CFL on TSN producer Hynes, late Grey Cup champion, TSN analyst Schultz inducted into CFHoF
Published
Long-time CFL on TSN producer Jon Hynes and late Grey Cup champion and TSN analyst Chris Schultz were announced as inductees into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame media wing on Thursday alongside accomplished writer Vicki Hall as members of the 2023 class.
Nominees for the media wing are recommended by the Football Reporters of Canada (FRC) before being presented to the CFHoF Selection Committee for approval.
The media class of 2023 will be inducted on Grey Cup Sunday, Nov. 19, during the FRC annual brunch.
Jon Hynes
Hynes has been the lead producer for more than 800 CFL telecasts on TSN, including 28 playoff games and the past 14 Grey Cups.
Hynes joined the network in 1989 and five years later, he was assigned to CFL games as an associate producer and isolation director. Hynes helped launch the “CFL on TSN” and ultimately became TSN’s senior producer of live events. He has gained an unmatched, encyclopedic knowledge of the league, while winning two Canadian Screen Awards and earning 10 nominations for best live sporting event, including the 100th Grey Cup in 2012. A native of Hamilton, Hynes also won two Gemini Awards for TSN’s coverage of the world junior hockey championships. Along with Olympic assignments in 2010 and 2012, he also produced broadcasts of the NBA, NHL and CHL.
Chris Schultz
Schultz played college football at the University of Arizona, before being drafted by the Dallas Cowboys with the 189th pick in the 1983 NFL Draft and played three seasons for America’s Team.
Schultz returned home in 1986 to join the Toronto Argonauts and played nine seasons for the Double Blue, winning the 79th Grey Cup against the Calgary Stampeders. Following his playing career, Schultz joined the media as an influential football analyst. On The Fan 590, Schultz co-hosted football shows from 1995-2010 and served as a CFL and NFL analyst. In 1998, Schultz joined TSN, where he was a CFL on TSN panelist, while contributing analysis to SportsCentre and TSN.ca until 2017. From 2018-19, he served as the colour analyst for Argonauts’ games on TSN 1050 Toronto radio broadcasts.
During his broadcasting career, he proudly championed Purolator’s Tackle Hunger campaign as its Canadian spokesperson. He is a member of the Ontario and Burlington (his hometown) Sports Halls of Fame. Schultz died in 2021.
Vicki Hall
After a short stint writing news at her hometown newspaper, the Regina Leader-Post, Hall ventured to Alberta to begin her sports-writing career at the Edmonton Journal.
From 2001 to 2008, she served as the paper’s CFL beat writer. Hall joined the Calgary Herald in 2009 as an NHL writer, while also serving as the CFL backup reporter, before taking over the Stampeders beat from 2013-15. In 2015, she became the first female president of the Football Reporters of Canada, and then the first woman on the Canadian Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. She is the first woman inducted into the Hall.
She spent three years as Postmedia’s national amateur sportswriter, winning a National Newspaper Award in 2015, before freelancing for CBC and teaching journalism at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology