Mike Morreale is the new president of the Ottawa Redblacks, the team announced on Tuesday.
In this role, Morreale will focus on building a “championship-calibre team and restoring the sense of pride, connection and excitement the club wants to inspire across Ottawa,” the team said in a news release Tuesday.
The former CFL receiver will lead a review of football operations, establish a permanent leadership structure for the team and strengthen its approach for identifying, recruiting and developing players, as well as develop a longer-term football and business plan to guide the club’s priorities, the team said.
“I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity, and I understand the responsibility that comes with it,” Morreale said in the release. “This is about more than building a team that can win. It’s about building an organization that can compete for championships and give people in Ottawa a reason to feel connected to and proud of the Redblacks. I know there is work ahead, and my focus will be on making the decisions needed to build that kind of organization that leads to success on and off the field.”
The announcement comes two months after the Redblacks’ former president, Adrian Sciarra, left the organization and the team dismissed its vice-president of football operations, Shawn Burke. The team also announced that it had recently hired veteran CFL executive Jim Popp as a senior football adviser.
Until their win over the Toronto Argonauts on Oct. 17, the Redblacks were winless this season, contributing to the longest losing streak in the league’s modern era.
“Our fans have every right to expect much more from the Redblacks than we have delivered,” Mark Goudie, president and CEO of the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, said in the release. “Mike has two clear jobs: build a football organization capable of competing for championships and reconnect this team with Ottawa. When this club was at its best, this city felt part of it. We need to earn that back.”
Morreale played 12 seasons in the CFL with the Toronto Argonauts, from 1995 to 1996 and 2002 to 2003, and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, from 1997 to 2001 and 2004 to 2006, winning two Grey Cups.
In 1999, during his Grey Cup-winning season with the Tiger-Cats, Morreale was named the league’s most outstanding Canadian player and received the Grey Cup Most Valuable Canadian award. Two years later, he received the Tom Pate Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to his team on and off the field.
After his playing career, Morreale served as the Canadian Football League Players’ Association’s player representative, director of marketing and president.
But Morreale’s contribution to Canadian sport goes beyond the gridiron. In 2017, Morreale and Richard Petko co-founded the Canadian Elite Basketball League and served as its commissioner, helping to build the league from the ground up. The league’s first expansion franchise, the Ottawa BlackJacks, was founded in 2019 and plays at TD Arena at Lansdowne Park.
When OBJ spoke with Goudie in June before the 2026 CFL season kicked off, he said the team was in rebuild mode, both on and off the field.
“The thing we’re most proud of is the fan experience at TD Place, which has always been awesome. What hasn’t kept up over the last couple of years is the quality of our team and the football on the field, so that’s the big thing we’re changing this season,” he said at the time.
In the off-season, the Redblacks made changes on and off the field, including hiring Ryan Dinwiddie as head coach and general manager. Dinwiddie won one Grey Cup as assistant coach of the Calgary Stampeders in 2018 and two Grey Cups as head coach of the Toronto Argonauts in 2022 and 2024.
“The message we want to send to Ottawa football fans is that we’re back, we’re going to make this work and we’re going to make you proud of us,” Goudie told OBJ in June. “We leave it to (the coaches). They’re the experts. You hire the right people and you let them do their jobs.”
He said the team’s growth would take five or six years as it builds credibility and trust with the fanbase.
