JOHNSON TAKES OVER FROM HIGGINS
TORONTO, Ontario – Veteran head referee Glen Johnson is the CFL’s new vice-president, officiating.
The Winnipeg native retired Monday after 24 years as an official to assume the position with the league’s head office. He replaces Tom Higgins, whose contract wasn’t renewed.
“While Glen’s talents as an on-field official will be sorely missed, we are absolutely thrilled he has agreed to take on this tremendously important role within the league office,” CFL commissioner Mark Cohon said in a statement.
Johnson appeared in 416 career games and earned 11 Grey Cup appointments. That included the historic 100th game in 2012, which saw the Toronto Argonauts beat the Calgary Stampeders 35-22 at Rogers Centre.
“It has been an honour to officiate alongside trusted colleagues who are dedicated and passionate about our great game, its integrity and their important role within it,” Johnson said. “I welcome this opportunity to work with them in a new way at a time that the CFL is entering an exciting modern era marked by new stadiums, expansion and business growth.”
(Canadian Press)
Very entertaining show yesterday. Welcome back soon!
Good ref over the years all things considered.
how can we expect improvement in officiating when the head of officials has all his incompetent buddies still on the field? Not much chance of discipline for blown calls.
They could have hired Rob Ford and it would be an improvement over Higgins. Jet's give this guy a chance, he's bound to be better than what we had.
Great, have another guy who needs to wear glasses watching the quality of officials.
Hopefully the CFL decided to improve their eye care benefits for all it’s employees….
I think they do pretty good considering this is not their full time job. But look at the refs in the NFL – just as many people complaining how brutal they are and those guys are hired full time by the league. In the CFL they have to do their day jobs as policeman or whatever then once per week put on a refs hat. Although there are no guarantees, if you want to improve quality then it would seem that a starting point would be to hire the refs full time at 100K per year or so……CFL can't afford… Read more »
On a side note, is your first name Lyle? Just curious.
Woz… NFL Officials are not full time, they all have thier regular jobs. Ed H is a Lawyer. There is an article in SI about what the fall out of having FT Officials in the NFL would be, as a lot of the current guys have jobs that pay a large amount. There is also a story on officials in the NFL and what they do week in week out on the MMQB on SI right now. CFL officials follow the same pattern, but they are Firefighters, Cops, Teachers, Lawyers etc as well… it would take more than 100K to… Read more »
The NFL at least comes out and admits the refs made a mistake and say they are downgraded for future games and for playoffs.
The CFL sticks up for the refs at all costs, getting the league to admit a mistake was made is like asking them to eat a pile of dog doo doo – it ain’t going to happen.
Before you can start paying referees $100,000 you might wanna pay the players more than that then.
Sheets only made around $70,000 with playoff bonus's and other incentives.
I guess the CFL is a hobby for the players too.
Good hire !