Darian Durant recently shed new light on his decision to retire from the CFL in May 2018, only four months after signing with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“I definitely was interested and had every intention to go to Winnipeg and play (that year). I can remember a conversation I had with a coach — I won’t say his name because I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus — but I just had my first child and I was contemplating retiring because I just had a baby and I wanted to be there and going to Winnipeg would have took away from that,” he told 620 CKRM.
“I was speaking with one of the coaches and he said, ‘You know what? I didn’t spend much time with my kids when they were young either, so you’re not gonna miss much’ and that kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t really like that, so at that point, I said, ‘You know what? I don’t want to be a part of a situation where a coach doesn’t put family first.’ I’ve always been in that environment starting with Kent Austin and then moving on to Ken Miller and even [Corey] Chamblin, they all preached family and when I felt like my family wasn’t being put first, I got a little bitter about that and decided to just hang it up.”
Durant made it clear that family was his primary reason for retiring back in 2018 when he originally made his announcement. At that time, he claimed his wife wouldn’t be able to join him in Winnipeg as much as they were originally anticipating and that being away for an out-of-town off-season training session was harder than he’d expected, illustrating how difficult it would be to leave for an entire season.
The new piece of information from this latest interview was the phone call he shared with an unnamed coach in Winnipeg. The club’s coaching staff has remained mostly intact since Durant retired, including Mike O’Shea, Buck Pierce, Kevin Bourgoin, Marty Costello, Richie Hall, and Jordan Younger, though some of those individuals now hold different roles than they did back in 2018. Coaches who were with Winnipeg that season but have since departed include Paul LaPolice, Glen Young, and Paul Boudreau.
The Blue Bombers have made a point of allowing players to miss games for the birth of children in recent years, including Canadian starters Nic Demski and Patrick Neufeld as recently as 2023. The team also allowed then-backup quarterback Dru Brown to miss a game that year following the death of his father.
Durant’s retirement was considered controversial at the time because he’d received a $70,000 signing bonus from the Blue Bombers, who felt they weren’t properly informed of his decision to retire. Reports at the time indicated that the team asked for the money back and Durant declined. The veteran passer only addressed the signing bonus in one interview and said he believed he deserved the money despite rendering no services to the team.
The native of Florence, S.C. received calls about returning to the field after his retirement announcement but ultimately decided not to play again.
“(Then-starting quarterback) Matt Nichols was injured during training camp (with the Blue Bombers) when I initially retired and so I fielded a few phone calls from my agent asking if I wanted to double back and go back and play but at that point, I had made up my mind that I’m pretty much done,” said Durant.
“It’s never easy to hang up the cleats. This is a sport and something that I’ve been doing pretty much my entire life, so it’s very hard to hang it up. But playing in one place like Saskatchewan for so long and then having a bad experience in Montreal, I didn’t want to repeat that in Winnipeg, so I realized that it was time for me to hang it up.”
Durant remained mostly out of the spotlight following his retirement until last year when he returned to Regina to be inducted into the Plaza of Honour as part of Saskatchewan’s 2013 Grey Cup team.
The 42-year-old is now a regular on 620 CKRM and recently hosted ‘Dinner with Doubles,’ an inaugural charity event that was held the night before the Labour Day Classic. A fan from North Battleford, Sask. paid $5,600 for four tickets to sit at Durant’s table, a testament to how beloved he remains in Rider Nation. He will return to the city later this year to be inducted into the team’s Plaza of Honour as an individual.
