There was a time, not too long ago, when Jeff Stusek was the highest-ranking employee at Information Services Corporation.
Now he is in the unaccustomed role of a rookie — and cherishing every precious millisecond of it.
Stusek, the President-CEO of ISC from 2006 to 2022, is the newest member of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ coaching staff. He was named the Special Teams Assistant last week.
“I’m very humbled,” he said. “I’m honoured. I’m all those things, which I’m typically not very good at.
“I’m good at, ‘Let’s go. Let’s achieve. Let’s drive,’ so I’m a little speechless about it, but in the most positive way.”
Stusek has now been involved in Canadian football in pretty much every possible way.
As a fan, he began attending Roughriders games at Taylor Field with his mother (Cheryl) and uncle (Ray Griffeth) in the 1970s.
In the mid-1980s, Stusek was a star running back for the Regina Intercollegiate Football League’s Usher Unicorns. The fuse being lit, he remained involved in the sport as a coach.
In a volunteer capacity, he coached at the RIFL, Regina Minor Football, Football Saskatchewan, Team Canada and university levels.
Most recently, he was the University of Regina Rams’ Special Teams Co-ordinator and Assistant Head Coach.
As well, he is a former President-Chair of RMF and President of the Prairie Football Conference’s Regina Thunder.
And we have yet to cite his past association with the Roughriders as a member of the Board of Directors (2010 to 2019) and a guest coach at Coors Light Training Camp (2024 and 2025).
“I’m starting a professional career in coaching at 56 years old,” he marvelled. “The story is 100-per-cent upside down.
“I should have started like Josh Donnelly, worked my way up, had a business, and then come back and sort of done the governance side of it, versus the way I’ve done it.”
Not that he is lamenting the scenario.
“I genuinely think this is a grassroots story about local people having success, he said.
Another example to that effect is Donnelly — a former Rams quarterback and Offensive Co-ordinator who, at 25, is entering his second season as the Roughriders’ Offensive Assistant.
Donnelly and Stusek are among three Rams alumni on Saskatchewan’s coaching staff. Former Rams quarterback and assistant coach Marc Mueller is preparing for his third season as the CFL team’s Offensive Co-ordinator.
“I didn’t go into this thinking, ‘I want to coach for the Riders one day,’ ” Stusek said. “I didn’t even go into it thinking, ‘I want to be paid to coach one day.’ ”
Instead, he coached for free while earning a living elsewhere — at ISC and over the 13 previous years he spent with the City of Regina as the Director of Transit and in technology roles.
“Everything was always kind of side by side,” Stusek said. “I lived two lives. They weren’t entirely separate, but I lived two lives. I coached at the university level for the last nine seasons and I was a CEO for five or six of those.
“The university season has long hours as well. So on a Monday, for example, at 6:30 in the morning I was at ISC being the CEO of a publicly traded company. I would hustle out of there at 4 or 4:15 in the afternoon to get to the Rams office. I’d get home at 11 or 11:30.
“Then I’d just repeat, day after day.”
Now he would like to help the Roughriders repeat as Grey Cup winners.
As it stands, he has already been associated with one CFL championship team — as a Board member in 2013.
In the long history of the community-owned franchise, Stusek is only the second person to join the coaching staff after being involved at the Board level. The first was the legendary Al Ritchie, who in 1963 was one of the charter inductees into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
“Now I go to the other end of the spectrum,” Stusek noted. “I’m the low, low, low man on the totem pole of the entire organization — and that’s really cool.
“There’s a passion around coaching. I’ve always had it. I applied the coaching passion to business, with the kind of leadership style that’s inclusive and growth-oriented and people-oriented.
“Those two things fit side by side. And when I was on the Rider board, I also got to mesh those two things together.”
Family is another key component of the equation.
Stusek and his wife, Sheryl, have two sons. Carter, a former Thunder linebacker, has been on the Rams’ coaching staff since 2022. Bennett is a former Rams receiver.
“Sheryl retired in June,” Stusek said. “I was prepared to travel with her and everything, but she insisted that this opportunity was once in a lifetime and that I needed to try it.
“She is the glue in our family. When the boys were both playing, she just made sure that things were handled. She has always been supportive of my football journey and of my professional journey.”
That journey, as the principal assistant to Special Teams Co-ordinator Kent Maugeri, began on the first Monday of January.
“I walked in and I could barely start my computer,” Stusek said with a laugh. “I had to learn new software and I was thinking, ‘This is super cool!’
“I lose track of time because I’m just involved and I can’t get in early enough. I can’t stay late enough because I just want to learn and take it all in.
“My whole objective is, ‘I’m going to be a positive asset for this team when the players show up.’ I’m going to be well-positioned to know what they need to know and what I can give them.
“I’ve got a tough four months ahead of me (until training camp), but I’ve already started and we’re ready.”