The Last Season of the CFL as we Knew it is About to Start

For those CFL fans who remember when CTV and CBC used to televise games, with CBC starting at Labor Day, having all CFL games on one channel like TSN was convenient. Asking long-time fans to shell out more money for a streaming service they may or may not be able to accommodate highlighted the fact the CFL has been moving away from their long-time fans and is feeling confident in doing so.

I’ve been seeing this in Riderville as the Riders over the last 10 years have dropped everything from publishing media guides (which are a more reliable source of Rider facts than the stats currently running on the CFL page), to pocket calendars seniors could put on their fridge to check when Riders games were on, to until this year not printing tickets because of their inane faith in the Ticketmaster app which works well in getting tickets on IPhones but not so much on Android.

The irritation of paying for another service may get mitigated by the argument the extra money will go to the players, but one Rider fan I know who puts down over $10,000 a year for season tickets, road trips and Grey Cups posted on social media she is thinking this will be her last year with the DAZN extra cost being the breaking point.

Add this to the changes in the playoffs, with now eight teams out of nine making the playoffs, and the shortening of the field, moving the goalposts to the back of the end zone like the NFL and making the field 100 yards long instead of 110 and taking five yards out of the back of the end zone, and maybe the CFL could use some lessons in transparency.

The rationale for all the changes is not being addressed, other than the speaking points about increasing offense scoring and removing the rouge for balls kicked through the end zone and apparently eliminating tie games.

What is left unsaid is Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment who own the Argonauts, along with the Blue Jays and Raptors, is in the business of franchise valuations. The more a franchise is valued, the greater the asking price MLSE can ask of potential sellers.

The problem is with a league of nine teams, with lousy grass roots marketing, the only thing that so far is increasing the value of teams is money from gambling. Adding more teams would increase interest, in theory, and the league must show it is doing all it can to get money for what it currently has.

Helping the cause of expansion is shortening the field which would allow municipalities the green light to pay for facilities housing CFL and soccer teams, perhaps university, junior and high school games and concerts. The federal government does not want to be in the business of being seen to subsidize professional sports teams by building facilities, but if they are multi-use facilities, a better case can be argued.

There are also people who worry the changes will lead to the CFL trying the American expansion route again. I can see that worry, but having been around for the first US expansion, the only team that managed to pay their own bills and bring in fans were the Baltimore Stallions, who later moved to Montreal.

The key there was the Baltimore Colts moved in the middle of the night to Cleveland and the people of Baltimore were furious with the NFL and wanted a team back. The UFL has a team like that of Baltimore and that was St. Louis which lost their team to Los Angeles, took the NFL to court and won.

There is an older NFL style stadium in St. Louis and if the UFL folds as common sense argues it should, I would not object to bringing in St. Louis into the CFL. The CFL is not being straight about what its end game is, and the older fans, who grew up with the game and love it, are suspicious of anything that would make the game more American.

As far as DAZN goes, I work stretches of midnight shifts so I watch most of my CFL games on YouTube which when you take out the commercials are much shorter. I don’t have a problem listening to games on the radio which is what I did when helping combine in the fields growing up.

I’ll give the CFL credit for trying things, but somehow, I am reminded of former Commissioner Randy Ambrosie and his dumpster fire presentation before Parliament asking for public money to have a 2020 season played out of two or three stadiums, not nine. Ambrosie was tone deaf in his presentation and while my initial take on Johnson and his changes was, he is also tone deaf or a stooge of MLSE, I am moving to the conclusion the CFL does not care what their older fans feel about the changes, feeling they will follow the league no matter what or else someone else will.

The major changes kick in next year, which means this is the last year of the 55-yard line, the exciting return of missed field goals, and goal posts which may occasionally knock down the ill-advised pass.

The Riders had already finished their two preseason games and spent the last week practicing and getting ready for their first bye week, which is week one. The Riders will go three weeks from their last exhibition game to their first league game on June 13 when they unveil their 2025 Championship Banner against the BC Lions.

As defending champions, the Riders won last year due to their depth which rose to the occasion during the various spates of injuries all teams experience. The Riders priorities were identifying their backup quarterback, who appears to be Jack Coan although Brayden Schager won a lot of fans with a gutsy last-minute drive to beat the Win A Pig Blue Bombers in Saskatoon.

While Schager moved the ball well, remember that exhibition games are job interviews and unless you finished 3-15 and need a win to market to potential fans, you don’t really care about the score, but how the team met the various challenges during the game.

While my good Win A Pig friends like to say if 40-year-old Trevor Harris goes down, the Riders are cooked without him. I point out the same applies to Bomber QB Zach Collaros who seems to get injured every time the wind blows. Unlike the Bombers who had two quarterbacks walk off the team because they felt the competition for backup to Collaros was rigged with the appearance of Tyler Elgersama, the Canadian QB who spent time wandering NFL free agent camps, the Riders have the offensive line, receiving corps and running game to carry either Coan or Schager.

The other thing about exhibition games is you don’t have all the starters in so it is hard to gauge what progress your team may or may not have made in the offseason. This ends Thursday night when Montreal goes to Hamilton.

Montreal was the second betting choice to get to the Grey Cup, BC seems to the popular fit, and like the Riders, Montreal has a good enough core that it didn’t need to make drastic changes.

Hamilton lost to Montreal on a last-minute field goal in the Eastern Final and with Bo Levi Mitchell seemingly recovering his form, the Cats feels their have a window to finally add a Grey Cup since their last one in 1999.

This game will not be as interesting as say, one between these teams in October or November, but these two teams are looking to get out of the blocks fast. Davis Alexander, the Montreal QB who lead his team to the Grey Cup but got a hamstring injury in the eastern final that affected his play in the Grey Cup, did get pulled for precautionary physical reasons.

Alexander also has a history of playing hard with injuries which can make the recovery process more difficult than what it needs to be. Alexander will not have deep threat Austin Mack, who moved on to Edmonton, so I can see Montreal trying to establish some chemistry with their offense while Hamilton will try to convince us they have a running game, and they are not afraid to use it.

Hamilton wins this one 31-27.

On Friday we have Winb A Pig going to Calgary who got great news with the signing for three years of Jaydon Hutchings, the defensive tackle who mowed through the league last season and returned from an NFL tryout.

The Bombers are going to bring in a defense who apparently are going to blitz the quarterback a lot. They bring in an offensive line trying to keep Collaros on his feet and open holes for running back Brady Olivera.

The Bombers do not have a receiving corps with any deep burners, but who they have indicate new offensive coordinator Tommy Condell could be looking at a ball control and short passing game to move the ball.

Calgary was a major surprise last year and with two wins over the Riders, I would have expected to see them in the western final. Calgary did a great job of recruitment but while they have some very good positional players, when those players went down, the Stamps did not the backups who could deliver.

Fans can expect to see an aging team trying to make another run at the Grey Cup in the Bombers, versus a team with a mile thick of talent that runs less than an inch deep. One of two injuries will knock the pins out of the Stampeders.

Being asked to pick between the Bombers and Stampeders is like trying to choose between Ebola and the Bubonic Plague. I am going to go with Calgary and a 22-16 win because until Calgary starts to rack up injuries, their defensive line will make life miserable for opposing offenses.

On Saturday we have the Edmonton Elk prance into Ottawa to play the Redblacks. Ottawa made big moves in the offseason, bringing in former Argo Head Coach Ryan Dinwiddie who is also GM. Dinwiddie made a comment last year after the first Rider Argo game won by the Riders on a Mario Alford last minute return TD that seemed to throw his team under the bus because they were short one person on the return.

Dinwiddie promised changes, but did not make any, and I got the impression that except for Nick Arbuckle, Dinwiddie had lost the locker room. Dinwiddie did a great job with Arbuckle through the absence of Chad Kelly, and whether he does as well with Jake Maier or Dru Brown will likely determine how far Ottawa goes.

Ottawa got help from former Rider free agents AJ Allen at linebacker, CJ Reavis, also linebacker, and Habbakuk Baldonado at defensive line. Allen is the jewel being a Canadian linebacker and the three should be good in the locker room to help build a winning culture. The problem is it takes time to build chemistry.

Dinwiddie naming Maier as the starter for week one may have been a signal to Brown to step up his play because it is hard to be a starter if you are injured or away from the offense. Brown will either be motivated or feeling betrayed and with Maier you get a quarterback who is a good game manager but tends to make a bad decision at an inopportune moment.

Edmonton has Cody Fajardo from the start as the Tre Ford experiment went to Hamilton for further work. Edmonton tried to upgrade their offense to go with an effective running game and there is a great deal of optimism in Edmonton over the improving play of their defense.

Edmonton though was thought to have a pretty good defense last year, but by playing Ford for six games, more of less conceding the games in the name of trying to provide Ford with some experience, the Elk were in the hole and while Fajardo tried to dig them out, they fell short.

It is not impossible for Ottawa to use the novelty of a new coach and a bunch of players with winning pedigrees to get a win at home, I must like Edmonton with a solid running game and more experience with playing with each other.

Ottawa will be competitive, but Maier is good for one major mistake a game, unless he really got his confidence back last year, and Edmonton has more chemistry from this distance to get a 24-16 win.

So in the last year of the CFL as we once knew it, what does the crystal ball have to say?

In the east I’ll have to put Hamilton in first place. Mitchell seems to have gotten his groove back and is now trying to teach a Hamilton team what it takes to win. Losing the Eastern Final by a field goal should spark the Cats and the addition of Ford does give Hamilton some interesting choices on short yardage. I am not sold on a running game in Hamilton or their defensive secondary, but this is why they play the games.

Montreal should finish in second place because Montreal is relatively stable but after Alexander got pulled from the second exhibition game for a leg injury, you must wonder what happens if Alexander misses several games due to injury. The Als are a livelier team with Alexander, but as the great philosopher Clint Eastwood once said, A man has got to know his limitations. So, if Alexander pushes himself and aggravates an injury, he will likely hurt his team and force it on the road again in the playoffs.

Ottawa looks like third to me due to the air of uncertainty around the team and what kind of directions Dinwiddie will take them. As a first time GM, maybe he will feel more comfortable with the players coming in, but good GMs have both the contacts and the ability to get a crack video department to break down film on potential players. Ottawa is big question mark which makes them very interesting to watch this year.

I may be underestimating Toronto Argonauts for fourth place, but I think they are about another year away from making a big impact. A new coach and the return of Kelly at QB should help the offense, but it was not the offense, it was the defense or lack thereof that sunk the team last year. While the Argos have brought some former defensive players vital to their two Grey Cup wins in three years, those players are also old and not what they used to be. I suppose it doesn’t matter with the Argos being kicked out of their stadium for the World Cup and being road warriors, but they are also a big question mark and will be interesting to watch.

In the west I think it is going to be a dogfight. I am going to go with the Riders for first place because they again have the depth although they have question marks around their defensive line and ability to rush the passer. Their offense is largely intact and their sole goal is keeping 40 year old Trevor Harris vertical for as long as possible. There are some funny reasons to also pick the Riders starting with this being the 113th Grey Cup in Calgary. The Riders are notorious for the 13th man and winning the 2013 Grey Cup and Calgary was the site of the most painful Rider loss in the 50 years I have been watching them in 2009. The Riders first game is June 13th against BC and June 13th marks the 20th year since I have surgery to have a cancerous thyroid removed. I am a superstitious Rider fan, but the universe is clearly telling me Riders will win it all.

BC has a lot of good players, but not enough of them. The Lions have been trying to spread their salary cap money around, trying to get help for Nathan Rourke who had a teachable moment or two in the western final. With a lot of money in the hands of a few players, the problem comes when if those star players go down with injury, can you afford to pay for quality backups? Every team gets a run of injuries and how BC handles those runs will determine if they finish first or second.

Calgary is another team with lots of talent, but not the depth to sustain it. Calgary did a good job recruiting last year and will try to match that this year as they try to get into the Grey Cup at their home park as a participant and not just the parking valet. Calgary may have a problem if Vernon Adams Jr. goes down because they don’t any experienced backups, but if they have talent, the Stampeders could get by the surprise of the unexpected.

Edmonton will finish fourth because the law of averages suggests Edmonton can win games in the first third of the season and not spot other teams wins and try to make it up in the last half of the season. Continuity will be very important to get the Elks in sniffing distance of the playoffs and a cross over is very likely if Edmonton can consistently play all three facets of the game. If Edmonton falls short, it will likely be due to depth issues.

Win A Pig finishes last because as much as Head Coach Mike O’Shea has the loyalty of his veterans, O’Shea has gone to the well once too many times with the same crew. Winnipeg will go with the short possession and ground game to keep their defense off the field and take pressure off Collaros. I have no confidence in their offense line and defensive secondary, but this is why they play the games.

by Greg Urbanoski

The Last Season of the CFL as we Knew it is About to Start

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