Argos’ boat don’t float

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This article was published 31/01/2015 (4214 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Saying everything is great in the CFL “except for Toronto” is a bit like the old gag — “Aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

The problems with the Toronto Argonauts, which begin with the lack of an appropriate venue in which to play and extend to an owner who owns another CFL franchise and has been increasingly unwilling to invest in the Toronto product, are not something that can be easily glossed over.

Home to Canada’s largest city and most influential media market, Toronto is to Canada what New York is to the United States — if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

But the converse is also true. Just ask the new mayor of Toronto, John Tory, who as a former CFL chairman and commissioner, knows more than a little about the central role Toronto plays in the CFL.

“I believe that the existence of a strong franchise in Toronto is important to the Canadian Football League,” Tory told TSN 1050 Radio in Toronto earlier this month. “As much as people might say, ‘Oh the league can survive without Toronto.’ I don’t think… well it could survive but it would not survive in a strong kind of way without a strong Toronto franchise.”

Having a diehard CFL fan in Tory in the mayor’s chair in Toronto could not have come at a better time for the CFL. Tory, who led the CFL through some of its most financially turbulent times in the 1990s, has already been using his office as a bully pulpit to lobby for a new home for the Argos at BMO Field.

“You get BMO Field renovated and have 23,000 to 24,000 seats there, it will sell out for CFL football,” Tory told the radio station. “It will become a ticket for which there is a demand. It will become the place to be.

“Let’s face it, no criticism of the Rogers Centre (but) you don’t feel you’re in the place to be at the Rogers Centre when there is 20,000 people there in a 50,000-seat stadium.”

The Argos must vacate Rogers Centre after the 2017 season and the most logical new home for them would be at BMO Field, which is home to Toronto’s pro soccer team, Toronto FC.

Renovations are already underway at BMO Field that could make the venue suitable for the CFL, but there is squabbling over who’s going to pay and a demand the federal government cough up $10 million of the $120-million renovation price tag.

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns Toronto FC as well as the NBA’s Raptors and NHL’s Maple Leafs, would be the most logical choice to take over ownership of the Argos from David Braley, who owns a second CFL franchise in B.C.

But talks between the two parties have thus far failed to yield an agreement and the Argos are expected to face another tough schedule in 2015 at Rogers Centre, where the presence of the Blue Jays and the 2015 Pan Am Games could have the Argos once again this season playing a lot of weekday games and venturing out on the road for a month or more at a time.

Tory told TSN Radio he’s optimistic Braley and MLSE will eventually hammer out a deal that will see the Argos move to BMO Field.

“I think the Argos need it to get back on their feet,” he said.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @PaulWiecek