Hall of Fame profile: Roughriders struck gold when they signed Vince Goldsmith

The Saskatchewan Roughriders never formally announced the signing of Vince Goldsmith.

There wasn’t a press conference, or even a press release.

But when training camp kicked off in May of 1981, there he was on the roster — listed, albeit for a brief time, as No. 53.

Before too long, he was No. 1 among CFL rookies.

An award winner in Year 1.

And, all these years later, a Canadian Football Hall of Famer.

He is part of the shrine’s Class of 2024 — an esteemed group that also includes two fellow former Roughriders players (Weston Dressler and Chad Owens) and an erstwhile Saskatchewan coach (Ray Jauch).

Fittingly, Goldsmith was notified of his selection to the Hall by a former Saskatchewan teammate.

“When John Hufnagel gave me a call and told me that it happened, I was kind of in a haze for a while,” Goldsmith said.

The 5-foot-11, 240-pound pass-rusher extraordinaire often left would-be blockers in a daze as he closed in on quarterbacks over 10 CFL seasons.

Six of those seasons were spent in Saskatchewan, where he wore Nos. 78 (1981 to 1983) and 70 (1988 to 1990) with great distinction.

Also an alumnus of the Toronto Argonauts and Calgary Stampeders, Goldsmith amassed 131 sacks — eighth on the league’s career list — in 163 regular-season games.

That impressive sack total includes 17 as a rookie in 1981 and 20 (then a Roughriders record) in 1983.

He rejoined the Roughriders in 1988 and promptly helped them snap an 11-year playoff drought.

In 1989, he contributed to the second Grey Cup championship in franchise history.

“When I went to Canada, I kind of had a chip on my shoulder because I felt I needed to prove something after I didn’t get drafted in the NFL,” Goldsmith, 65, said from Edgewood, Wash.

“I wanted to prove to everybody that I could play football at the professional level. I could play it in Canada. I could play it in the NFL. I could just play it.

“I felt that I was as good as anybody.”

That quickly became apparent as Goldsmith helped the Roughriders post a 9-7 record in 1981. The team was coming off back-to-back 2-14 seasons when he joined the team.

“I was at the University of Oregon,” the former Ducks standout said. “At that time, the NFL had done the draft. I wasn’t in it, so I had rolled into track, because I was also involved in the shot put.

“I was working with the track team and I got a call from the coach, who told me that Ed Alsman, who was the player-personnel director at Saskatchewan, had contacted them and they were interested in me.

“At that time, I really didn’t have a whole lot of options, but I wanted to continue to play football. If I wanted to play, the CFL seemed to be the path to take.

“I think they had a contract and it was open for three players. I was one of the three and the first one who took it was going to get it.

“That’s how it happened. I just took the contract and came to Canada and did the best I could.”

He ended up as one of the best, period, after becoming a star in a league that had been largely foreign to him in more ways than one.

“Embarrassingly, I didn’t know very much about the Canadian Football League other than Warren Moon had gone to Canada because he did not get drafted,” said Goldsmith, who sacked Moon three times when Edmonton visited Taylor Field on Oct. 18, 1981.

“The only reason I think of Warren Moon was because he played at Washington, which is our arch-rival down in Oregon.

“At that time, a lot of my friends and a lot of players said, ‘The Canadian Football League is good option if you don’t want to break your neck trying to get into the NFL,’ so that was the path I chose to take.

“Once I got in, I found out it was a lot better than people had given it credit for down in the States. At that time, I was pretty much American-focused and the NFL was the biggest league.”

He ended up registering some of the biggest totals in Roughriders history.

With 89 sacks, he is second to fellow Hall of Famer Bobby Jurasin (140) on the team’s All-Time list. Jurasin’s 22 sacks in 1987 surpassed a Roughriders standard Goldsmith had set two years earlier.

Goldsmith still holds the Roughriders’ record for games of three or more sacks (seven). He peaked with four sacks on July 12, 1981 against the visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

A remarkably durable player, Goldsmith played in all 18 regular-season games during each of his final five years in the CFL. He was only 31 when he left the game.

“Ten years is a long time and I was starting to feel it physically and I was starting to feel it mentally,” reflected Goldsmith, whose eight seasons with a double-digit sack total rank him second in league history.

“I still had the will to win and the competitive drive was there, but everything has to come to an end. When it comes to an end, you don’t want it to crash and burn and blow up. You want to have a smooth transition.”

Goldsmith worked in television at CTV Regina for a brief time before moving back to the United States and establishing a standout career outside of football.

“When I retired, I went back home and got a master’s degree in health care administration,” he said. “Then I got a master’s degree in business administration and started working in health care administration. From there, I went over into correctional health care administration.

“That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 20 years or so. I’ve retired from actively being in correctional health care administration and now I’m just doing some consulting there.

“I knew it wasn’t going to last forever and the older I was getting, I don’t know if I had slowed down at all, but you do figure some things out in 10 years.

“For them to pay you a lot of money after you’ve been in the league for 10 years and they can find someone bigger, younger or cheaper, you’ve got to read the writing on the wall and do the best you can to land on your feet once you’re out.”

Now he has landed in the Hall of Fame.

“Coming to Canada and making it, playing for 10 years, that was great,” Goldsmith concluded. “Now, being inducted into the Hall of Fame, that kind of sums up my career.

“That puts a bow on it, to say that, ‘Yes, I arrived.’ I don’t have anything else to prove.”