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Fans in Ottawa have witnessed two CFL teams fold over the past 30 years, but Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) executive chairman and managing partner Roger Greenberg has made it clear the same thing will not happen to the Redblacks.
“We’re not going anywhere. I was born here, I was raised here. This is where my family made its fortune,” he told TSN 1200 on Wednesday.
“We have a responsibility to the fans here, so I’m not running anywhere. It’s public knowledge the amount of dollars that we, the ownership group, have put into this situation, so we’re not running anywhere. We’re gonna fix this. We’re gonna figure out how to create a winning team here.”
The Redblacks have lost 16 consecutive games dating back to last season, setting a modern CFL record. They are also the seventh team ever to start the season with an 0-10 record.
The club has made several changes amid the skid, including the departure of president Adrian Sciarra and the firing of vice-president of football operations Shawn Burke.
Greenberg indicated that he listens to postgame fan calls and reads comments on social media, though he tries not to do too much of the latter, saying it gets “a little depressing after a while.” He’s clearly aware of how fans are feeling.
“We want to create a sustainable winning situation here in Ottawa. Our fans want that, they expect that. We want that, we expect that. We’re not delivering that, so we need to figure out how we create a sustainable ongoing situation,” said Greenberg.
“What have we been doing wrong? It’s not just one year that we haven’t been producing. It’s been longer than that, so we need to figure out what’s gone wrong, and how do we fix it? I don’t have the answers today. That’s one of the reasons we brought Jim (Popp) in, and I think (head coach and general manager) Ryan (Dinwiddie) will be a real big help with that as well with his record of success.”
Popp has been hired for the rest of 2026 to serve as a senior football advisor. The 61-year-old native of Elkin, N.C. spent 26 seasons working as the general manager of the Baltimore Stallions, Montreal Alouettes, and Toronto Argonauts, posting a 269-194-1 regular-season record and winning five Grey Cups.
“We went to Jim because he has a history of being a super talent evaluator,” said Greenberg. “He’s working with Ryan and with (OSEG president and CEO) Mark Goudie to look at it from soup to nuts, and to try to figure out where are we weak, where do we need to improve, and what we do to get Redblacks back in the kind of situation we were in for our first five years of existence.”
Greenberg, who described himself as “not a football guy,” expects Goudie and Popp to conduct interviews for a new team president and make a recommendation regarding a hire and a structure for the football operations. He then anticipates that he and his partner, John Ruddy, will meet with the candidate to “make sure” they’re the right fit.
“My responsibility is to create conditions that allow other people to do what they can do, so I do what others can’t, and I let them do what they can. Creating conditions to be able to put a football team on the field, supporting it financially, that’s my main focus,” he said.
“I think we’ve got a great coach in Coach Dinwiddie, and with Jim Popp and with Mark Goudie, I think we’ve got a great core there to help figure out what we need to do to improve.”
The Redblacks are one of the key components of a massive redevelopment in the Lansdowne area. The $419 million project, known colloquially as Lansdowne 2.0, will include a new event centre, new retail space, and two residential towers.
Greenberg indicated the event centre is supposed to open in the fall of 2028, with the OHL’s 67s moving there for the 2028-29 season. The north-side stands at TD Place Stadium will be demolished after that season, and then rebuilt over the next two years.
Goudie has previously indicated that the capacity of TD Place Stadium, which is currently close to 25,000, will be around 24,000 when construction is complete. He also hopes to host a Grey Cup once the renovations are complete.
“Without the Redblacks, none of the rest of this would have happened” said Greenberg.
“That’s what was at the core of what we wanted to do with Lansdowne, and everything was built around sustaining what’s really been the central gathering place for the city of Ottawa for 175 years. We did a parcel job in 2012 with the construction that we did. In hindsight, we should have taken the whole process forward to make it truly sustainable, and so that’s what we’re doing.
“We’ve gone from 250,000 visitors a year at Landsdowne to four million. Our goal is to take that four million and grow it to five million-plus over the next five to 10 years, so that’s what we’re trying to do, but football was always at the core of what we’ve been trying to do.”
The Ottawa Redblacks (0-10) will host the B.C. Lions (4-5) at TD Place Stadium on Sunday, August 30 with kickoff scheduled for 7:00 p.m. EDT. The Lions are coming off a 30-16 win over B.C., while the Redblacks were blown out by the Montreal Alouettes.
The weather forecast in Ottawa calls for 23 degrees with a mix of sun and cloud. The game will be broadcast on TSN and RDS2 in Canada, CBS Sports Network in the United States, and CFL+ internationally. Radio listeners can tune-in on 730 CKNW (English) or Sher-E-Punjab Radio AM 600 (Punjabi) in Vancouver or TSN 1200 in Ottawa.
