bluto

The league just won some excellent sponsorships though.

Well... if you didn't hate us before...

Best laugh in weeks!

You can't think that Popp would've made the deal without an understanding in place?

A year of scholarship for the lad behind Ricky would seem to be in order. Recall that Ray, widely acknowledged as one of the smartest QBs we've seen, played an entire half season and sat out 3 weeks with an injury and watched our Milo/Trestman offence in 2012 before he "got it".

If so, then we've ruined it twice now. You're welcome.

my sides...

yeahhhh... you too.

Was nice meeting you there homie.

How'd that work out?

Non issue. Strictly a media thing. Reigning East MOP. 5000+ yards. Played 19/20 games. Won a Grey Cup. Has a young family and a chance to play for a coach he loves with a team he loves for half a million dollars. Do the maths. At the GC rally, the crowd kept chanting "One More Year!" at him whenever he touched the Cup. When he got to the mic, what did he say? "One more? Why not two?"

I ******* love my team. In the same hotel as them. Partied all night. Tip: never get to the buffet after the o line has been there first. The Argo Bounce. It's real. Heading home. No voice left. 8/10 hangover. Still not warmed up. Feeling fine.

2011 was Vancouver... '12 was Toronto for the 100th... you'd think I'd remember that.

True. Considering that you'd think they'd like a hall full of CFL supporters, that makes the pricing a bit odd. I was lucky that year as I didn't have to pay as a presenter.

Example: We can agree that Trestman is a pretty good coach, right? Our biggest turning point was switching Whittaker (a player Trestman loves, has a past with, and still isn't all used up) for Wilder Jr. Once that happened (and our defence got healthy), we were a different team. It took until Sept 16 for Trestman to make the switch.

Yup. It's a great event and a heckuva after party. Good memories of Vancouver in '12 when I presented the Most Outstanding Canadian trophy to Jerome Messam. Ironic that I'll be rooting against him from the nation's other capitol this weekend.

His holy mullet be praised. Idk about the burbs being better for attendance... maybe? If you chose one direction and put it there (like, North probably because if you went East or West you'd be de facto losing every fan from the other side of the GTA) and built a strong local following... I could see it working... but then it wouldn't feel like the Argos. I love sitting outside down by the lake and seeing the glass skyscrapers and concrete canyons and the CN all lit up. I think that for Bay Street's sake, it has to remain a "Toronto" team regardless of consequences. The oldest. Pulling together since 1873. And yes, we true Double-Blue through and through types are justifiably proud of that and our history.

I get it. But that's the power of a media conglom actively trying to keep people away from the Argos. And that's just one aspect of it. I also have an "I'm better than everyone else" attitude... it just doesn't have anything to do with the city by the lake.

Funny story: at work we keep the lobby television on the local 24 hour news station. Been that way for years. Now, I've heard the occasional Argo score announced on there... I've seen the cheerleaders on the breakfast show... I've even seen Pinball on there when he's doing his charity work... But you'd never say that the Argos get coverage on par with what a major sport franchise ought to get. This past Monday however (yesterday), the Boatmen were on repeat all day long. Recaps of the game... even brief recaps of the western final... live interview from Ray... taped interview from Trestman... live interview from Wilder Jr. ... I literally had to check several times to see if it was the same channel as always. The Argos were getting the Bigtime treatment and all I could think was: i) where the hell has this been all these years, and ii) thank Flutie the Leafs didn't play last night. For whatever reason, the various media congloms here in Hogtown have considered it part of their culture to ignore the CFL as scrupulously as possible.Rogers sure as heck won't promote it (as it's a TSN property) and in this town, that will mostly bury you. What has been baffling has been the lack of a push from the local Bell properties. Anyway, suffice it to say that despite drawing major advertisers, doing huge ratings and delivering championships every few years, the Argos get the silent treatment. Then there's where the fans are. Here's a family friendly, affordable event in the heart of the city that has 46% of its citizens having being born in foreign lands and have no connection to North American football let alone the CFL. Does that mean you can't market to them? No... but have you seen what it takes, dollar-wise, to market a product in this city? Frankly, even a half-ass digital/TV/Radio/Print campaign for a short period of time costs more than your franchise is worth. And the silence is deafening. And it isn't as if there aren't a million other options for your entertainment dollar in this burg... So where are your traditional fans? Where are the ones you can lure out to a game if you finally get a nice stadium where your fans aren't treated with hostility (Roger centre) and you don't end up with a schedule full of Wednesday games (Blue Jays)... well, presuming you get a good schedule (this season's was the best in a longgg time) you can hope that the traditional CFL fans will come back into the city from the 905 area code (and in some cases the 519 like from Kitchener, 705 like from Barrie, or the 613 like from Belleville). Because that's where the traditional CFL fans and families have migrated to. So imagine you're ArgoDave. He finished work at 5 in Kitchener, had his car already loaded and wifey patiently waiting for him to go into the city with the worst traffic in North America, burn a tank of gas in doing so, pay $25 for parking to barely make it in time for the kickoff (if you're lucky) to pay $11.50 for a large import (yup... can't even catch a buzz for $50). Then you watch a rebuilding team that was shaky for large parts of the season and fight traffic to go home and hopefully you're there before 1am. Or maybe you're a Go Train commuter and you do the same thing minus the parking fee and tank of gas but you get shoehorned into a train car and then drive home from whatever station yu parked at and try to be home by 1am. Of course, you could always stay home and drink $2.50 premium microbrews out of your basement fridge while reclining in your lazy-boy and watching in HD on your 60" screen. This is the problem in a nutshell. You can't market to them because it costs too much. You can't make it any easier to get to and from the games. You can't lower your concession prices for various reasons. You can't give them free parking. You can't target the people who live closer because they don't know you. Best you can hope for is a gradual process of gaining these people back while luring new customers. The atmosphere at BMO is really good. Combine that with winning football and the occasional bigtime treatment from the local media and it will work out... but then... sometimes you launch a new season in a new field and you finish last in the league. Yeah... we win Grey Cups in this town, but we also shoot ourselves in the foot every time it looks like we can gain a better foothold and return to the halcyon days of the late 70's and early 80's when we'd have 40k out to the Ex for the Argos every weekend. Long post. Kinda rambling. And if I'm honest it's just exhausting rehashing this every year or so. Yeah, you hate us, but without us, there'd be no top level national sponsors like Nissan that would touch the league. And the money in the league is good right now. The CFL is a viable career for a football player and for a few it's an excellent springboard to a 7 figure contract down south. So if it's all the same to you guys, I think we should all just be on board with the Argos having deep playoff runs and lots of home wins for a couple of years and see if we can't duplicate that crowd from Sunday every week. K? Thx.

And thank Flutie for that! At least one Toronto sports club can regularly reward its supporters with a championship every now and then. The Leafs just hurt me again and again... they're like a hot ex-girlfriend.

If he's willing to sign on as a consultant or director at large there's really no underestimating how valuable his contact list could be to a team.

Not my estimate... Neilsen ratings. And your woeful ignorance of the issues the GTA presents the CFL is showing... or was that your zeal for putting down a fanbase that you don't particularly like to give yourself a feeling of superiority? As for calling your comment dickish, I stand by it. You make the same sort of comment virtually every time the Argonauts, Toronto, or me enter into the conversation. So I won't feel as though I'm missing anything by adding you to my block list. Not precisely the sort of thing that I would have wished for on the august occasion of my 1000th post, but there we are. And piggybacking on that, I'd like to say a quick thanks to the ownership and management of MBB for establishing and keeping a good thing going. It is with no small amount of pride that I (as a Morning Big Blue OG) look back on the small role that I played in bringing the events to bear that launched this site and torpedoed that other POS.

Your broken record comment is becoming dickish. Check the TV ratings in southern Ontario, there's several hundred thousand of us.

Yeah, but the Rider losses felt kinda sketchy. We got flagged into oblivion and had poor discipline and couldn't get a bounce. I felt like on our day, we'd prove the better team. Calgary on the other hand, curbstomped us away, and beat us good at home. Our level has gotten closer to theirs these last several weeks, but I harbour no illusions of superiority. Need the Football Gods to smile upon us this Sunday for that.

905'ers... east, west and north. All good football fans (as was likely in evidence on tv).