Episode 08: Bob McFarlane

What does it take to become a champion? Bob McFarlane, Com’83, shares the story of how the Red Banner Society is using philanthropy to help the Football Gaels build a championship culture. 

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Cause & Effect, Episode 8, Robert McFarlane, Com’83

Host: Watching the football Gaels absolutely dominate for the second straight season – it got me thinking about the incredible transformation the team has been through over the past couple of years. After six years of mediocrity, they made it to the Yates Cup final last year – and this year, well, I don’t have to tell you. So, what’s the secret of their success?

Well, winning is complicated. You don’t just wake up one morning and decide to become a winner. One of the winningest coaches of all time, Nick Saban of the University of Alabama, said, “Becoming a champion is not an easy process. It’s done by focusing on what it takes to get there – every choice, every decision, everything we do every day.”

I’m Deborah Melman-Clement, and this is Cause and Effect, a Queen’s Alumni Review podcast, where we dive into the motivations of philanthropists and explore what they’re passionate about and the impact they have on the world. 

So how did the Gaels pull off such an amazing transformation? Well, part of the answer is that they did what Coach Saban talks about. They made those little decisions, those little commitments every single day. But you know what? There were bigger decisions and bigger commitments that had to happen first. 

You see, when it comes to college football, there’s only so much a team and a coach can do on their own. They need support. And the Gaels are lucky enough to have that support, courtesy of the Red Banner Society.

The Red Banner Society is one of those uniquely Queen’s things. It’s a small group of football alumni who have made it their mission to rebuild the football program. They’ve given tens of millions of dollars over the last decade alone, and they co-manage the team with the university. 

Bob McFarlane is a charter member of the Red Banner Society. His commitment to the team – both in time and money – was born from his experiences as a player more than 40 years ago.

Bob:  It started with an affinity to giving back to Queen’s, given that it was a transformative experience for me to be part of a football team that was one of the best in the country and also a great school. For me it was about pursuing accomplishment and being part of both great coaches and great people. And it was great having the student fans and everything and the traditions. So, you throw all those together and flash forward 30 years. So, for me it was how do I give back and help Queen’s be a top destination and program so everyone from the fans to the players to the coaches to the administration to the alumni can be proud. 

Host: Bob grew up a couple of hours from Kingston in Ottawa, so when it came time to choose a university, Queen’s was on his radar – for a couple of reasons.

Bob: I had wanted to study business and I wanted to play football. I had grown up in Ottawa. I was an all-star there. And Queen’s had just won the Vanier Cup national championship and the Commerce program was rated at the top. So, I didn’t have to choose between great academics and high-level football competition. I could get both.

There was a fellow at my high school, Gary Schreyer, whose dad had gone to Queen’s and was a star and played professionally for Ottawa in the CFL. And Gary went to Queen’s and came back during the Christmas holidays wearing a national championships baseball cap. I thought that was pretty cool. So that kind of just sealed the deal.   

Host:  Because training camp typically starts in August, Bob and his teammates arrived on campus a month before most students. And they went right to work. It reminds me of another Nick Saban quote – “There are two pains in life: the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.” 

Even though he was just barely out of high school, Bob got used to the pain of discipline quickly. After all, you need a little discipline if you’re going to make it through an entire month of three-a-day practices.

Bob: I can remember never feeling so tired in my life. Not only is it physically challenging, but each night, especially at my position, defensive backs, we had assignments. We had written assignments. You had to fill out the test and it was submitted, and they handed it back the next day. And that was the playbook. So, you’re given a playbook to learn, chapters to read, and whatever, and then you had tests. So, my first tests at Queen’s were football tests.

Host:  Things got a little easier once the school year started –mainly because all those classes and assignments meant there wasn’t enough time to fit three practices into the day. 

Bob:  Because then you’re one practice a day 4:30 to 6:30 as I recollect during school days, and then weekends were games and we had trips on alternate weekends, so it was quite the challenge, but what it does is it focuses the mind. So be a champion. If you want to be a champion, you have to work hard.

Host: Hard work and a focused mind – if those are the qualities of a champion, Bob developed them at Queen’s. And they served him well. He went on to earn an MBA from Western and launch a career in the finance and telecom sectors, most notably as the longtime Executive VP and CFO of TELUS.

As Bob was busy building a successful career, he was watching the Gaels from afar  – and he couldn’t help noticing that they had fallen on hard times. After winning the 2009 Vanier Cup, the Gaels – and pretty much every other Canadian varsity team – were regularly overshadowed by the Laval University Rouge et Or, the U-SPORTS powerhouse that has won a ridiculous 10 Vanier Cups since 1999.

Laval’s success was an inspiration to Bob and some other football alumni – Stu Lang, Paul Hand, Don Bayne, and a few others – who got together and decided to see if they could find a way to duplicate Laval’s success at Queen’s.

Bob: We said why is Laval so successful and what will it take for Queen’s to be successful. You know, this isn’t a participation sport. This isn’t extracurricular. This is varsity athletics. And varsity athletics means competing at the highest level possible and putting our student-athletes in a position to win. 

Host: Laval’s secret isn’t just that they hire great coaches and recruit great players – it’s that they have the resources to do it.  

Bob: And so guess what? When you’ve got more money, you can pay more scholarships, you can pay more coaches, you can recruit better players, and it’s a virtuous circle.

Host:  They called themselves the Red Banner Society. Why Red Banner?

Bob:  If you think of those banners that fly showing national championships, there’s a red – of course Queen’s colours are red, gold, and blue. But the championship banners, I think red is the outline of them, so it was associated with this is a society to facilitate success for the university and its football program.

Host: And they knew exactly where to start. The team had a good coach in Pat Sheehan and some talented players. What they didn’t have was a great home field. Richardson Stadium was almost 40 years old at that point, and it was – to put it nicely -- starting to show its age.

Bob: When I heard that Queen’s had used wood from the original stadium that was built in like 1920-something to help construct the stands out in the West Campus for Richardson when it was built in 1972, I knew that the time has come. We need to have a first-class facility, so we set that out to be our objective.  

We approached the administration and said, we have some expertise, we would like to help you. We’d like to help with respect to funding and raising money for a new stadium, because the old one was falling apart. I think the upper deck was condemned by the fire department for safety regulations because it might fall down. 

Host: Knowing there was nowhere to go but up, Bob and the Red Banner Society got busy imagining the new stadium.

Bob:  The fun part is sitting down with administration and saying what should the new stadium look like? Which features should it have? And by the time you finish, you’ve got a $100-million stadium, and I don’t think we can afford that. So then comes the reality of saying what can you get for what reasonable amount of funds? 

Host: The more “reasonable” version ended up costing just over $20 million. The university kicked in $3 million, which meant they somehow had to find $17 million.

Bob: You know, when you’re starting with zero and you have to get to 20 with donated money, and you’re only looking at some football alumni, right? It’s pretty hard. 

Host: Still, they got it done. Nearly all of the money came from the Red Banner Society, led by former Gaels star Stu Lang, who stepped up with a $10-million gift. That wasn’t Lang’s only contribution. He also came up with the stadium’s final design. 

Bob: And the design that Stu Lang came up with, which was a bowl design, where you can actually walk down into the stadium and you can walk around, we got to the point where for all the funds we raised, we could do three quarters of it. We could do the U. But the cap of the U would be open, and we figured one day we could maybe get to that, but let’s get the core stadium built now.

Host: The new Richardson Stadium hosted its first game on September 17th, 2016. The final piece of the stadium – a state-of-the-art football pavilion – is slated to open almost seven years later to the day. And like the rest of the stadium, it was made possible by the Red Banner Society.

When you think about their amazing achievements, it’s easy to get the impression that the Red Banner Society is all about the stadium, but there’s a lot more to it than that. As Bob says, football is about more than just games and buildings. It’s about creating a winning culture.

Bob: Great student-athletes, great coaching, great facilities, great culture. OK? Students, the administration, the alumni, everything can impact culture. And Queen’s has an incredible tradition of excellence – many championships, amazing loyalty, great crowds and stuff like that. So we want to build upon that. 

Host:  One of the ways they’ve been building on it is by bringing in a world-class coaching staff. They personally recruited Steve Snyder to take over the team in 2019. Another way they’ve been building is by investing in Athletic Financial Awards – scholarships to help the team recruit top players. 

Bob: I basically had seven full scholarships endowed through me and a partial match from the university. Now they’re up to $4,500 a year. So I really believe in supporting athletes so that the best can afford to come and play, you know, at Queen’s.

Host:  So now that the stadium is built, the pavilion is almost ready, the coach of the future is installed, and Athletic Financial Awards are attracting top players to the team, what’s left for the Red Banner Society to do?

Bob:  Probably making sure that the program is funded in a manner that it doesn’t have to dwell upon annual fundraising as much from football alumni. To be on a more sustainable footing, it’s great to have endowed scholarships so you don’t have to have a football dinner just to make things balance out.

Host: Actually, there is one more building they’re looking to build: a fieldhouse – an indoor turf field on the stadium grounds that will enable the team to practice year-round.

Bob:  If you think of our Canadian climate, right? And when are students there? Well, the start of September is nice, but from November on, it’s pretty cold. So to be able to do field sports, but in a covered, climate-controlled facility, that’s what the best schools, certainly in the States and it’s also what many of our competitors here in Ontario have. And I would think that’s a gap in the Q portfolio that needs to be filled.

Host: Between the stadium and the pavilion – and one day soon, the fieldhouse – the Red Banner Society is leaving a legacy for Queen’s football – and beyond.

Bob: It’s not just for Q football. It’s for soccer and other sports for Q. It’s also for the Kingston community. It’s a resource. It can be for concerts. And so, it’s like – OK, we’ve given you this resource, now let’s make sure it’s managed to generate rental income and so on and so forth and then you don’t have to rely on donations as much.

Host: You could say that Bob’s passion is football. But when you think about his philanthropy and how it’s gone beyond the stadium to include those seven Athletic Financial Awards, I think it’s more accurate to say that his passion is education and football is a big part of it. 

Bob: Being a champion to me – yes it’s about winning championships on the field, but it’s much more than that. It’s creating champions for life. There are few things in life like a 100-person college football team where lessons of life are taught and learned and reinforced daily. 

Host: When you reflect on a season like the one the Gaels had, it’s easy to get caught up in the winning, but when you remember what Nick Saban said – that winning is the result of a lot of little choices – and you think about how those choices are going to impact the lives of everyone associated with that team – how they really are going to be winners for life, well, then we really do have a lot to celebrate. 

I want to wrap this up by thanking our executive producers, Karen Bertrand and Scott Anderson. I also want to thank my Advancement colleagues, Michelle Fuko, Nikki Beaulieu, Jeanette Hepburn, Alex Beshara, Callum Linden, Danielle Van Den Brink, and Wendy Treverton. And, of course, I want to thank Bob McFarlane and his fellow Red Banner Society member, Paul Hand, for so generously sharing some great stories with us.

If you have a great philanthropy story that want to share, we definitely want to hear from you. Reach out to your relationship manager if you have one, or look for me on the Advancement staff directory at Queen’sU-dot-ca. 

I’m Deborah Melman-Clement, and this was Cause and Effect. If you want more, you can subscribe on Spotify, Apple, Google, or Amazon.