10 WEEKEND THINGS

1 – Don’t take my word for it. Take Gregg Drinnan’s. The veteran Kamloops sportswriter is a quasi-outsider to the CFL (he follows the league but doesn’t cover the league) and offered this assessment of the quagmire the league finds itself in: “I would suggest that this day of reckoning has been in the CFL’s windshield for a few years now. I don’t know exactly when it was that the CFL came to the fork in the road and took the wrong one, but somewhere along the way it lost track of who it is.” Well said GD, and very true.

2 – A nervous feeling struck me late this week that the CFL hasn’t necessarily hit rock bottom despite cancelling its 2020 season on Monday, and facing PR nightmare after nightmare this summer. The finger-pointing – primarily at the federal government – tells me the CFL tall foreheads still don’t realize they’re the problem. You don’t need to be an Addictions Counsellor or Sober Coach to know that the first step in Recovery is admitting you have a problem. These guys still think it’s everybody else’s fault. So we wait …

3 – In times like this you need to trust your allies. (TRUST: “A firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”) A month ago a guy who’s worked in pro football as long as anybody called and said very sternly, “They’re not going to play Rod! The owners know it’ll cost more to play than not play so they’re gonna pull the plug on this thing and blame the players!” As it turned out, he was half right. They pulled the plug on it but instead blamed Ottawa. The owners couldn’t blame the players because, to a man, the players wanted to play no matter what. The players have come off like the good guys in all this – and victims – which they are.

4 – On TSN 1200 Ottawa this week, the Voice of the Senators Dean Brown (who boasts 10 seasons broadcasting Rough Riders games) said he’d heard this MLSE/CFL story too and added that he’s heard season ticket holders for the Maple Leafs and Raptors will get free tickets to the Argonauts. He asked me if that would cheapen the CFL product? Absolutely not! The only thing the Argos are struggling with is visibility and if this is what it takes to get people in the door at BMO Field, so be it. I think we all can agree that the CFL product is so tremendous that once you’re in the door, you’ll be hooked. The same thing happened to me with the NLL and CEBL. The Rush and Rattlers invited me to games, and I soon bought seasons.

5 – For a minute, forget about the CFL owners and governors. Think about the players and coaches. They’re devastated and reeling. They truly were expecting an announcement this week that there would be a shortened 2020 season. Now that there’s not, they have no idea what to do with themselves and are extremely fearful of the future. They’ll survive no matter what but in the meantime, this is literally a traumatic time for them.

6 – The greatest resource the CFL has is its players and one of those is Roughriders defensive end Charleston Hughes (pictured). He appeared in studio on The RP Show on Friday and for 20 minutes, he was non-stop entertainment. He gushed that he expected to play this year and is still mentally dealing with the fallout. The Northwood product figured he could register 12 sacks in a 6-game season. He’d also planned to set the CFL all-time sack record within the next two years. So imagine how he feels to be burning a season at age 36. “Chucky” also hosts a podcast entitled Better With Age and this week he hosted Calgary QB Bo Levi Mitchell. Regarding our feud, Hughes thinks it’s great for the CFL. So too, is Charleston Hughes.

He’s the kind of guy who sells tickets and the lack of media coverage of the CFL over the past 10-15 years in the major markets is a HUGE reason for the decline in the league’s popularity. People have no idea how important and influential the media is, despite how much they may hate it. Teams: the media gets your word out for you for free. Read that again.

7 – What’s next for the CFL? Bomber President Wade Miller said this week they need to find a way to be more efficient and we all know that means “how to do more with less”. So the layoffs are coming. That’s very scary for the office staff. The league had also teased a marketing campaign to be announced by the end of the week, but that didn’t happen. Watch for it this week, I suppose. As far as relevance goes in the Canadian sports market, the CFL has an uphill struggle but it can be done. I know how I’d do it, but I’m eager to watch how they’re going to do it. Their strategy of hibernating in the off-season and “going dark” is really coming back to bite them in the ass now.

8 – Spotted: Former CFL referee and Director of Officiating Glen Johnson working for the Canadian Premier League helping stage their year-end tournament bubble in Charlottetown, PEI. He was a great referee and a great personality for the CFL. There are a lot of them out there!

9 – I wish coaches and GMs would be more respectful of the job the media has to do and on the flip side, I wish the media would be more empathetic to the coaches and players when asking questions (putting themselves in the others’ shoes). I know neither of these things will happen; I just wanted to say it out loud.

10 – RANDOMS TO END: I dreamt last night that I got Coronavirus. I survived. With a roughly 99.6% recovery rate, it wasn’t a nightmare. … I also dreamt Saskatoon was the NBA bubble city and teams were wearing their game uniforms while eating in local restaurants, like Fuddruckers. Kids, don’t eat pizza before bed. … The Blue Jays have caught my interest. The usual marathon is now a sprint in 2020 and it’s getting good. Listening to Shulman/Martinez is a bonus. … Can’t see Mike Milbury surviving this one. … I believe the Argonauts can be rekindled. I talk to so many people who grew up in Toronto, still live there, and say “I grew up with the Argos and love the CFL”. But the CFL has to truly love itself first – for what it is – and that’s going to come after some heavy soul-searching. Have they started that process yet? … Commissioner Randy Ambrosie doesn’t seem worried about his job. If he was, he wouldn’t be pointing the finger at himself. This tells me, he’s not losing his job. … SJHL President Bill Chow announced on The RP Show this week that their target date to start the 2020-21 season is October 9. I’ll have much more on his comments and other hockey talk in my column at DUBNetwork.ca. … Get out and enjoy the sun! What a wonderful summer it’s been.

Y’er welcome,
RP
@rodpedersen