HIGGINS STEPS DOWN
TORONTO — The Canadian Football League announced today that Tom Higgins is leaving his role as Director of Officiating, effective immediately.
“Tom’s tenure as Director of Officiating has seen the introduction of many improvements and innovations from the debut of the Command Centre for video review to the introduction of position coaches to the addition of a coordinator for the development of amateur officials,” said CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon.
Higgins, a two-time Coach of the Year in the CFL, who also coached two squads to Grey Cup berths and won a Grey Cup as a head coach, was originally hired as the CFL’s Director of Officiating on April 15, 2008.
“It’s our understanding that Tom intends to seek a position on the competitive side of football, as a coach, general manager or administrator,” said Cohon. “We thank him for his efforts and wish him the very best in his future endeavours.”
The CFL is currently engaged in the process to identify new leadership for its officiating department.
He said last night that his contract was not renewed by the CFL. Why? There's a story here somewhere obviously. Officiating has been very sketchy for a long time but you can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t!
Higgins would be able to work the refs on the sidelines if he gets back into coaching.
The conversation could start something like “Remember the time I stuck up for your ass, when you screwed up in X, Y and Z games?"
Tom helped bring a lot of good things to CFL officiating. Instant reply, challenges, review of every scoring or attempted scoring play. Saving multiple challenges by coaches. Tom did far more good than any other single individual as far as officiating goes.
Tom's demenour reminds me of Marc Trestman. I think Tom would make an excellent Head Coach for the Montreal Allouettes.
3RDand1
Regina, SK
Higgens will be working with Campbell.
Its the CFL. There is history there.