Darrell Davis: Like it or loathe it, I’m back at the Leader-Post

We’re carrying on the tradition of writing what matters

Published Jul 26, 2023 • 3 minute read

From his playing career with the Roughriders to a golfing excursion to his current days as general manager, Jeremy O’Day (middle) has often crossed paths with Darrell Davis. Photo by Charles Melnick

We were sitting together inside sunny Mosaic Stadium — me, Rob Vanstone and Murray McCormick — watching a Saskatchewan Roughriders practice last season when general manager Jeremy O’Day walked by. He glanced up at us.

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“What is this, the ’80s?” O’Day said with a chuckle.

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Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

All three of us are old enough to remember seeing O’Day play in the CFL during the 1990s, that’s for sure, and admittedly we can date our newspaper careers back even further to that post-disco decade. But none of us ever lost the thread.

We kept day-to-day tabs on Saskatchewan’s pro football team through three Grey Cup wins and three losses, 14 head coaches, countless players, a couple decent quarterbacks and nine general managers, including the current jokester.

Full disclosure: As a Leader-Post sports writer, I chronicled O’Day’s entire playing career and golfed with him once. Riders teammate Gene Makowsky, now a provincial cabinet minister, and radio analyst Carm Carteri, now happily retired, rounded out our players-versus-media foursome; I can’t remember who won. I truly like and respect the GM. If he brings another Grey Cup to Saskatchewan, everything should be fine. His coach, Craig Dickenson, is also a good man whose future with the Roughriders depends solely on this season’s performances.

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Following an offseason makeover and a roster that continues to fluctuate because of injured players, including free-agent quarterback Trevor Harris, the Roughriders are on a two-game losing skid and have slipped to 3-3 as they head to Touchdown Atlantic for a showdown Saturday with the undefeated Toronto Argonauts, the reigning Grey Cup champions.

How the Roughriders got here, well, through the past years all the minutiae was recorded by Vanstone and McCormick on the pages and website of the Regina Leader-Post.

They did an amazing job while I was gone!

We were co-workers for many years in the L-P’s sports department. When I semi-retired in 2008 to look after family matters, Rob was well-established as the paper’s columnist, whose take on everything from the Riders to high school sports to dogs was golden. His puns … not so good.

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Murray could handle any assignment, so after years on curling media benches he took over the Riders’ beat.

They waded into every story, from amateur sports to the Roughriders, dealing with court cases and free agents and firings, asking questions and writing the answers. That’s long been the tradition at the Leader-Post: Writing what matters.

Now they’re gone, with Vanstone in his new career as historian and senior journalist for the Roughriders’ website and McCormick retiring to the golf course, or Mexico and other places I can’t remember.

I’ll try to not tarnish their legacies.

I’m looking forward to working with new L-P sports editor Taylor Shire, a trusted voice from his days locally at Global TV, and an excellent writer. I’m also proud to rejoin a hard-working newspaper staff that includes web editor Austin Davis, one of my sons. Thanks, managing editor Colin McGarrigle, for all of this.

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Like it or loathe it, you’ve got me again. I’m going to write features and pointed columns for the L-P website and its printed versions, focusing on sports in Regina and Saskatchewan. My home.

I’m in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame’s media wing as a writer. I now help pick hall inductees. I have written books about hockey and football, covered Olympic Games, Grey Cups and world curling championships. I hope to never write about Theoren Fleury (again) or Jamie Sale; I’ll let them be judged by public opinion.

It’s a second go-round for me, to use a rodeo term, but I haven’t lost the sports thread.

I’ve been teaching journalism at the University of Regina, writing books and freelance articles, plus I’m a regular on The Green Zone, a sports show on radio stations CJME and CKOM, where I tell listeners that video review sucks. It has taken spontaneity out of games and the reviews rarely get the blasted calls right anyway!

Football, hockey, baseball, so many sports are being ruined by video reviews. Fans think it’s too late, that technology and expectations have changed so much that sports can’t go back to the way they were.

Why not? There’s nothing wrong with going back.