Naylor’s Kickoff: CFL selling new season as first step towards brighter future

Dave Naylor

TSN Football Insider

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While the opening night of any sports season brings a feel of excitement and anticipation, tonight’s Canadian Football League opener in Calgary between the Stampeders and Montreal Alouettes will have a little more significance.

It’s the first time the CFL has opened on time since 2019 after the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the entire 2020 season and the early part of 2021, resulting in a 14-game regular season that kicked off Aug. 5. The 2021 Grey Cup game was pushed to December just as the Omicron variant wave was taking flight.

Few professional sports leagues got hit harder by the pandemic than the CFL, sending it down desperate paths. It started in 2020 when the league went fishing for a federal government bailout – a $30 million interest-free loan which was denied – and continued in early 2021 when the CFL considered a merger with the owners of the XFL.

More than anything, being unable to play for 21 months tested the loyalty of everyone associated with the CFL game – the owners, the players and, of course, the league’s fans, who were dragged along through all the uncertainty.

All of that ends tonight.

If nothing else, the CFL’s pandemic experience reminds us how the economic engine of this league is still driven by ordinary fans in a very traditional way.

The league is aggressively trying to develop revenue streams beyond the bums-in-seats stream, but for the foreseeable future that’s what the CFL is going to rely upon most.

And during the pandemic, no bums in seats meant no football.

The league used the time to execute a full re-examination of its business model, the game itself and its partnership with its players.

Loads of things were discussed and contemplated. But in the end, the league’s governors opted against a radical makeover, choosing instead to try and improve upon what makes the league unique and special.

Fans will certainly recognize the game they see tonight and this season, but it’s worth noting that some things have changed under the hood, as well as on the field.

On the field, the league will implement rules to its kicking and return games that favour better field position, while the narrowing of the hashmarks on the field should allow offences to open up by using more of the field.

In the boardrooms, CFL teams will share revenue for the first time in 30 years in 2022. And one-tenth of the league’s revenue entity, CFL Ventures, is now owned by a company called Genius Sports, which is essentially promising to rocket the CFL technologically into the future.

The implications of that are powerful, given the importance of digital marketing and connection these days, and the ability all of that has to expand the CFL’s profile among sports bettors.

The advent of legal sports betting has the potential to impact the CFL more than any other North American professional sports league, if the league can use it to drive audiences and engage fans – particularly younger ones.

Characterizations of the CFL’s fan base as aging and older aren’t just rhetoric, they are true.

And no one is more aware of this than the league and its teams, which is why everything the league does is going to be guided by what it believes will appeal to younger fans.

It was that way during considerations of rule changes for this season as well as other changes the league is making to the game and its presentation. More scoring, more competition among players, a faster game flow and lots of excitement.

That’s what the league is hoping to deliver this season in what it believes it is confidently selling as the first step towards a brighter future.

Larry Tanenbaum weighs in on CFL’s direction

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum doesn’t offer his opinions in the media often. But in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail’s Simon Houpt, Tanenbaum addressed several topics related to his role as chairman of the company which owns the Toronto Argonauts, Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, among others.

The interview also included a question relating to a solution to the CFL’s challenges.

“Yeah, I thought so, and I was working on it, but I’m not sure there’s alignment among [some of] the other ownership groups of the other eight teams,” Tanenbaum said. “The community-owned teams seem to be satisfied with what’s happening in the CFL, so we’re working to see how the Argos fit into that scenario. I’m not happy with it. I’m not happy with the structure of the league. My concern is, in the major cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, it’s not attracted the younger fan engagement. You look at value creation and, you know, quite unfortunately, these teams are not worth that much money. The hockey, basketball or soccer teams are trading at hundreds of millions of dollars, in some cases billions of dollars.

“And you see the Argos, you know, a 106-year-old league, and what value creation are these franchises trading at? You’ve got to look at that and say, Is that success?”

Tanenbaum’s comments drew outrage from many on social media, who rightly pointed out that MLSE’s tenure of Argo ownership has been underwhelming.

The solution to which he refers is believed to be the league’s dance with the XFL and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, which ended without an arrangement last summer.

MLSE was known to be a strong proponent of an XFL partnership, presumably believing that it could sell four-down American football with The Rock as its flagship face and name, easier than it could three-down Canadian football.

Tanenbaum’s comments did nothing to dispel that. 

Expansion high on CFL agenda

One thing the CFL has never been much good at is expansion.

Consider that in 1967 the NHL had six teams and the CFL had nine. Today, the NHL has 32 and the CFL has nine.

But the league is exploring ways to change that, which is interesting in of itself since there aren’t a whole lot of obvious places to go.

The CFL will stage a game in Nova Scotia this summer and remains interested in the Halifax market, even though its most recent efforts there were truncated by the pandemic.

A restart is needed.  

Quebec City has been tossed about, but there’s not a suitable stadium and there is competition from the University of Laval.

Beyond that? You’re talking about a whole lot of small markets that don’t have facilities suitable for professional football.

But you never know until you ask the question, which is why the CFL has enlisted the services of an investment bank to help guide it through this exploration.

In the short team, the league would very much like to establish a 10th team, bringing a team to Atlantic Canada, if for no other reason than to demonstrate growth and establish an even number of teams.

Moving from nine to 10 teams would improve the efficiency of the schedule and would increase the league’s output to five games per week from the current four.

The committee is expected to report back to the league’s governors over the course of the year.

No rookie head coaches

For the first time in almost two decades, there are no rookie head coaches in the CFL in 2022.

The only head coaching change in the league since the end of last season was in Edmonton where the Elks went back to the future by hiring former coach Chris Jones to replace the dismissed Jaime Elizondo.

Jones has the distinction of never having been part of a CFL staff that was fired, and he’s safe this season as the Elks begin the great rebuild after bottoming out in 2021.

Here are three CFL head coaches that may not be on the hot seat to open the season but could be before long.

Ottawa Redblacks – Paul LaPolice: The 2021 Redblacks simply didn’t have the offensive personnel to compete last season, especially at quarterback, where they were forced to go with two raw rookies for much of the season. That shouldn’t be a problem this season. LaPolice was hired after the 2019 season because the Redblacks were terrible on offence, and he was the offensive co-ordinator of the Grey Cup champion Winnipeg Blue Bombers. With an experienced quarterback in Jeremiah Masoli and a decent cast of newly acquired veterans around him, there is pressure on LaPolice to use his coaching expertise to turn the new talent into a team. LaPolice was not hired by new Ottawa general manager Shawn Burke, although that may be a non-factor.

BC Lions – Rick Campbell: The Lions weren’t a disaster last season but got worse as the season wore on, which never leaves a good taste at the end of a non-playoff year. Campbell has endorsed Nathan Rourke as the team’s starting quarterback, despite Rourke’s appearance in just three CFL games. Going with a young quarterback can have its rewards but the short term can be bumpy. The Lions are all-in on Rourke, having backed him up with Michael O’Connor, who has never started in the CFL, and Antonio Pipkin, whose been primarily a backup in Montreal and Toronto. If Rourke is ready for prime time, Campbell will look like a genius. If he’s not, he’ll be feeling the heat.

Montreal Alouettes – Khari Jones: Start with the fact that Jones is coaching without a contract for next season, often the first sign that a coach’s seat could be about to get very hot. The Alouettes took a small step backwards in 2021, going from a home playoff loss to a road playoff loss. Two seasons, two playoff appearances and two losses is no embarrassment considering what came before Jones. But the fact that he was not hired by general manager Danny Maciocia has led to speculation that Maciocia may have other ideas for the role, perhaps including himself. Either way, the dynamics in Montreal mean Jones’ seat may not stay cool for long.