CFL changes beyond tone deaf

Opinion

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in the nation’s capital, Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ Trey Vaval ran a franchise-setting 128-yard missed field goal off the foot of Ottawa Redblacks kicker Lewis Ward to the house.

As the season enters its homestretch, this may be one of the last “exciting” major plays in the Canadian Football League — no matter what the league’s commissioner claimed Monday in the declared revamp to Americanize the Canadian pastime — as the league will fundamentally change after the final whistle of the 112th Grey Cup on Nov. 16 if the redesigns are implemented.

The 35-second clock will likely eliminate the “anything can happen” dying minutes of game play and the commissioner cannot guarantee touchdowns will increase by 10 per cent next season — that is subjectively dependent on the on-field product any given year.

The announcement of these changes raises the question of if the commissioner has any idea what the actual state of the league is at the moment to justify these changes for more on-field “entertainment”? Because if he did, he’d know the standings at the moment could hardly be any more exciting.

And the political timing of the announcement couldn’t be more tone deaf at a time when the country is trying to preserve its identity in the face of U.S. threats.

The Canadian gridiron is literally stitched into the McMahon, Mosaic, Percival Molson Memorial and Princess Auto stadiums.

The University of Calgary and McGill University share their stadiums with the Calgary Stampeders and Montreal Alouettes respectively, while the City of Regina operates Mosaic stadium and plays host to both the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the University of Regina Rams. Meanwhile, the University of Manitoba owns the land the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ stadium resides on.

Rules aside, this is how the league will be torn down through economics.

U Sports can decide to expel the teams from their stadiums, meaning the possibility of four teams collapsing in the league is possible as four new stadiums would have to be built.

The other option is for U Sports and every other grassroots football league — who already operate on shoe-string budgets — to find money to rejig their rules and gridirons to fit the new Americanized narrative the CFL has decided to take despite not consulting players, coaches or fans.

If anything, the league needs a 10th Canadian team, not any of this nonsense that players and fans never asked for.

But the commissioner doesn’t care how the players feel. And he’s banking on fans not caring either.

However, the vitriol towards him, the league and the CFL’s board of governors over the last day says the fans really do care. Rare is the positive comment about these changes — outside of media outlets who are doubling down on the business jargon the CFL is using and isn’t pushing back with questions despite nearly all the Canadian identity being stripped from the league save for three downs.

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Canadian football is beloved because fans love the chaos of the game and the rules it has kept from the sport’s precursor: rugby.

Where data came from to make these changes is puzzling. So the questions must be asked: why is the NFL gridiron and audience engagement the standard? And, if this is truly an audience engagement push, why is the league comparing a market of 40 million total population to a market of 340 million?

Small franchises thriving is the pulse to take, not failing larger markets. And if the league’s fans are “aging” then how have the Bombers sold tickets like never before in the biggest stadium the franchise has ever called home?

In fact, the Bombers set a club record Sept. 6 with the Banjo Bowl marking the 11th consecutive sell out, and nearly 10,000 fans watched the U of M Bisons 34-7 domination over the University of Alberta Golden Bears at Princess Auto Stadium on Saturday. Clearly the Canadian game is doing just fine.

grace.paizen@freepress.mb.ca

Grace Anne Paizen
Sports Editor

Grace oversees the team that produces sports journalism for the Free Press.