History was made with one stroke of a pen on Jan. 28, 2000.
The moment Danny Barrett accepted Roy Shivers’ offer to join the Saskatchewan Roughriders, they became professional football’s first Black General Manager/Head Coach tandem.
Five years earlier, Shivers had become pro football’s first Black GM when he was hired by the Birmingham Barracudas — an American-based CFL expansion franchise.
“Roy is the best player personnel person in professional football,” Barracudas owner Art Williams told Murray Rauw of the Calgary Herald on Jan. 27, 1995. “He’s the best judge of football talent.”
Shivers delivered top-flight talent to the B.C. Lions and Calgary Stampeders before joining the Barracudas for what would be their only season of operation. He then rejoined the Stampeders for four more seasons before being named the Roughriders’ General Manager and Director of Football Operations on Dec. 23, 1999.
The hiring of Barrett followed barely a month later.
“I always had a plan,” Shivers told Riderville.com in October of 2024, when he returned to Saskatchewan to be inducted into the Plaza of Honour.
“My father said, ‘Bring somebody with you.’ If I ever got an opportunity, I was going to do it.”
Shivers never forgot the words of his father, Willie, and took his advice upon joining the Roughriders.
“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.
Barrett became the second Black Head Coach in CFL history, following Willie Wood (Toronto Argonauts, 1980 to 1982).
Toronto was the host team for a history-making event on Sept. 15, 2000, when Barrett and the Argonauts’ Michael (Pinball) Clemons became the first two Black CFL Head Coaches to oppose one another.
Barrett, a former Argonauts quarterback, debuted in the CFL with Calgary in 1983 after starring at the University of Cincinnati.
He was a CFL player for 14 seasons before being named the Stampeders’ Quarterbacks Coach in 1997.
After one season in that capacity, Barrett joined the Lions as the Assistant Offensive Co-ordinator and Quarterbacks Coach. He also dressed for 15 games as a quarterback that season.
Barrett was exclusively a coach in 1999, mentoring the Lions’ receivers, before beginning a seven-season stay in Saskatchewan.
Shivers and Barrett inherited a three-win team and steadily rebuilt the Roughriders into a perennial playoff participant.
On April 12, 2006, Shivers made a trade that would benefit Saskatchewan for the next decade.
He acquired the first overall selection in the Ottawa Renegades’ dispersal draft and used that pick to add quarterback Kerry Joseph. As part of that deal, the Roughriders acquired the rights to former University of North Carolina signal-caller Darian Durant.
In the first season of the post-Shivers/Barrett era, Joseph quarterbacked Saskatchewan to a Grey Cup championship in 2007. He was also named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player.
Durant was the starting quarterback when Saskatchewan reached the 2009, 2010 and 2013 Grey Cup Games — the latter of which was a 45-23 home-field victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Shivers rejoined the Lions in 2008 and spent six seasons as the Director of Player Personnel. In 2014, he was named the Lions’ Football Operations Consultant/Scout, serving in that capacity for four years.
A Grey Cup champion in 1985, 1992, 1998 and 2011, Shivers entered the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as a builder in 2023.
Barrett recently completed his 29th season as a coach.
After his contract was not renewed by the Roughriders, he coached in the U.S. college ranks for nine seasons.
Barrett has been an NFL Running Backs Coach for the past 10 seasons, with the Miami Dolphins (2016-17) and Houston Texans (2018-present). He has doubled as the Texans’ Assistant Head Coach since 2023.