“Why not us?” Stevenson Bone has big plans for Golden Bears football

Why not the University of Alberta?

Sure it was a less than successful 2024 season — a bit of an anomaly that followed from 2023’s conference championship game perhaps — that’s building into what Golden Bears football can do now.

The first thing it can do is welcome Stevenson Bone, a U Sports alumni, previous offensive co-ordinator for the British Columbia Thunderbirds, and the Bears’ newest head coach. Notice all the Canadian university football?

“They are a very physical, tough, good team, and good opponent. And when the job opened up, I thought, ‘Wow, what an opportunity to go to a place that’s already established,'” Bone said.

That’s U of A’s calling card though — we’re an old school, with a lot of history, and a lot banners to back it up. Just not football.

The Bears have gone without the nationally coveted Vanier Cup since 1980, and went 30 long years where even the conference Hardy championship seemed out reach. Then Chris Morris shows up, the Bears win a little, not a lot more, and suddenly nine U of A players are headed to the invitational and national combine.

“If you look at the way that Coach Morris built [the program] over 10 years, it was really exceptional. And I have a lot of respect for that man,” Bone said.

Lot to live up to as well.

“I hope to improve off of last year’s record and make the playoffs. I think that that’s a realistic goal for us in year one and and try to take a chance at it.”

Can the Golden Bears make it further?

In reality, there’s no good reason why they can’t. If Regina can go 3-5 and win it all in Canada West, the Bears can pick themselves up from a rough year and do something special next season.

“Why not us? Why are we going to sit there and say that we can’t do that?”

“It’s been a while, no question. But the reality is, just because it happened 30 years ago or 20 years ago or 10 years ago, still means that it happened. So that’s what I want to tell our players — they owe it to those people that played in the program previously, and students to have a good product and go to the games and feel intrinsically a part of it,” Bone said.

A good product — one you can market to the student population, and one that builds into success. How do you do that?

Offense.

“The feedback that I’ve been getting [from players], is ‘wow, okay, we’re going to be an exciting team.’ Everyone’s kind of pumped on offense, offensively anyway, to sit there and go, ‘Wow, we’re going to run something fun and different, and then people are going to enjoy that.'”

Bears building up from “year zero”

It’s not that the Bears’ defence is poor, it’s just young and incoming compared to a well-established offensive structure.

And maybe an offensive co-ordinator is inclined to lean into offense, put on a show, fill the stands Friday night, and let the rookies learn.

“For me, as much as this is year one, it’s really year zero, in the sense that it’s not totally the recruiting class that I’ve been involved in. Next year, I’ll have a full cycle of guys that I want to bring in to emulate our program. That, to me, is really year one,” Bone said.

Year zero? That’s a good way to put it. You can acknowledge that as low as the lows have been, this is something new — something exciting.

“There’ll be some bumps along the road, and I don’t think everyone’s going to be 100 per cent pleased. There’ll be some hiccups and some challenges, and we’ll face them next year. But the reality is, most of them are excited, especially the leadership group. Those are the guys you’ve got to capture first and make sure that they’re the ones that are bought in, because they’ll buy the rest of the team in as well.”