May 08 2008
The Beginning of the End for the CFL?
A couple of weeks ago, those lovable scamps at Kissing Suzy Kolber lashed out at Canada for trying to lure the Buffalo Bills north of the border. The Bills, of course, struck a $78 million deal with the city of Toronto, which will allow the city to host eight Bills games at the SkyDom… uh, the Rogers Centre over the next five years.
Here’s the $78 million question, though — if Toronto falls in love with the Bills, will they abandon the Argonauts and send the Canadian Football League crashing down?
CFL commissioner Mark Cohon has already said publicly that an NFL team in Toronto would be the death knell for his 3-down, 110-yard football league. Said Cohon:
“I want to see Toronto as a prospering (CFL) franchise, which sets the bellwether for the rest of the league. I was not hired to be commissioner of a Western league.
“If you make the assumption that an NFL team would come into this market, it would cut into (the CFL’s) ad revenue, ticketing and would remove our ability to compete, as there’s a limited number of sponsorship and television money in the Canadian marketplace.”
Perhaps the real question is how important Toronto is to the CFL. If the Argos give way to the Bills, would the Hamilton Tiger-Cats fan base fall apart well? Would Montreal be too cut off from the rest of the league to allow the Alouettes to survive? Or is Cohon just being a Cassandra?
It makes sense for Toronto — a big city with a sports-crazy fan base that already has teams in the NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS — to try and lure the Bills away from Buffalo. Perhaps sports fans in Toronto think the CFL is a too much of a minor league compared to the NFL, and “Canadian-ness” might not be as important as having the best quality sports in that city.
So is this deal really the beginning of the end of the CFL? Could Canadian football survive the stampede of the Bills? Or will 3-down football up north become a relic of the 20th century?
hey, you want to ensure the long term future of the CFL in TO w/o the NFL: You have to pressure the Canadian gov’t to pass laws to prevent the upward expanscion of the NFL.
It’s as simple as that.
The question is: do you have the balls to do it?
Damn, I hope not. There aren’t enough semi-professional leagues to play in these days. First NFLE, now CFL?
I don’t think that the Bills playing in Canada means the end for the CFL. Even if the Bills should eventually move to Canada, that is still just one team. Unless the NFl decides to expand to a world league (which I think yould be stupid!), there will always be a demand for other football leagues.