wbbfan

toronto is not a litmus test though. Out side of the leafs that is the biggest band wagon fan base in canada and one of the biggest in NA. Yes the cfl has struggled, carrying 2 markets for too long took a lot out of the league coffers and covid only made it worse. Changes moving forward are needed. But I know lots and lots of young fans in the primary target range 18-35, in ott, hammer, here, sask of course too. Cal needs a stadium, edm needs some consistency and a stadium, I actually like mtl is very well poised right now. If the feds hadnt pooched us with covid funds last year I think things would be pretty optimistic.

Competing against a team full of imps is too big a disadvantage.

Us based NI dont work though. Even if its territorial. Not to mention having us based teams in league with us would badly hurt our ability to recruit. To hell with that. If we played some funny mixed rules or alternated rules for a cross over championship or some interleague play thatd be ok. But they cant have our 3 downs, our field width, or our endzone depth. They could take the rouge on the missed FG, id keep it on the punt though. 100 yards end zone to end zone would be fine too. More than that is suicide imo.

I certainly dont think the tv deal with disappear if we went down in teams, namely if we lost TO. people in to already dont care thats the worst case scenario. It would hurt though. If any thing I think losing MTL would be worse for the league pipeline wise. But I certainly dont want to see us go down to 6 teams. The tv deal and viewership has been growing in a time when the argos couldnt have worse support. At this point I think MTL and the argos ownership is solid. BC is the only one I worry about right now in terms of possibly needed to be carried by the league.

same here

I followed the moose through the IHL years and WJ each year but since the AHL merger its been the end of it all for me.

A good team is a big part of that experience. When the team is a 3-5 win team that atmosphere isnt nearly as good.

Winning big early and giving a championship starved city a title goes a long ways. See the goldeyes. Too many teams get stuck in rebuilding cycles instead of playing to win.

I feel like the long term should be sustainable with the tv deal growing each time, we just cant afford to carry a dud franchise or twos expenses. But the xfl will have none of its own games in 2021 or 2022. And we'd be getting money right away. So they would certainly need to have us playing games in their markets. And having it be 2 divisions like the afc nfc merger that made the NFL would mean we'd have to play each other at some point. Are they gonna play under our rules? are we gonna sell our game out? would the cfl survive selling out our style? I dont think so.

Time for a save the CFL gofundme campaign.

I dont see much of a revenue stream coming from the us watching cfl games. They dipped hard on the xfl 2.0, aafl, spring league, arena league etc. Hard core american football fans have the NFL, ncaa, and high school ball. They dont lack for content. The cfl is a fringe style for them too, we arent that different for them from the arena league and their interest in foreign teams is extremely low.

Or if the gov't comes through that'd do it for sure. I doubt it. Prolly some board of governers with people from all sides and he reps us. Money always wants to have their own guy atleast as figure head. 100%. The xfl version 1.0 had plenty of creativity. A bunch of crap and a few debatable gems. Xfl 2.0 didnt add any thing really.

I am really worried about that too. With out out side intervention I think we likely see a 6iish team league for a season or two maybe more. Maybe we see a real dip in terms of imp talent due to cash cut backs. The federal liberals dont want to bail out the cfl on the cfls terms. But they also wont want to have refused them then see the cfl go bankrupt. That would be a huge hit especially after giving money hand over fist to every one else. And not just in the west, but in several regions of ontario and quebec too. I always expect that when a financial issue is made public, that its much worse than expected. I dont trust ambrosie half as far as I could throw him.

I think they had a couple of decent markets but as many weak ones. The real issue is both the in game attendance and the tv ratings started to dip hard after like week 2/3. That after a big dip from week 1. I dont think we saw the bottom of the fall, or where their draw would settle to as a norm. If any thing, covid gave them an out.

TO attendance wouldnt change if they played in a 100k seat stadium or only had 8 lawn chairs and 2 standing only spots. And montreal had good success with over charging for artificially scarce spots when they were a dynasty. Since that ended they havent been on stabile financial grounds and both teams have recently been only kept above water by the cfl. Im sure the bombers could make it work if we only had say 15k capacity and people paid more, Id pay 2 or 3 or what ever times more. but I dont think thatd fly in bc, to, ott and maybe mtl. The league that really optimizes income from sports betting will be an unstoppable juggernaut for generations to come. Thats easily the biggest un tapped revenue source in all of sports. But its dangerous too. Muay thai fights in thailand have been ruined by the gamblers and corruption.

Sounds like hog wash to me. They didnt do this with the first or 2nd pass of the XFL. Or for the AAF, or spring league etc. The record of the XFL is going bankrupt twice. The 2nd edition didnt even make it through the first season. Im not sure that this 3rd version of the XFL has deeper pockets or better media ties. The nfl spent a TON of cash in NFLE back in the day. And they have a deeper talent pool than ever. I think if any thing, it makes sense that a few of the pro leagues come under an NFL umbrella. Clearly we'd have to have some ability to keep the uniqueness of our game intact. And a full on minor league set up wouldnt work. But itd still be nothing for each NFL team to kick a couple million dollars into us, the xfl, and a league like one in mexico to strengthen the pro pipeline and keep talent circulating.

They have no rosters, coaching or mangement staffs in place. They have nothing to field for football and likely dont have the time to put some thing together. But perhaps they are thinking of cfl games in XFL cities. This whole thing has me nauseas. I havent been this worried since the collapse of the us teams and dark ages of the bombers.

The nature of betting institutions. Just means put some money on the blue n gold.

or the 2000 core with geroy, aj3, milt and robert gordon. Heck the milt, armstrong and TE would be great too. I think we have as much talent and athleticism in the wr core since then and I fully expect to see the most productive passing game we've seen in that time as well.

You can make a lot of different skill sets work at slot, from milt to nik lewis. Its all about how they are used. Also, woli has good speed for his size. BC was trying to sign him before he got his NI papers as an imp. I have no doubt woli would excel at slot, hes really good with the tough yards and with catch and run stuff.

The CFL is a cultural institution in canada. Its far more important than some large companies that got very large wage subsidy checks then still did massive lay offs.

Fear isnt really accurate. Its more like slight hesitation. And the deep ball windows can close quickly. If a qb is aggressive in pushing the ball down field the instant they see the window open its often missed. Yeah early in his 2019 run we did see more pushing the ball down field than we had previous. But it wasnt like he was throwing "50/50" balls and letting his wrs make plays, or even game design. Our 2019 group of wr's were very dangerous top to bottom and defenses took a while to adapt to the level of speed we brought in. The fault is to be shared, pretty close to equally. Lapo didnt keep the offense and nichols growing and improving year to year. Nichols battled a lot of injuries here. Harris and the OL is relatively low blame not much more they could have done. With Collaros and Buck running the show now I expect to see more of a difference than we've seen on offense for 5 or so years. And I cant wait to see what they bring to the table.

People think a high completion % (in a short yardage passing offense at that) He was by no means joe montana throwing guys open, or leading them to extra yardage. But idk if the cfl has one of those guys right now.

Ol, especially tackle has become a position of much more athletic demand. Weve come a long way from the era when matt sheridan was a stalwart at guard to a time when geoff gray is the new standard. That or larry allen esq freak athletes. The NI pipeline is almost always behind the us. And that means the difference between what you find at ni T and imp T is lofty. Mean while we have also seen a great increase in ratio breakers. Its still hard to attract the most athletic big kids to playing line, but only more so up here. So we've gone from good teams striving to start 4 or 5 ni ol, 1 wr and 1 dl as pretty standard to teams starting 3 or even 2 NI ol with a mix of other positions. Idk if we will see the number of NI Ts every rise back up to what it used to be.

Honestly aside from judge their FA pick ups could be the over-the-hill-gang. A bunch of guys who played in the nfl which means high talent level but not necessarily skill sets that will transition well to the cfl game. Judge and speller are the two young good pick ups of their off season. And both the ol and dl will see an insane amount of roll over. GL to them having any continuity with that.