell us how we did as an organization and how their experience at TD Place was. We see if we lose a couple of games at the beginning of the year, our scores are still exceptionally high because people are enjoying the party that happens 10 times a year here. As we got into this losing skid, people weren’t happy — we saw that in their comments. They went out of their way to praise the environment here, but they weren’t happy with the football and they expect us to do better, we expect ourselves to do better. We need to make sure we get back to where we expect to be.
Q There was a long string of sellouts for the Redblacks, are you disturbed by lesser attendance numbers and empty seats this season?
A It’s concerning, I don’t know if it’s disturbing. We’ll average about 22,500 this season, which in the season we’ve had I don’t think is terribly bad. In addition to some of the unfortunate team performances, we’ve had a crappy year of rain being projected. I think seven of the nine games we’ve had rain in the projections on Game Day. If the long-range forecast is showing rain, it impacts our ticket base. Thankfully, a lot of the games actually ended up being OK. A lot of the empty seats you saw were actually sold seats. We have a surprisingly strong crowd coming for the Nov. 1 Als game. I think there’s the appetite — people recognize that going to Redblacks games is fun. I think it was the Edmonton game (Sept. 28), we had one of our biggest walk-up crowds of the season in the throes of that losing streak because the weather was decent.
Q Do you or any of the partners have any input on football personnel decisions?
A There are some things that are self-evident. But the job
I’ve been asked to do is put the infrastructure in place for football — that starts with Marcel. My relationship with football ops from a business perspective is with Marcel. His responsibility and my expectation of him is to put the rest of his football ops team and his coaching staff in place to be able to carry out his vision and his mandate. In terms of expectations around playing time and talent, that’s 100% Marcel’s responsibility to figure out.
Q What are some of the positive things you see going on around this team?
A One luxury we have is the support and patience of our ownership group. They want to win, just like the rest of us. But they understand that people have their jobs, they respect the chain of command — that Marcel’s going to be the GM and Rick’s going to be the coach. They don’t get involved in the day-to-day tactical sports decisions. That sounds obvious, but it’s not. You see that in a lot of different professional sports in North America where presidents and owners think they’re smarter than the experts and start messing with that stuff. It hardly ever goes well. And (the ownership group) lets us invest in things like the Game Day experience. They understand we’re building fans for five and 10 and 20 years, not just this season. I think we’re good at hospitality, we’re good at the guest services part of it and we’re good at being humble. We understand people are investing the most precious thing they have — their time — in us. We take that seriously. We want to make sure they have the best experience we can possibly provide.
Q Getting back to Marcel and Rick, will a decision be made on their future soon after the regular season concludes?
A Yeah. I haven’t gone through timing with Marcel. He’ll go through his evaluation phase with Rick, hopefully come to a consensus of things we can shore up and what our blueprint for next year looks like. An OC (Offensive co-ordinator) has to be top of the list, everything kind of trickles down from there. I’ll let Marcel and Rick have their conversations, then in the next couple of weeks I’ll step into it and look to understand what the blueprint looks like and what our game plan for next year is going to be.
Q You believe both the GM and coach should finish out their term?
A Continuity is incredibly important in sport. We hired competent people here and for a whole bunch of reasons we’ve already gone through, we had a really difficult season. My expectation is they’re the right people to fix it and that’s what I expect to happen come next year.
Q Would you lean toward letting them finishing their term or would you look at contract extensions?
A Too early to have that conversation. I want to get through my discussions with them first and understand what the blueprint looks like.