I believe the Canadian Football League and Canadian-style football is a much more exciting brand than the tired NFL cookie-cutter game that their 400 pounders are forced to play on tiny football fields, directed by obsessive, compulsive coaches.
The CFL is poised to begin a whole new season on Friday night, and I am excited about what lies ahead for our Canadian teams.
But one thing continues to trouble me and that is the very fact that the league itself, is just too tiny.
We play a big game, but with too few participants.
The fact that Eastern Canada can only muster up three bona fide teams is a disgrace. They have to borrow the Blue Bummers from Winnipeg and make them pretend easterners just to balance the schedule. What kind of nonsense is that?
I know, I know, the Ottawa Renegades are coming back, but then we've been hearing about the Ottawa Renegades (nee Rough Riders) coming back for the past six years and they haven't surfaced yet.
So maybe it's here we can look to see what the problems are in Eastern Canada.
Ontario is going broke, yet the people in their largest city think they should have an NFL franchise, even though everyone else agrees that the Canadian brand of football is better. Toronto has this grandiose feeling that they are better than the CFL so they pay scant attention to their Argonauts while wooing the Buffalo Bills of the NFL. And when the Bills do make a foray into Toronto the Good, they have a difficult time selling tickets, as do the Argonauts. Maybe they want a better NFL team? Who knows? All I do know is that TO best get their act together soon. They've already been reduced to having to ice an amateur hockey team to compete in the NHL.
So then we slide over to our nation's capital and again ... no CFL team to be had. After 23 false starts, I'm beginning to think Estevan will have a CFL team before Ottawa gets back into the fold. Of course this is the city built by bureaucrats, so nothing will quickly happen there. They've kinda knocked down one side of the old Frank Clair Stadium and sorta rebuilt it, but they are kinda looking for business partners to pay the bill and sorta redesigning their construction and logistical plans.
So we have Montreal and Hamilton as the last bastions of CFL representation in Eastern Canada. How sad. Hamilton can't find a temporary home for next season to accommodate their rebuild and we have no idea what will happen to Montreal once Anthony Calvillo retires.
So instead of thriving with franchises in Ottawa, London, Waterloo, Halifax, we get a watered down CFL.
Even in the west I do believe we could make an addition. Forget Saskatoon, that was just a scare tactic to get the stadium project moving in Regina. But with four or five million folks residing in B.C., don't ya think that the region around Kelowna, Vernon, Peachland, et al., could support a franchise? Lots of money out there, lots of fans ... lots of fans who don't relish the idea of having to make a trip to the inner sanctums of Bancouver Riotland to see a game.
Build it and they will come. After all, everybody from Saskatchewan over the age of 60 has retired to Kelowna and you know what kind of fans they are!
I'll cheer on our little eight-team CFL because it is the best kind of North American football being played out there right now from an entertainment standpoint. But it would be really nice to have at least a 10-team league, doncha think?
I know what! Let's have the CFL expand into the United States and show them how real football is played! Ooops, I forgot.
