After professing that the Saskatchewan Roughriders are still a team that plays by the rules or at least wants to, head coach Craig Dickenson has to deal with yet another player getting out of hand and acting out, thus breaking the CFL’s code of conduct. The incident happened at last Friday’s game against the BC Lions…a game in which the Riders fell by a whopping 28 to 10.

The culprit this time around: Gary Johnson Jr..

The Roughriders have placed him on the suspended list because of what transpired. As has been reported, the specific infraction occurred after the game was played. Interestingly enough the team is being very quiet about the specifics about what occurred exactly (many sources not including what transpired exactly), the team labeling it “an incident and a violation of the code of conduct,” as you will see in the following statement made by Dickenson…

As per augustineformayor.ca, the team “did not want to go into detail…”

“He came in first thing Saturday morning…owned up to being involved in an altercation, an incident. He was very good about it. He took full responsibility. We ended up suspending him because he violated our code of conduct. It’s conduct detrimental to the team, so I just wanted to put that out there…

He feels bad about what happened. I don’t want to go into specifics on it, but it was enough to violate our code of conduct. We feel strongly that when you’re out on the town or whatever you’re doing, you represent the club and you’re held to a little higher standard than just the average Joe, so we suspended him for one game. We don’t know how much longer it will go, but it’s one game for now.”

via Regina Leader-Post

Of course just this season Garrett Marino was suspended for his actions in a game against the Ottawa Redblacks (a by now infamous issue) and so was Duke Williams suspended for throwing a helmet…both incidents highly publicized.

The team and its coach came under fire following all the incidents and as I reported last time, Dickenson stated that the team still cares about playing by the rules (link below) and now this.

As for Johnson, who played his college ball with the Texas Longhorns, he does have a history with suspensions such as the one he just suffered. An incident in 2018 led to a suspension specifically, the team (Texas Longhorns) stating at the time: “Gary Johnson is suspended one game for violation of team rules and will not play today against Kansas.”

He has been with the Riders since 2019.

Riders Suffer $4.5 Million Loss

It was during a meeting this week that the Saskatchewan Roughriders made it known that during the last two years, the team has suffered a severe financial loss.

The specific amount reported is a total of $4,488,310 in losses over the last two years.

Kent Paul, Roughriders CFO, had this to say on the matter:

“Even though this year we showed a profit or a positive result, we still have a negative result when you put the two years together and we envision this year will continue to allow us to recover further…”

via Global

President and CEO of the Riders, Craig Reynolds, added the following:

“The recovery has happened and happened reasonably quickly and that’s honestly full credit to our fanbase, to sell out two home games last year in the midst of a pandemic was quite an accomplishment…I think we managed expenses well through it and we took a number of necessary steps to make sure that we were managing our finances through the course of that…”

via Global (link above)

And that’s saying something, because it was just at the start of the 2022 season that many fans were complaining about ticket prices amidst a wave of inflation, and they’re still going to games as Reynolds has stated, which in the end is promising indeed.

As for the Riders, they’re set to face the BC Lions once again on Friday August 26^th at 10:30 PM EST.

*For all your 2022 CFL Season News: CFL News Hub

NEXT: Roughriders Release Na’Ty Rodgers—Playing By Rules Is Still Important To The Riders Despite Popular Belief