Seeing Mike Reilly on your screen isn’t anything new for football fans, but he connected in a different way in a video put out by the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation last week.
“It wasn’t going to be a video about me. It was going to be a video about the city, just showing all sorts of different things that make Edmonton great,” Reilly said on Inside Sports with Reid Wilkins on Tuesday night.
READ MORE: Mike Reilly promotes Edmonton as ‘city of grit and love’
He was approached to voice and appear in the video in late November.
“I took it as something I had a tremendous amount of pride in, them even asking me to do that. Edmonton does mean so much to me, so much to my family. It has become home. My daughter was born in the city of Edmonton,” Reilly explained.
“I thought they did a great job on it. I really did think it encompassed all the awesome, diverse things that make Edmonton what it is.”
Reilly, who won the 2017 Most Outstanding Player award in the CFL, will have a new backup in 2018. Kevin Glenn, a 17-year veteran, was signed by the Eskimos on Monday.
“I know Kevin quite well. I get along with Kevin really well,” Reilly said. “He’s a very good locker room guy. He’s a guy I’m excited to have on our team. When I heard he’d been released by Saskatchewan and we were considering potentially reaching out to him with a contract offer, I called Kevin up.
“I tried to do my best to recruit him a little bit. He’s a guy that I wanted on our team. You have to have a quality guy in that backup position.”
Glenn has now been under contract to all nine CFL franchises at some point in his career. When he’s previously signed as a backup, he’s often wound up starting because of an injury.
“I used to open talk about the ‘Kevin Glenn Curse,'” joked Reilly. “I’d be like, ‘Man, don’t ever sign that guy on a team where I’m the starter, because I don’t want to go down!’
“I believe that this is the year where that curse is broken. We won’t be needing his services due to any injuries if we play our cards right.”