Celebrating Roy Shivers during Black History Month

Roy Shivers was a game-changer in professional football for reasons that transcend touchdowns, tackles, X’s and O’s.

His contributions from a cultural perspective are also worthy of celebration — Black History Month being an opportune time to reflect on a Canadian football legend and a trailblazer.

In 1995, Shivers became the first Black general manager in pro football history when he was hired by a short-lived American-based CFL franchise, the Birmingham Barracudas.

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Shivers returned to the GM’s chair on Dec. 23, 1999, when his association with the Saskatchewan Roughriders was made official.

When Danny Barrett joined the Green and White on Jan. 28, 2000, he and Shivers became football’s first Black GM/head coach duo.

“I always had a plan,” Shivers reflected last October, when he returned to Saskatchewan to be inducted into the SaskTel Plaza of Honour.

“My father said, ‘Bring somebody with you.’ If I ever got an opportunity, I was going to do it.”

The message from Shivers’ father, Willie, resonated decades later when Saskatchewan entered the equation.

“I just wanted to get my foot in the door to open it up for people like Danny and myself and other minorities in football, because it had never been done,” Shivers said.

Even when Shivers moved the yardsticks, there was still plenty of work to be done.

“I’m down at the Senior Bowl with all these Black coaches, scouts and everything,” he recalled. “They’re all running up to me and going, ‘Oh, Shiv … great job … great job.’

“I said, ‘Why don’t you guys say something? You have a bigger platform than I have. I’m in the CFL. You’re in the NFL.’ They were all afraid.”

Fast forward a quarter-century.

Across the football spectrum, there is no longer a novelty attached to the hiring of a Black GM or coach.

Barrett, who was the Roughriders’ field boss for seven seasons, remains involved in the pro ranks as the Houston Texans’ assistant head coach and running backs coach.

Post-Barrett, Saskatchewan has employed three Black head coaches — Corey Chamblin (Dec. 15, 2011 to Aug. 31, 2015), Bob Dyce (latter half of 2015 season) and Corey Mace (Nov. 30, 2023 to present).

Shivers arrived in Saskatchewan as the owner of two Grey Cup rings, earned with the Calgary Stampeders in 1992 and 1998.

He was part of two other championships, with the BC Lions in 1985 and 2011.

A remarkable career has subsequently been honoured with enshrinement in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame (2022) and Plaza of Honour (2024).

In Saskatchewan, Shivers and Barrett inherited a team that had won just three games in 1999 and missed the playoffs four times in a span of five seasons.

The Roughriders steadily improved as the 2000s dawned, becoming a perennial playoff participant.

Shivers’ stamp was evident on Saskatchewan’s championship teams of 2007 and 2013. It was he, for example, who acquired two future Grey Cup-winning quarterbacks — Kerry Joseph (2007) and Darian Durant (2013) — in one 2006 trade.

Joseph, a record-setting quarterback at McNeese State, was converted to defensive back once he ascended to the NFL. The move was another example of a long-established trend — Black quarterbacks playing a different position in the four-down pro ranks.

Durant, at five-foot-11, was typical in the sense that quarterbacks who were under six feet tall often had to head to Canada to receive a legitimate chance.

(Riderville.com)

That, too, has changed.

“All the Black quarterbacks who are playing in the NFL right now would have been up here 20, 25 years ago,” Shivers noted. “Kyler Murray is five-foot-10. He would have been up here.”

Instead, the former Oklahoma Sooners standout was chosen first overall in the 2019 NFL Draft, by the Arizona Cardinals.

Four years later, another 5-foot-10 signal-caller — Bryce Young — was selected with the top pick. He recently completed his second season with the Carolina Panthers after starring with the Alabama Crimson Tide.

“The coaches in the college ranks, when they’re going out recruiting, they want the best athlete to touch the ball more than anyone else,” Shivers explained. “They finally caught up with the CFL.”

Societally, there was so much catching up to do when Shivers was growing up in Oakland. And make no mistake, there is still progress to be made. But he can look at the then and now and appreciate how much things have changed in his lifetime.

Born on July 8, 1941 in Halley, Ark., Shivers was only two when his father moved the family to northern California.

At the time, Shivers had two sisters (one younger and one older). He and his siblings embarked for California along with two of their aunts.

“My father worked on the railroad — Southern Pacific,” Shivers recalled. “He was from Louisiana and my mother (Idell) was from Arkansas. The three of us (children) were born in Arkansas.

“My father got us railroad passes and brought us to California. My grandfather had told him, ‘Take my two girls with you.’ We all came to California on the train.

“We stopped in Fresno where we had some relatives. I asked my dad later on, ‘How come we didn’t stay in Fresno?’ He said it was too much like the south, because it was all picking cotton and picking fruit and all that stuff.”

So it was off to Oakland, where Shivers’ father got a job on a military base with a naval supply centre.

“I thought the Bay Area — the east Bay — was the greatest place in the world when I was growing up,” said Shivers, a long-time resident of Las Vegas.

“There was tension, but it wasn’t on the surface. Everybody halfway got along.”

However, the racism boiled over elsewhere in the United States.

Johnny Bright — a future Canadian football star with Calgary and Edmonton — was repeatedly assaulted by a White opponent while playing college football for the Drake Bulldogs in a 1951 game.

Bright was forced to leave the game after a racially motivated punch left him with a broken jaw.

“Johnny Bright was one of my idols growing up,” said Shivers, whose bust — like that of Bright — is in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

Shivers also referenced the time when a Black youngster — 14-year-old Emmett Till — was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955, allegedly for whistling at a white woman.

The acquittals of the accused killers by an all-white jury sparked outrage throughout the Black community and galvanized the Civil Rights movement in the United States. (Both accused killers later confessed to the crime after selling their story to Look magazine.)

“When Emmett Till was killed, I was the same age as he was,” Shivers said. “I really rebelled, because I had never seen anything like that. My dad had taken us out of the south.”

For that, Shivers is eternally grateful.

“I thought my father was a great man to survive what he went through and to still have his manhood,” he said.

“What used to really tick me off was my father worked for a certain ethnic group. I used to be with him sometimes and they’d call him ‘Willie’ and he would be like ‘Mr. So-and-so.’

“I was a little kid and I realized that my father was older than the other guy, so how come he can’t get the same respect? That stayed with me and that affected me.”

Those are the words of someone who effected change as a football executive and has therefore had an enduring influence.

“I don’t speak on it most of the time, but here I know,” Shivers said, pointing to his head, “because I’ve seen the change.

“Change is slow but steady and I’ve seen it and I’m very happy with it.”