By Michael Heilman
The 2019 CFL season is officially in the books with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers winning the Grey Cup over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 33-13. With the season now in the rear-view mirror, it’s time for the CFL to fix the problems that have kept them from being an elite league.
This year, CFL attendance was down for the seventh consecutive year averaging 22,917 fans a game. The CFL are trying to sell two teams, the B.C. Lions and the Montreal Alouettes, who’s previous owners left the league due to losing money. The CFL took over ownership of Montreal in May of this year from Bob Wetenhall and Andrew Wetenhall because they lost over fifty-million dollars since 1997. On the other side, the Lions owners lost seven million in 2017 to 2018.
The CFL are working with potential owners to bring an expansion team to Halifax; NS called the Atlantic Schooners to even the number of teams. But, bringing a new team won’t help grow the league unless they take a page out of the XFL.
Recently, the XFL blocked the Detroit Lions from signing quarterback Josh Johnson. Johnson was taken in the XFL Supplemental Draft by the Los Angeles Wildcats, leaving the Lions to look elsewhere to find a quarterback.
What the XFL did was protect a player they have signed from going to the NFL. Why? Because the XFL wants to market players they have in their league like Landry Jones. If they are going to succeed in getting fans to come to the games, they need players to market just like the NFL does with Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and so on. The CFL does not have enough star power to market as its top players have left for the NFL. Some CFL teams release them so they can pursue playing in the NFL. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you keep losing star players to the NFL, fans are not going to take you seriously as a league. You can’t keep catering to the NFL if you want to be a competitive league.
Another option the CFL could look into is moving the season up. Starting the season in June is not bad but, would they do better by moving the season up say late February to early March as the weather begins to warm up. In addition to moving the season up, they could cut the regular season games to twelve weeks. By reducing the season to twelve weeks, teams would not play each other four times in their division but instead would play twice a year. Moving the season up would also guarantee that the CFL does not clash with the NFL regular-season games and lose viewership, especially in the United States.
In addition to cutting the season to twelve weeks, they could also eliminate the east and west divisions and unite as one. Getting rid of the two divisions would solve a lot of problems, especially the playoffs. There would be no more cross-over playoff format as teams from another division go to the other to compete in the playoffs if they have a winning record. This year, the Edmonton Eskimos of the West division went to the East division to compete in the playoffs. If they were in the West, they would’ve been eliminated.
Just making some of these changes could help the CFL keep, bring in new fans, and potentially bring in new owners, not only for both Montreal and B.C. but also new expansion teams to the league.
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