Under Jim Hopson, the Saskatchewan Roughriders enjoyed a prosperous, precedent-setting decade.
And, until 2005, the presence of a full-time President-CEO — a role Hopson embraced and, in many ways, defined — was without precedent in the organization’s history.
Dating back to the formation of the Regina Rugby Club in 1910, the top of the community-owned team’s operational pyramid consisted entirely of volunteers for nearly a century.
Cue the Hopson years, during which the Green and White appeared in four Grey Cup Games (winning two) and experienced a stratospheric increase in revenues and fan interest — a boom time that ultimately led to the approval and construction of a new stadium.
“Stepping back — and Jim was the first to say this — I think a ton of credit has to go to the Board of Directors, which was called the Management Committee at that time,” Craig Reynolds, who succeeded Hopson as the President-CEO in 2015, reflected on Thursday at Mosaic Stadium.
“To make that decision after 95 years of doing it one way, they recognized, ‘We need to do this differently. Something has to change here, because we have this incredible fan base and we can be very successful here.’
“I met Jim several years after that and he would talk about some of the challenges there, because we needed to invest and we needed to grow.
“There was something like 12 people here in the organization when Jim first started. You can’t run a super-successful sports franchise with 12 people, so he knew that he needed to invest.
“In order to do that, he needed to convince people and get a buy-in to his vision. He went about that methodically and eventually got that.
“I don’t think he gets enough credit for that, because that’s hard to change. Change is hard, period. Organizational change is very hard. And when you have 95 years of history to change, it’s especially hard.
“But he was the right person to do that. He was the right person at the right time and he was able to execute that brilliantly and to great success.”
That is evidenced by the fact that Hopson’s lengthy list of accolades includes enshrinement in the SaskTel Plaza of Honour (in 2018) and Canadian Football Hall of Fame (2019).
Those accomplishments, and so many more, have been accentuated and celebrated since it was announced that Hopson passed away at age 73 after a three-year battle with colon cancer.
“On Tuesday, we lost a very important member of our Rider family, and Saskatchewan lost a great man — someone filled with warmth, kindness and compassion,” Reynolds said. “The Riders lost someone who helped change the course of history for our team.
“On a personal level, Jim changed the course of my life by bringing me back home to Saskatchewan (as the Chief Financial Officer in 2009), and for that I’m forever grateful. I’m going to miss a man I admired greatly. He was an incredible mentor and friend.
“Most of all, my thoughts are with his incredible wife, Brenda, who has an unmatched strength, and his two amazing kids, Carrie and Tyler, and we offer to them our deepest condolences.”
And the deepest gratitude.
“He changed the course for this club forever,” Reynolds said. “He was the first to admit that he didn’t do it alone. Obviously, the Board made a courageous decision to hire Jim in the first place. They certainly hired the right person.
“He just brought a change in attitude. He brought a belief that this club could be great and that it could be what it is today.
“It’s debatable whether we’d be in this amazing facility without Jim. He did so much for this club. No matter how many accolades we bestow upon him, it’s still not enough to thank him for what he did and the leadership he showed throughout his tenure here.”
Hopson’s association with the Roughriders began in 1973, when he spent his first of four seasons as a member of the team’s offensive line.
Leading up to the 1977 CFL season, Hopson retired as a player — despite having just turned 26 — so he could devote the entirety of his vocational life to teaching.
In 2011, Hopson rejoined the Roughriders as a Special Advisor to the Management Committee.
He was named the President-CEO on Oct. 20, 2004, at a time when he was wrapping up a 30-year career in education as a teacher, principal and administrator.
“We need someone out there who is driving the business aspect of the Club throughout the province,” Garry Huntington, who then served as the Roughriders’ President as the head of a volunteer-based Management Committee, told the Regina Leader-Post during the media conference at which Hopson’s appointment was announced.
“We have a stronger CFL and every other club has a full-time CEO. We have outstanding individuals who have devoted a tremendous amount of time, but the demand is so big that it can’t be done on a volunteer basis.”
The volunteer component remains an essential and cherished facet of the organization, but by 2005 it was time for the buck to stop at the desk of someone who was a paid employee and, as such, fully accountable for and engaged in the Club’s day-to-day, year-to-year operations.
“It was a total attitude change,” Reynolds noted. “He brought that attitude change and I think it was part and parcel with his positivity.
“He just said, ‘Why can’t it be us? Why aren’t we the flagship franchise? Why can’t we be the flagship franchise? We can’t we lead the league in every category?’
“He believed in that and had that positive attitude. He inspired others to believe in that, too.
“We’ve always had the fan base, but he inspired people to truly believe that we could be more successful.
“He believed that you hire good people and you empower them and you give them the tools to do things and you inspire that belief in them.”
Not to mention a belief in thinking big, even on an unprecedented scale.
“This wonderful new stadium is a prime example of that,” Reynolds noted.
“He made the province believe that we deserved the best stadium in Canada — and it is — and we should be very proud of what we have here, because he believed that the fans deserved that and that we as a province deserved that and our football team deserved these incredible facilities that we have today.
“He went through that process. I remember our conversations. He trusted me with so much around the stadium. He just kept saying, ‘Make it the best it can be.’
“It was an incredible honour to participate in that and to try to make it the best it could possibly be, because he made us all believe that we deserved that. Our football team deserved that and our fans deserved that.”
- Hopson’s family has identified three organizations to which donations can be made in his memory: The Saskatchewan Roughrider Foundation, the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan, and Regina Minor Football.
