Blue Bombers 2014 Thread (Game 5 - July 25 @ BC)

[Koonta]

CFL has absolutely no need of Toronto. I mean I'd love if Toronto populace could understand that NFL considers them a joke and that CFL offers an exciting affordable brand of football you can't have south of the border. However if they haven't by now (20+ years of this being the case, ie Flutie) it doesn't seem likely. Toronto doesn't generate near the same ticket or sales numbers that the west or Quebec (province) does. At this point if Braley can sell his second team to a legit CFL market in Quebec City or Maritimes it'd be a win for the CFL. Screw Toronto, we really don't need them anymore than the NFL, the West and Quebec drive the CFL.

Agree (especially the screw Toronto part). There is however alot of propaghanda floating around about how losing Toronto woud be a death knell for the CFL and it usually has to do with the national TV deal/national sponsorship,etc. That always strikes me as being way overstated/overblown.

MLSE should buy the Argos and have them play in BMO field and get them the hell out of Rogers Place (however maybe MLSE is fooling themselves holding out for an NFL team I don't know)

 

[Jet]

CFL has absolutely no need of Toronto. I mean I'd love if Toronto populace could understand that NFL considers them a joke and that CFL offers an exciting affordable brand of football you can't have south of the border. However if they haven't by now (20+ years of this being the case, ie Flutie) it doesn't seem likely. Toronto doesn't generate near the same ticket or sales numbers that the west or Quebec (province) does. At this point if Braley can sell his second team to a legit CFL market in Quebec City or Maritimes it'd be a win for the CFL. Screw Toronto, we really don't need them anymore than the NFL, the West and Quebec drive the CFL.

Agree (especially the screw Toronto part). There is however alot of propaghanda floating around about how losing Toronto woud be a death knell for the CFL and it usually has to do with the national TV deal/national sponsorship,etc. That always strikes me as being way overstated/overblown.

MLSE should buy the Argos and have them play in BMO field and get them the hell out of Rogers Place (however maybe MLSE is fooling themselves holding out for an NFL team I don't know)

I think the CFL is marketable in Toronto. They are just doing it the wrong way. I agree, they need out of Rogers Centre. Go to BMO field. Look at Montreal. Playing out of McGill is quaint, it's beautiful and it really adds to the charm of going to a game.

The Argonauts have to embrace the fact that they are not the NFL. They have to say '**** you' to all that think the league is Mickey Mouse. To hell with them. Downsize the seats and create ticket demand. People go to that behemoth of a stadium and it just plays into the minor league attitude about the CFL because it's so empty.

There are lots of people in that Golden Horseshoe populace to market the CFL to. It's a great product, but it's not now, nor will it be the NFL (which makes me happy, I personally do not care for the NFL).

 

[HannuJ]

Loving that you love CFL out in Toronto. I worked with some people in Sask from near Toronto that loved CFL. Even they said 90% of people didn't care. I loved it that they got onboard (to be honest they did get more on board after pretty much moving out to the west). Argonauts do not get nearly enough credit in their own city. Really wished Ontario would support CFL like the rest of the country. I'll even give you a bye Hannu for being a Argo fan (if you are one) haha.

watch your mouth, son.
I may have moved here in 2000, but I'm a Winnipegger.
i will never cheer for the Leafs.
(well, they make it easy to never cheer for them).
I will always bleed Blue and Gold. It was part of my childhood and i'll still watch Friday Night Football. much to the chagrin of my wife. but still.

going to Bombers games in Toronto is really depressing. nothing's worse than sitting in an empty stadium. it's like going to a comedy club and no one laughing at the comedian on stage.

and the CFL does need toronto. TSN wouldn't give that TV deal if the ARgos folded.

 

[BigZ65]

Agree (especially the screw Toronto part). There is however alot of propaghanda floating around about how losing Toronto woud be a death knell for the CFL and it usually has to do with the national TV deal/national sponsorship,etc. That always strikes me as being way overstated/overblown.

It's not propaganda. The TV ratings skyrocketed in Southern Ontario, and so did the CFL-TSN rights fee. You could argue about what the effect of losing the Argos would be on those ratings, that's completely hypothetical. Hard to see the CFL being anywhere near the league it is today without Toronto. Simply put, there isn't much room for growth in any of the more traditionally successful CFL markets.

The Argos need a facility in the 905. Moving to BMO is just shifting deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

[HannuJ]

I think the CFL is marketable in Toronto. They are just doing it the wrong way. I agree, they need out of Rogers Centre. Go to BMO field. Look at Montreal. Playing out of McGill is quaint, it's beautiful and it really adds to the charm of going to a game.

The Argonauts have to embrace the fact that they are not the NFL. They have to say '**** you' to all that think the league is Mickey Mouse. To hell with them. Downsize the seats and create ticket demand. People go to that behemoth of a stadium and it just plays into the minor league attitude about the CFL because it's so empty.

There are lots of people in that Golden Horseshoe populace to market the CFL to. It's a great product, but it's not now, nor will it be the NFL (which makes me happy, I personally do not care for the NFL).

Hamilton wasn't doing so well either. mind you, their old stadium was a disgusting hole. made Wpg Stadium look amazing.

it's quite possible that toronto's not a football town. MLS does well because we're a diverse town with a huge immigrant population and people grew up soccer fans. Basketball's only started to "take off" (using 1 year of hype as a springboard, i hope).

Mtl claims it makes nothing due to its small stadium.

 

[BigZ65]

refs haven't been complaint worthy for a few years.

If you have any clue about football and watched the games last night it wouldn't be possible to make that ^ statement.

Last week they didn't properly penalize two late/dangerous hits, this week they've flagged a bunch of legal hits in the 2 games we've seen so far. The crew for the Bombers-Als game were tossing flags left, right and centre, yet let a whole bunch of ridiculous pass interference go, after calling a handful of ticky tack PI's in the first half. Horribly inconsistent, which is the worst kind of officiating, at least be consistently bad.

 

[Jet]

Hamilton wasn't doing so well either. mind you, their old stadium was a disgusting hole. made Wpg Stadium look amazing.

it's quite possible that toronto's not a football town. MLS does well because we're a diverse town with a huge immigrant population and people grew up soccer fans. Basketball's only started to "take off" (using 1 year of hype as a springboard, i hope).

Mtl claims it makes nothing due to its small stadium.

It's fair to say that Toronto is not a football town. The NFL games they've hosted have been far from gigantic successes. Of course, it's hard to gauge when you have another city's team playing there, but still.

Even if Toronto isn't a football town per say, they still have the population that could support a healthy team even if a small percentage of people were interested.

They have to figure it out though. I do believe that the golden horseshoe is critical to the growth and success of the CFL. I'd like to see the CFL re-expand into the States too, but on a much smaller and slower scale.

 

[Hank Chinaski]

It's fair to say that Toronto is not a football town. The NFL games they've hosted have been far from gigantic successes. Of course, it's hard to gauge when you have another city's team playing there, but still.

Even if Toronto isn't a football town per say, they still have the population that could support a healthy team even if a small percentage of people were interested.

They have to figure it out though. I do believe that the golden horseshoe is critical to the growth and success of the CFL. I'd like to see the CFL re-expand into the States, but on a much smaller and slower scale.

Looking at it historically, Toronto has shown they will support the Argos. They had great crowds pretty well all throughout the years they played at Exhibition Stadium, and also in the first few years they played at SkyDome.

It seems like their dip in attendance occurred when there was a dip league-wide, during the awful American expansion years. And while all the other CFL markets have seemingly recovered from those terrible years, Toronto hasn't quite made that full recovery.

 

[Jet]

Looking at it historically, Toronto has shown they will support the Argos. They had great crowds pretty well all throughout the years they played at Exhibition Stadium, and also in the first few years they played at SkyDome.

It seems like their dip in attendance occurred when there was a dip league-wide, during the awful American expansion years. And while all the other CFL markets have seemingly recovered from those terrible years, Toronto hasn't quite made that full recovery.

When you say the awful American expansion years, it seems a little misleading. The American expansion was in response to a critical loss in interest for the CFL from Canadians.

I really think the addition of 2 American teams would be very beneficial to the league.

 

[BigZ65]

The GTA is a football town. Minor football and high school programs that are the envy of the rest of the country. Only other place comparable is the lower mainland in BC.

There are several factors working against pro football in Toronto, biggest and most obvious is the lack of a suitable facility. Even BMO will be shared and far from ideal in terms of location. Argos would still need their own facility to practice. They currently practice at a field in Mississauga and exist out of several rented trailers.

The golden opportunity was the facility at York. C & S, the owners with no cash, totally blew that one. Then they blew the Varsity opportunity too, and that facility was scaled way back into one that will never be suitable for the CFL again. It's a beautiful facility for a middling CIS program.

They need to get out to the suburbs, where their football fans are. A place like Markham could be just dumb enough to put up some public money to attract a pro sports team.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

When you say the awful American expansion years, it seems a little misleading. The American expansion was in response to a critical loss in interest for the CFL from Canadians.

I really think the addition of 2 American teams would be very beneficial to the league.

One of the biggest problems I have with American expansion is they can't enforce the ratio. Which is a huge advantage for american teams (see Baltimore's Grey Cup).

 

[BigZ65]

When you say the awful American expansion years, it seems a little misleading. The American expansion was in response to a critical loss in interest for the CFL from Canadians.

I really think the addition of 2 American teams would be very beneficial to the league.

Not really. It was a cash call by a desperate group of owners who were surviving cheque to cheque, mostly because of their inability to regulate their own spending. The American expansion put the league from struggling to the brink of death.

I think it would be very difficult for any American expansion to be sustainable (see the history of any non-NFL pro football in the US), and most of the cities that would be reasonable candidates are in the same boat as the Canadian expansion candidates, in need of a suitable stadium.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

The GTA is a football town. Minor football and high school programs that are the envy of the rest of the country. Only other place comparable is the lower mainland in BC.

Yeah I disagree with this. Quebec produces more CFL players than anywhere else. Football is huge in Quebec. And the prairies have been great and are building. Between Calgary and Winnipeg there's almost the same amount of people as GTA I think which produce more talent per capita than GTA (I might be REALLY wrong on this it's just an instinct, if somebody can show this is wrong I will completely cave here haha).

But there's a reason the CFL is already talking about getting rid of junior exemptions. The West gets such a huge advantage particularly BC since it's the best junior league (RB Andrew Harris is WPG player but played junior in BC where BC exempted him).

 

[Hank Chinaski]

When you say the awful American expansion years, it seems a little misleading. The American expansion was in response to a critical loss in interest for the CFL from Canadians.

I really think the addition of 2 American teams would be very beneficial to the league.

Disagree with this take. The American expansion was a quick cash grab orchestrated by Larry Smith and a few owners, who tried to capitalize on the fact that there was no secondary league in the US at that time (the WLAF had just folded).

Put another way, the CFL would've done just fine through that 1993-95 period without American expansion. Instead, the league was brought to the brink of existence.

Yeah I disagree with this. Quebec produces more CFL players than anywhere else. Football is huge in Quebec. And the prairies have been great and are building. Between Calgary and Winnipeg there's almost the same amount of people as GTA I think which produce more talent per capita than GTA (I might be REALLY wrong on this it's just an instinct, if somebody can show this is wrong I will completely cave here haha).

Ontario and the BC lower mainland also churns out like 10x more NCAA scholarship talent than the rest of Canada combined. The reason you don't see that translating to the CFL is because CFL teams will sooner draft a guy from Quebec that has played 2 years of CEGEP and 5 years with a CIS squad than some guy from Ontario that has started for a year at some mid-major school in the US, even if they're close in terms of ability.

 

[Jet]

They need to get out to the suburbs, where their football fans are. A place like Markham could be just dumb enough to put up some public money to attract a pro sports team.

I'd bet Markham would be perfect. I think they were going hard to get an NHL team for a time there and were willing to pony up on an arena.

One of the biggest problems I have with American expansion is they can't enforce the ratio. Which is a huge advantage for american teams (see Baltimore's Grey Cup).

Why can't they though? Make the rules the same for every team? I think if they grow it slowly they can really strengthen the league with a couple of strategic markets. The one problem I (and many others) have with the CFL is lack of teams and too many teams making the post season. There just aren't enough centres in Canada left that can support a team.

Disagree with this take. The American expansion was a quick cash grab orchestrated by Larry Smith and a few owners, who tried to capitalize on the fact that there was no secondary league in the US at that time (the WLAF had just folded).

Put another way, the CFL would've done just fine through that 1993-95 period without American expansion. Instead, the league was brought to the brink of existence.
.

I think the reason that the expansion was so aggressive though is that so many teams were struggling financially and needed a cash infusion. If they could have been more patient, I believe there would be American teams still in the CFL to this day.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Why can't they though? Make the rules the same for every team? I think if they grow it slowly they can really strengthen the league with a couple of strategic markets. The one problem I (and many others) have with the CFL is lack of teams and too many teams making the post season. There just aren't enough centres in Canada left that can support a team.

It's against the law in US. Can't force US based teams to abide my rules to keep canadian players starting and on the roster (it might be illegal for even american players but that's never an issue).

 

[Hank Chinaski]

I think the reason that the expansion was so aggressive though is that so many teams were struggling financially and needed a cash infusion. If they could have been more patient, I believe there would be American teams still in the CFL to this day.

But you have to go back to why the teams were struggling. Their spending was out of control, and certain owners were delusional enough to believe they could compete with the NFL for college talent (ie. the Rocket Ismail signing). American expansion was just a symptom of the CFL mindset at the time, and it wasn't really necessary.

I do agree that a more controlled American expansion could have been successful, but you need the perfect mix of variables for an American market to be successful: no pro team, no competing college teams, a suitable stadium, and most importantly a strong ownership group that can handle a few lean years.

 

[LadyJet26]

But you have to go back to why the teams were struggling. Their spending was out of control, and certain owners were delusional enough to believe they could compete with the NFL for college talent (ie. the Rocket Ismail signing). American expansion was just a symptom of the CFL mindset at the time, and it wasn't really necessary.

I do agree that a more controlled American expansion could have been successful, but you need the perfect mix of variables for an American market to be successful: no pro team, no competing college teams, a suitable stadium, and most importantly a strong ownership group that can handle a few lean years.

I think the CFL being on ESPN now is helping Americans (especially southern Americans) understand and have access to the Canadian game. During American expansion in the CFL, Americans didn't know wtf the CFL was.

 

[sipowicz]

It's fair to say that Toronto is not a football town. The NFL games they've hosted have been far from gigantic successes. Of course, it's hard to gauge when you have another city's team playing there, but still.

Even if Toronto isn't a football town per say, they still have the population that could support a healthy team even if a small percentage of people were interested.

They have to figure it out though. I do believe that the golden horseshoe is critical to the growth and success of the CFL. I'd like to see the CFL re-expand into the States too, but on a much smaller and slower scale.

If you did a poll about TO's most popular sports hockey would be #1 followed by cricket!

 

[ps241]

I agree in Toronto its all about the stadium and the location of the stadium, the current situation is not much better than the Big O was in Montreal and that almost killed the CFL in that province. if you put the right stadium in the right location they would support a team. Its about creating scarcity because the product sells itself live in the correct venue.

 

[BigZ65]

Yeah I disagree with this. Quebec produces more CFL players than anywhere else. Football is huge in Quebec. And the prairies have been great and are building. Between Calgary and Winnipeg there's almost the same amount of people as GTA I think which produce more talent per capita than GTA (I might be REALLY wrong on this it's just an instinct, if somebody can show this is wrong I will completely cave here haha).

But there's a reason the CFL is already talking about getting rid of junior exemptions. The West gets such a huge advantage particularly BC since it's the best junior league (RB Andrew Harris is WPG player but played junior in BC where BC exempted him).

Quebec's minor football programs are the fastest growing, they aren't producing more football players than BC and Ontario (vast majority from GTA). BC does things quite differently in many respects, Alberta too. They are leading the way in making football a 12 month a year sport (for better or worse) and giving elite players more opportunities for development. Quebec's programs are still very young and developing. Our programs on the prairies are taking a step out of the 1960s which they were stuck in for about 40 years, Saskatchewan leading the way. The programs in and around Winnipeg are still pretty fragile, extremely dependent on strong leadership, not really self-sustaining yet. A handful of coaches decide they don't have the time to commit, and a bunch of teams are gone. Huge shortages of qualified coaches and officials, infrastructure is mostly crap too, but getting a little better with some new facilities (thank god for indoor soccer) and improvements to others.

The rest of the country looks to Ontario and BC, Alberta to a lesser extent, for guidance in how to develop players, coaches and programs, in my experience.

The junior exemption is garbage. Looks like they are getting rid of it entirely and putting those guys in the draft, but I think it would be fair if they based the exemption on where players attended high school rather than the location of their junior team, seeing as how BC has a whole league to pick from while places like Winnipeg and Calgary have one mediocre junior program.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Quebec's minor football programs are the fastest growing, they aren't producing more football players than BC and Ontario (vast majority from GTA). BC does things quite differently in many respects, Alberta too. They are leading the way in making football a 12 month a year sport (for better or worse) and giving elite players more opportunities for development. Quebec's programs are still very young and developing. Our programs on the prairies are taking a step out of the 1960s which they were stuck in for about 40 years, Saskatchewan leading the way. The programs in and around Winnipeg are still pretty fragile, extremely dependent on strong leadership, not really self-sustaining yet. A handful of coaches decide they don't have the time to commit, and a bunch of teams are gone. Huge shortages of qualified coaches and officials, infrastructure is mostly crap too, but getting a little better with some new facilities (thank god for indoor soccer) and improvements to others.

The rest of the country looks to Ontario and BC, Alberta to a lesser extent, for guidance in how to develop players, coaches and programs, in my experience.

The junior exemption is garbage. Looks like they are getting rid of it entirely and putting those guys in the draft, but I think it would be fair if they based the exemption on where players attended high school rather than the location of their junior team, seeing as how BC has a whole league to pick from while places like Winnipeg and Calgary have one mediocre junior program.

Thanks for this. I'm not super up to date on this. I know a little bit maybe 5-6 removed about the Alberta and Manitoba programs (at the youth/high school/junior level seemed to very similiar from what I could tell) and talk and rumours about the other leagues but that's about it. Manitoba despite their archaic kinda terrible system still does tend to do fine with regards to top level (CFL hell even a little NFL) talent.

Thanks for the correction on Quebec. It just had seemed to produce plenty of talent (although I might be looking at CIS grads to CFL which are not necessarily Quebec grads) and the talking heads seem to always talk up Quebec.

And I agree with the Junior exemption. I mean one notable example is Andrew Harris. Winnipeg born and grown but he went to BC for their junior league (which is great, at least the equal of the Prairie League but the Prairie League has 2 EDM team, 1 CGY team, 2 SSK teams, 1 WPG team versus BC having the whole league) so Harris was protected by BC not WPG. Needs to at very least hugely reformatted. Like you said high school might not be a bad idea, but they just need to re-think their draft rules to include these junior players.

 

[Guardian17]

Noooooo!

Swaggerville was a joke. That's what's refreshing about this group, they're not interested in clowning and jawing.

Win a Grey Cup first, then you can slap some dumb nickname on your team.

Exactly!

 

[Andy6]

One of the biggest problems I have with American expansion is they can't enforce the ratio. Which is a huge advantage for american teams (see Baltimore's Grey Cup).

Although people were predicting that the Gold Miners (the lone U.S. team the first year) would go undefeated when in reality their all-American line-up ended up being just another typical also-ran expansion team.

 

[King Woodballs]