Few coaches in any sport at any level have had the success, the career, and the respect that Peter Connellan enjoyed.
His win-loss record is envied by coaches across the country, but equally impressive was his ability to demand – and receive – the best from his players when it really
counted.
Peter joined the Dinos football program as an assistant coach following a career with the Calgary Board of Education in the late 1970s and took over the head job on an interim basis for the 1977 season – winning the conference title, a sign of things to
come.
Connellan was given the full-time head coaching position prior to the 1983 season, sparking one of the most successful coaching tenures in Canadian Interuniversity Sport history. He repeated his 1977 conference championship in 1983 but went one better, defeating the Queen’s Golden Gaels 31-21 in the Vanier Cup. It was the first of four national titles in 13 years for the Dinos, who quickly became the class of CIS football under his tutelage.
In his 13 seasons at the helm, Connellan’s Dinos reached the Canada West playoffs 10 times – in an era where only the top two teams reached the post-season – won eight Canada West championships (1977, 83, 84, 85, 88, 92, 93, and 95), and made five Vanier Cup appearances, winning four times (1983, 85, 88, 95). His regular season winning percentage was a staggering .673 (70-32), but his post-season record was even more stunning at .727. He was one of the rare coaches whose teams performed better in the playoffs than the regular season, losing just six of 22 playoff games in his career.
His 13-year career did not include a single sub-.500 season, and his overall coaching record against Canadian universities was 87-38-2 (.682). He won the Frank Tindall Trophy as CIS coach of the year in both 1977 and 1985.
Connellan developed a significant number of players into the professional ranks, with 45 of his athletes selected in the CFL entry draft during his tenure. A respected clinician, Peter has mentored countless football coaches throughout southern Alberta. He was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame as a builder in 1998.
Peter retired from coaching following the Dinos’ 1995 Vanier Cup title, a 54-24 defeat of Western Ontario, but did return to serve as offensive coordinator for the team for two seasons in 2004 and 2005.
In 2006, Peter and his wife Liz donated a seven-foot concrete dinosaur, which had been a feature in their backyard since 1987, back to the university as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations. Originally at the Calgary Zoo, the red and gold-painted T-rex was a gift to the Connellans from the 1987 Dinos football team and now sits proudly at the east entrance to the Kinesiology complex at the University of Calgary.
