OUT OF THE TUNNEL: CELEBRATING FOOTBALL WE HAVE, AND WHAT IF’S

All we can do is look from afar at how the NFL and some NCAA teams have hit the field over the past month. One thing that has stuck out is how each league is handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NFL is treating it very seriously. In Week 4 the Tennessee Titans had a flurry of positive tests spread across players and staff which forced the postponement of their game with the Pittsburgh Steelers to Week 7 on October 25. Then Patriots quarterback Cam Newton tested positive which triggered a strange chain of events that forced the NFL to move their game against the Kansas City Chiefs to Monday night with the Pats taking two separate planes to Kansas City.

This week, the Denver Broncos and Patriots game has been pushed to next week which created a domino effect across the league for eight different games. One of those impacted is the Buffalo Bills and Titans. This will be pushed to Tuesday night and will still be a part of Week 5.

It will be interesting to see how far the NFL will push games and rearrange their schedule. They do not want to extend the season by two or three weeks. The main reason is the Super Bowl being played in Tampa Bay in February. It’s set to go with zero restrictions in regards to the size of the crowd. The Super Bowl will be a packed house.

The NFL is taking things fairly seriously. However the NCAA, not so much.

A handful of teams have played games while having double digit numbers of players at home with positive COVID-19 tests. Most conferences have stipulations that if a team has enough players at each position to field a team, they are allowed to go ahead and play.

Now the PAC-10 and BIG-10 are set to hit the field at the end of the month and with that, the majority of the NCAA will be on the field once the calendar turns to November.

All of this gets us to thinking what would the CFL have looked like if the league was forward-thinking and had the foresight to organize the dual bubble situation early on in the process. With a smart plan, all levels of government may have been able to get on board more easily and the CFL would be on the field as we speak.

Then again, it is nice to see how seriously Canada as a whole is handling the pandemic and as numbers begin to rise across the country, maybe a CFL season would have been harder to fully pull off than we all think.

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Watching all of this football it got us to thinking on how a CFL broadcast looks and could look if (and when — fingers crossed) the game returns to the field in 2021.

Between the NFL and NCAA and the coverage of both on almost every network, there are things TSN and CFL can do to really put a nice new shine on their broadcasts. Here are five things we would like to see with the return to the field:

1. Keep games to Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One of the hardest things to deal with is the schedule. TSN has a lot of say when it comes to this as does the availability of stadiums, bye-weeks and many other things. When it comes down to it, if one wants to generate new fan habits, stop turning the CFL weekly schedule into a bizarre bingo card of days. This does nothing but hurt the game. 

To not keep the games to the three weekend days is just dumb. If one was to put one game a week on Sunday afternoon, then choose a start time between the two NFL time slots is an easy decision to make. Do the same on Saturday with a late afternoon game heading into hockey with the week beginning with a Friday double header. That sounds like the perfect recipe.

2. Moving the games to just three days per week allows TSN to have an extended pre-game show on Friday nights. The league deserves an hour to get fans ready for the week. An hour before the Friday Night Football double header would be great programming for the CFL and would also allow some time to spotlight other football being played in Canada. Call it Football Night in Canada. Yeah it’s old and tired but why the hell not? Football fans in Canada should get the love we deserve.

3. One of the toughest parts about watching games on TSN is how much they will stick to their story lines within the game. 

It could be a blowout that has nothing to do with original storylines laid out before the game but yet when the third quarter rolls around the broadcast goes right back to the well. The broadcast teams need to be a little more nimble within the game and that would go miles in their storytelling.

4. With the exit of Chris Cuthbert to Rogers Sportsnet to focus on hockey, there is an opening for a new voice within the CFL play calling stable. We love Cuthbert as well as Dustin Nielson, Gord Miller and Rod Black  but the tough part – which is also a tough part of Canadian play-callers as a whole – they all have the a similar sound, cadence and pacing of calling a football game. (Rod Black stands out as an exception to this)

This is more of a TSN problem; they love having everyone be of the same style and sound. The talent isn’t the star, the show is the star. The sound and pacing is also a Canadian problem. In the late-70’s, early-80’s all of the football play-callers were lower baritone and slower paced (think Dale Issac on CTV and Don Chevrier on CBC). With the popularity of Chris Cuthbert, a generation of play-by-play broadcasters now sound like him.

The new voice should be unique to change the pace and the sound of the game.

5. This is the hill we always die on here at Out of the Tunnel: can TSN please change the look of the CFL graphics package so it doesn’t look like every other live sports the network puts on.

To see the same look that hockey or basketball has been trotting out on a CFL broadcast is nauseating. Also, look at a game from 2010, the graphics are darn near the same as it is now.

Yes, we know there are brand standards to know we are watching TSN but let’s give the CFL package it’s own unique look.

Before we get to the Canadian to watch in the NCAA we would like to give ourselves the rare pat on the back with focussing on last week’s Canadian to watch, Geoff Cantin-Arku. The sophomore linebacker at Syracuse picked up a blocked punt and rolled in for a score in the Orange’s 38-24 loss to Duke on Saturday afternoon. Cantin-Arku also added another eight solo tackles in the loss.

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Canadian to watch in the NCAA

Terrel Jana (Sr.)
Wide Receiver – Virginia
6’0” 200
Vancouver, B.C.
High school – Woodberry Forest (Va.)

After a fantastic 2019 with over 800 yards receiving with the Virginia Cavaliers, Vancouver’s Terrel Jana is one of the top ranked players heading into the 2021 CFL draft.

Just days after the first edition of the CFL Scouting Bureau rankings pegged Jana as the third ranked prospect, he went out and had an incredible game with nine catches for 111 yards in Virginia’s 38-21 loss to North Carolina State.

Jana came out of Vancouver prior to playing two years of high school football at Woodberry Forrest in Virginia.

(RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF/PHOTO: @MIKERODAK)