HAMILTON, Ontario --- The Canadian Football League (CFL) announced Thursday, Nov. 21, that Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach Orlondo Steinauer has won the 2019 Annis Stukis award as the league's Coach of the Year.
Hamilton (16-3) meets the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (13-7) in the 107th Grey Cup game to decide the CFL championship for 2019, on Sunday, Nov. 24 (3 p.m. PT) at McMahan Stadium in Calgary, Alberta. The contest will be televised live on ESPN.
Hamilton won the Eastern final, 36-16, over the Edmonton Eskimos. The Tiger-Cats have won both regular-season meetings with Winnipeg, 23-15 and 33-13.
Steinauer, 46, tied a CFL record for a first-year head coach with 15 regular-season wins (Dave Dickenson – Calgary – 2016) and led the Tiger-Cats to a franchise-best 15-3 record, including six consecutive wins to close out the 2019 season. The 15 wins were three more than the club's previous franchise high of 12 (1989 & 1998) and also tied an all-time CFL record for wins by an East Division team in a single season. The Tiger-Cats also went 9-0 at home for the first time in franchise history.
The former Western Washington University football great took over an eight-win Tiger-Cats team and saw them improve by seven wins, finishing first overall in the CFL standings for the first time since 1998 and capturing the East Division crown for the first time since 2014. Steinauer's team also topped the league in points for (551) while allowing the least points against (344) this season. The 344 points allowed were the fewest in franchise history for an 18-game season, while the 551 points scored were second to only the 1999 team that tallied 603.
Steinauer received 38 first-place votes to win the award over West Division nominee Craig Dickenson of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He becomes the seventh Tiger-Cat coach to win the Annis Stukus Award following Greg Marshall (2004), Ron Lancaster (1998), Al Bruno (1989), Bob Shaw (1976), Ralph Sazio (1964) and Jim Trimble (1961).
The 2019 CFL Awards were handed out on Thursday night at Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta. The winners were selected by a panel of voters, including representation from the Football Reporters of Canada (FRC) from all nine CFL markets, members of the national chapter of the FRC and the head coaches of the CFL. In total, 50 ballots were completed.
Steinauer is the first WWU athlete to be a head coach in any major professional sport. Following a year as a broadcaster, he was a CFL assistant for eight seasons, being on a Grey Cup championship team as a defensive backs coach in 2012. In 2017, Steinauer was the defensive coordinator at NCAA Division I Fresno State, helping the Bulldogs perform one of the biggest single-season turnarounds in college football history (1-11 to 10-4).
Steinauer enjoyed a 13-year all-star career in the CFL as a safety with the Ottawa Rough Riders, Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts from 1996 to 2008. A two-time Grey Cup champion as a player, Steinauer finished his CFL career second all-time in interception return yards with 1,178.
Steinauer, who was born in Seattle and attended Lynnwood (Wash.) High School, was an all-star defensive back and kick returner at Western. In 1995, his senior season with the Vikings, Steinauer was a consensus All-American (first-team National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, first-team American Football Coaches Association college division, and second-team Associated Press Little All-America), and was named the school's top male athlete for 1995-96 as he made a school-record 10 pass interceptions to finish with a career total of 20.
Steinauer's wife, former WWU basketball player Gina Sampson, was the school's top female athlete for 1995-96. Both are inductees into the WWU Athletics Hall of Fame. They have three daughters.
Orlondo Steinauer
