Jeff Reinebold is back for a third stint with the B.C. Lions.
The Lions hired Reinebold as their special-teams co-ordinator earlier this week. Reinebold spent the last five seasons with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, serving as the club’s defensive co-ordinator last year before being fired following the club’s 0-6 start.
Reinebold also served as a Lions coach from 1991-93 and again in ’96.
Lions head coach Wally Buono:
“We’re very pleased that Jeff will be joining our staff for 2018. He is an outstanding coach who consistently fields exciting, disciplined and physical special teams units. He had a number of offers available to him, but his desire to come to the B.C. Lions I believe says a lot about the team and staff that Ed (GM Ed Hervey) and I are building for next season.”
Reinebold, a 60-year-old native of South Bend, Indiana, has coached throughout Canada, Europe and the US and is looking forward to coaching with CFL legend Wally Buono:
“After many years of battling against Wally on the field it will be great to go into battle together.”
Reinebold’s football journey has taken him across the CFL and to Europe and major US colleges.
In the Canadian Football League he has coached with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (current team), Montreal Alouettes, Edmonton Eskimos, Las Vegas Posse, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the B.C. Lions. He gave up a lucrative career with NFL Europe to take a huge pay cut and man the sidelines as a graduate assistant with the University of Hawaii and then moved on to SMU (Southern Methodist University). He was named one of the finest recruiters in college football.
Reinebold’s European adventure began in 1996 when he was a coach of the Rhein Fire of NFL Europe. After coaching stops in both the CFL, NFL Europe again and the NCAA, he returned to NFL Europe in 2004 as senior manager of international player development.
While in Europe, 11 of the defensive backs he coached found themselves on active NFL rosters. Three of his defensive linemen at Hawaii were drafted in the NFL.
Currently, he is based in London, England until early February, doing the TV color commentary on NFL games and the Super Bowl for Skysports, and co-hosting the biggest NFL podcast outside of North America – Inside The Huddle.
He is part of a two man team with Neil Reynolds, also a former NFL Europe executive, on the show. It airs at least once a week from London, year round, so over the years he has had to scramble to make it work. He has even handled it from the beaches of Costa Rica once on a surf vacation. For the dedicated “water man” – surfing and paddling are passions – it was only natural.