Flag on their play

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2015 (3065 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Look, I get it — nobody likes the guy who tips over the punch bowl and brings the party to a screeching halt.

And so the simplest thing to do in this space is to just write yet another thumb-sucker about what a “grand old game” the Grey Cup is and what a great party it is and, oh my, did you hear the thing that coach said about pre-game sex the other day?

But during a week in which local emergency rooms have been filled to the brim with CFL people who’ve dislocated their shoulders patting themselves on the back for what a great job they did this season, I’m going to have the temerity to suggest the 2015 CFL season sucked.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. On the contrary, there are a worrying number of Canadians who reached the exact same conclusion about the CFL this season.

How do I know this? Well, let’s try some numbers on for size:

• The audience for regular-season CFL broadcasts on TSN this season plunged 19 per cent, 15 per cent overall when you factor in French-language broadcasts on RDS. And that’s after they fell six per cent overall last year. That’s right, TSN lost a quarter of its CFL audience in English-speaking Canada in the last two years. One out of four CFL fans is now watching — or doing — something else.

• The audience for the playoffs has also been down. Last week’s West final was down 13 per cent over last year, the East final was down eight per cent and one of the division semifinals two weeks ago was down by, get this, 34 per cent.

• And it’s not just people at home turning their backs on the CFL. For all the rosy talk about shiny new sold-out CFL stadiums, the cold hard numbers tell a much starker tale — attendance in 2015 was down in five of the nine CFL cities, a total of two per cent overall and is now, on a per-game average, at its lowest levels since 2001.

But hey, nothing to see here, right? Did we mention how the Grey Cup brings the country together every year?

Rookie CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge Friday blamed the TV ratings drop on what he termed a “perfect storm” of other sporting events in Canada competing for eyeballs this year, citing the Pan Am Games, the Women’s World Cup and the Blue Jays playoff run as culprits in the CFL’s ratings drop.

That’s a laughable excuse — nobody watched the Pan Am Games this summer and blaming a four-week soccer event and a late season run by a baseball team for a CFL ratings plunge that extends back to 2014 is demonstrably false.

But even if it were true, what kind of league commissioner blames a dramatic loss in fan interest in their own league on the fact there was, well, competition? And, while we’re asking questions, how about this one:

Who is going to pay the mortgages for all these shiny new stadiums if the CFL ratings keep dropping and the recent TV rights windfall, upon which much of the new construction was based, dries up when the current deal expires in 2021? Answer: find a mirror.

And what about the attendance drop this season? Orridge glossed over that one Friday, insisting attendance this year was “flat.” Which it was — if by flat you mean at 14-year lows, down in the majority of the league’s cities, including the big markets in Toronto and Vancouver, and down overall.

Yes, some of that decline had to do with the debacle that was the Toronto Argonauts’ itinerant season. But if you think the Argos’ troubles are suddenly going to end simply because they have new owners and are moving into BMO Field next season, I would point out the list of ownership groups in the last couple decades that were purportedly going to “turn around the Argos” is almost as long as the list of Maple Leafs head coaches.

And BMO Field? Well, the last time the Argos shared a multi-sport outdoor stadium with another team, they weren’t exactly a resounding box office success either. But I digress.

One of the few things that was up in the CFL in 2015 — aside from the number of starting quarterbacks who got hurt (seven of nine) — were the number of penalties, which rose nine per cent in 2015 and are now up, get this, 28.1 per cent in the last two seasons.

The biggest problem facing the old CFL was that the refs weren’t involved enough in the games — said nobody, ever. And yet we now have a league that has been sold exactly that bill of goods by its vice-president of officiating, Glen Johnson, under whose watch the skyrocketing number of penalties has occurred the last two years.

Is it possible, just possible, the brain-stupefying number of penalties in the CFL this season might have had slightly more to do with the dramatic drop in ratings than all those Canadians Orridge thinks were flocking to watch roller figure skating at the Pan Am Games?

And, while we’re considering possibilities for the CFL’s difficulties other than the insatiable lust of Canadians for rhythmic gymnastics, is it also a teensy bit possible the CFL lost some credibility right from the start of this season when it became the only major pro sports league in the world that isn’t doing some form of random drug testing?

After the league and its drug tester severed relations in the spring when the agency had the audacity to publicly point out the CFL’s drug policy is toothless, Orridge told reporters in Winnipeg in early July a new testing agency would be in place in a “matter of weeks.”

Five months later, it still hasn’t happened and the best Orridge could offer Friday was another “soon.” In the meantime, every single player in Sunday’s championship game could be on illicit or performance-enhancing drugs, or both, for all the CFL — and its declining number of fans — know.

But yeah, it was the Pan Am Games that was to blame this year.

So what’s the league’s plan to take advantage of a Pan Am Games-less 2016 and get the CFL back on track? They’re re-branding. Seriously — the league unveiled a new logo on Friday they say is just what the doctor ordered to get all the youngsters interested again.

It’s quite a thing: the logo features the letters ‘CFL’ written in black against the white background of a football shape. There’s also half a red maple leaf and — this is the really exciting part — there are three laces on the football. The three laces signify three downs, get it? I hope whatever marketing agency came up with that piece of genius added another zero to its bill.

Not only that, Orridge was also excited Friday to announce the league will soon be unveiling a new website to replace the current laughingstock found at cfl.ca, which worked great in the days of dial-up but these days is missing a few basic staples, such as, for instance, comprehensive league statistics.

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So when is this exciting new CFL website going to be launched? Next week, of course. Seriously, a guy couldn’t make this stuff up.

In the meantime, the Bombers finally sent out a press release Friday afternoon announcing Sunday’s game is “sold-out.” There was no mention of all the tickets the team had quietly discounted and given away in recent weeks — or of Orridge’s claim just hours earlier Grey Cup tickets were still for sale. In any event, Sunday’s Grey Cup will be the second-smallest since 1975.

Now quick, someone get me a mop to clean up this punch. But please, by all means, do carry on.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek

Paul Wiecek
Reporter (retired)

Paul Wiecek was born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End and delivered the Free Press -- 53 papers, Machray Avenue, between Main and Salter Streets -- long before he was first hired as a Free Press reporter in 1989.

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