When the Prince George Kodiaks take to the field for their inaugural season in the B.C. Football Conference, they will have at least two former Grey Cup winning Calgary Stampeders roaming the sidelines.
After securing Keon Raymond as the head coach in November, Marvin Pope has signed on as the defensive coordinator, the team said Tuesday.
The 53-year-old native of Gainesville, Florida was a linebacker for the Stampeders from 1992 to 1997. He played in a different era than Raymond, who was a defensive back in Calgary from 2008 to 2015 before ending his career in 2016 with sojourns in Toronto and Hamilton.
But both were on Grey Cup winning teams - once for Pope and twice for Raymond.
And both decided to stay north of the border following the end of their playing days and remain involved in the game.
Pope has coached at the minor, high school, junior and university levels in Calgary and was the Stampeders' assistant defensive line and linebackers coach in 2010 when Raymond was a player on the team.
Pope was also the defensive coordinator for the BCFC's Langley Rams in 2018 when they got as far as the Canadian Bowl where they lost to the Saskatoon Hilltops.
"Once the (coaching) bug got into me...I just kept on with it," Pope said over the phone from his home in Calgary.
Prior to accepting the position with the Kodiaks, Pope was on the coaching staff of the University of Calgary Dinos for the past two years. When Raymond approached him with the idea of joining the Kodiaks, Pope listened.
"I like to build kids, I like to build confidence and help them get where they need to get and it seems like it's going to be a great job and something that we can start," Pope said. "We're building this thing from the ground up and that excites me."
Pope has yet to actually set foot in Prince George but he's not worried.
"It won't be the first time that football took me to a place I've never been," Pope said with a laugh and went on to note that prior to attending Central State University in Ohio, he had never left the state of Florida, and had never been outside the United States prior to coming to Calgary.
"They just told me 'bring your jacket with you' and I'm like okay, I'll do that," Pope said of Prince George. "So when I get there, I'm going to explore the city and meet some people and hit the ground running."
Indeed, Pope already has, saying he started to recruit prospects about two months ago when it became evident he was going to land the job. He also has a bit of a vision as to how the Kodiaks' defense is going to play the game.
"I already got a playbook built, I built a playbook about six years ago," Pope said. "Sometimes you have to vary it, it depends on the players that you get because every player can't do everything. You've got to put them in the best position to make plays and so I've been working non-stop. I'm still producing plays and recruiting."
Teams in the BCFC play under Canadian Junior Football League rules, which limit the age of eligibility to players aged 17- 22 during the current calendar year. But due to the pandemic which cancelled the 2020 season, the CJFL allowed 23-year-old players already registered in a junior league the previous season to play in 2021. That age extension will also apply for the 2022 season.
As an expansion team in the BCFC the Kodiaks will play against the Okanagan Sun, Kamloops Broncos, Langley Rams, Valley (Chilliwack) Huskers, Vancouver Island (Nanaimo) Raiders and Westshore (Langford) Rebels in an eight-game season that runs from August-November.
- with files from Ted Clarke
