‘Dave Ritchie was a winner’: late CFL coach’s legacy in Winnipeg a lasting one

The Hall of Fame football coach who helped lead the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to a Grey Cup championship in 1990 is being remembered as an inspiring, personable, and sometimes unpredictable leader on and off the field.

Dave Ritchie, who died at 85 on Saturday, served on the Winnipeg coaching staff in 1990 and 1991, and again as head coach from 1999-2004, winning coach of the year honours in 2001.

Among the football greats mourning his passing was fellow Canadian Football Hall of Fame inductee Doug Brown, who wore blue and gold for a decade, including four seasons during Ritchie’s tenure as coach.

“Coach Dave Ritchie meant the world to — not just his players, not just the coaches that coached with him… but the extended family he had wherever he went as a coach,” Brown told 680 CJOB’s The Start.

“(It was) very hard to just know Dave Ritchie professionally. You knew him privately if you knew him at all, and nobody was more personable. It’s a big loss on so many levels for so many people with the news we heard this weekend … when you lose a pillar of the football community like that.”

And while Brown said many of his memories of his former coach involved on-field success — including a trip to the 2001 Grey Cup game — he remembers Ritchie for his quirks as well … including an unexpected passion for a ’90s hip-hop hit.

“During the good times of us winning a lot of games with Dave Ritchie, MC Hammer came out with a song, 2 Legit 2 Quit,” Brown said.

“Just picture a man of that size and that stature in the middle of the locker room going through all the (music) video MC Hammer motions of 2 Legit 2 Quit. That was really what he adopted as a mantra for our football team at one point. That was a spectacle, that was something to see.”

“What a unique, one-of-a-kind individual that will never be replaced.”

Ritchie, born in New Bedford, Mass., in 1938, first came to Canada as a coach for the Montreal Alouettes in 1983, before a brief sojourn in Europe with the Milano Seamen of the Italian Football League (IFL).

He returned to the CFL and took a job with Winnipeg in 1990, in time to play a role in the Bombers’ championship season. It was one of many Canadian stops in his lengthy career, including jobs at the helm of the Ottawa Rough Riders, B.C. Lions (twice), and a second tenure with the Blue Bombers.

Ending his CFL career with a 108-76-3 record, Ritchie made a brief return to the game as coach of the Zurich Renegades in Switzerland’s Nationalliga A, before retiring for good.

Retired sportscaster and longtime voice of the Bombers, Bob Irving got to know Ritchie well during his time in Winnipeg, hosting a regular coach’s show with him and covering Bombers games and practices.

“He really left his mark with the Blue Bombers. He carved out a special niche in Blue Bombers history,” Irving told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg.

“Dave was a winner. He was a classic player’s coach. He could be strict and stern with them one minute, and the next minute he’d have his arm around them telling them how much he loved them, and that’s just the way he was.

“The players respected him immensely and so did the media.”

Ritchie was inducted into the Winnipeg Football Club Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2022.

His death is the latest in what has become a sad year for the Bombers, following the passing of franchise icons Ken Ploen and Gerry James just hours apart in February.

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