Deion Melvin cherishes time shared with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and his home team.
The latter squad consists of his wife, Beverly, and two adult daughters — Lywanna and Sherise.
They have made it possible for Melvin, the Roughriders’ Linebackers Coach, to mentor football players for 30 years.
“It’s like being in the military, because you move from job to job — either forcefully or if you willingly move to upgrade your status — and your wife and kids are moving with you,” he says. “And sometimes they don’t move with you and they’ve got to stay behind.
“My wife has done that for me for years. Sometimes, she has been a single mom for years until I’m able to get back or until they’re able to move with me.”
Now that another football season has arrived, Melvin deals with the distance removed from loved ones as an unavoidable part of the equation.
Three times per year, Beverly Melvin is able to travel to Regina from the family’s home in St. Louis and stay for a week or two.
It isn’t the ideal arrangement, of course, but the strength of the family and Coach Melvin’s passion for the game both prevail.
“I just put it this way: If you’re a coach, your wife has to love football and understand what your job is,” he says.
“As a coach, football is going to take you where you’re going to go. For me. I don’t have any regrets. I move on.
“I love coaching football. That’s why I’m here.”
Melvin was introduced to Saskatchewan in 2019, when he was a guest coach at training camp.
The matchmaker was Kent Maugeri, the Roughriders’ Special Teams Co-ordinator. They previously coached together at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., where Melvin was the Defensive Co-ordinator and Maugeri was responsible for the defensive backs.
“He went this way and I went another way,” Melvin recalls. “Then I came up as a guest coach. I didn’t want to do it but, since he asked me to do it, I said, ‘Well, I’ll see if I like it,’ and I did.
“I enjoyed my time. Then they called me back a year later and I ended up coming up.”
The announcement of Melvin’s hiring was made on Jan. 27, 2020, only six weeks before the declaration of a global pandemic that ultimately wiped out an entire CFL season.
Hence the need to wait a year to work directly with the Roughriders’ players. He is now entering his third season in Saskatchewan, having spent the rest of his time as a coach in the United States.
“In the CFL, you’re playing with an extra guy and that waggle motion, and that’s all different,” Melvin says. “But, in the nuts and bolts of it, football is football.
“You’ve still got to tackle. You’ve got to catch. You’ve got to block. You’ve got to receive. You’ve got to throw.
“The rules are a little different, but you learn the rules. In the end, though, football is still going to be football.”
It’s the same sport at which he excelled as a linebacker in Illinois while attending East Aurora High School and the College of DuPage.
His coaching journey began at East Aurora, where he was on the staff as a graduate assistant from 1990 to 1992.
He subsequently coached at Western Illinois (1993 to 1998), Missouri State (1999 to 2005), Georgia Southern (2006), Bowling Green (2007 and 2008), Ball State (2009 and 2010), Lindenwood University (2011 to 2016) and, once again, Western Illinois (2017 to 2019) before joining the Roughriders.
“I just love working with kids,” says Melvin, who coached 10 All-American linebackers at the college level.
“At one time, I went to school to be a teacher. I wanted to work with kids and I wanted to coach in high school. I got an opportunity to coach in college and I was in college until I came here.”
All these years later, he still views himself as a teacher as much as a coach.
“It’s the same principle,” Melvin says. “I love to be around the young people. Now with the older guys, it’s a little different, but it’s still educating and teaching them what football is all about.”
Melvin also wants to teach the players about life while offering some perspective that incorporates his fascination with history.
“Through history, you can learn a lot,” he says. “But if you don’t have history, you forget your past.”
