THURSDAY COMMENTARY – TWEAKING
(Listen daily for the Rod Pedersen Commentary on Cat Country 98 & R0ck 98.5 FM)
EVERYDAY IS VERY INTERESTING, IF YOU SLOW DOWN AND TAKE TIME TO LOOK AT IT.
JUST BEFORE THE END OF THE RP SHOW ON GAME+ TV ON WEDNESDAY, THE CFL DROPPED ITS LIST OF NINE RULE CHANGES FOR THE 2022 SEASON. THAT MADE THE DAY VERY INTERESTING.
THE FIRST THING THAT STRUCK ME WAS THAT IT WAS ONLY 19 DAYS BEFORE THE START OF TRAINING CAMPS AND COACHES WILL BE WILD ABOUT ALL THE CHANGES. THAT WAS THE CASE, AND THEY FOUND ABOUT THE CHANGES THE SAME TIME WE DID.
ANYWAY, NONE OF THE CHANGES INVOLVED A MOVE TO FOUR DOWNS. IN FACT, NOT MANY OF THEM WILL EVEN BE VISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE.
I’M NOT GOING TO LIST THEM HERE BECAUSE A SIMPLE GOOGLE SEARCH OF “CFL RULE CHANGES” WILL GIVE YOU THE COMPLETE LIST IN SECONDS.
TO BE HONEST, MOST OF THESE “TWEAKS” WERE NEEDED AND WILL HELP GAME FLOW, AS PLANNED. THE MOST SIGNIFICANT OF THEM WAS THE NARROWING OF THE HASH MARKS BY EIGHT YARDS, STARTING DRIVES AFTER FIELD GOALS AND ROUGES FROM THE 40-YARD LINE RATHER THAN THE 35, AND AMENDING THE NO YARDS RULE.
NOBODY CAN FIGURE OUT WHY A RULE WAS INSTITUTED TO ALLOW TWO QUARTERBACKS ON THE FIELD AT ONCE, BUT WHATEVER.
THIS WILL CAUSE A MILD ADJUSTMENT TO PLAYBOOKS, BUT NOTHING COACHES CAN’T OVERCOME OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS BEFORE CAMP.
REGARDING THE HASH MARKS AND THE FACT USPORTS AND JUNIOR FOOTBALL WON’T HAVE THE SAME RULE CHANGE, I’M TOLD BY FOOTBALL CANADA THAT FIELDS WILL FEATURE A SET OF HASH MARKS FOR BOTH PRO AND AMATEUR. (THINK OF TWO SETS OF TIRE TRACKS DOWN THE FIELD).
WE WERE HAVING LUNCH WITH A SHOW SPONSOR AFTERWARDS AND HER RESPONSE WAS, “I DON’T REALLY CARE. I JUST WANT TO GO TO THE GAMES, DRINK AND HAVE FUN.”
SIMILARLY, THE QUESTION I’D ASK AFTER THIS COMPREHENSIVE AND EXHAUSTIVE EXERCISE IS …
“WILL IT SELL MORE TICKETS?”
THAT’S TODAY’S ROD PEDERSEN COMMENTARY
(Photo: Edmonton Elks)
(The Rod Pedersen Show airs daily at 12 pm ET on Game+ TV across Canada and the USA. Call your cable provider for details. You can also watch on YouTube Live or listen 24/7 at RodPedersen.com/ListenLive)
Leave the game alone and focus on marketing and promoting. Get TSN up to speed for more cameras in the stadium and upgrade their professionalism of the broadcast to be more attractive to younger viewers. The game itself is NOT the problem. Leave it alone. Get owners, board members, and football operations people that understand the business of sport and more importantly football. None of what they’ve done was necessary.
I’m glad someone else noticed!!! 🙂
Good to hear from you on hear Mike. You’ve been a part of teams that had explosive offenses so it isn’t the rules, it’s simply personnel. If I’m not mistaken you were part Matt Dunigan’s 700 yard game…..30 years ago so it isn’t the rules that drive the offense. It’s talent. To me a football fan is a football fan and the game is the game. When I watch CFL/NCAA/NFL – the CFL is the best of the bunch. Yet it seems like a Cable Access Show when you watch it. I could in the most literal sense turn the… Read more »
The CFL’s main problem is negative media (fewer Canadians, four downs, etc.) The leader of all that is Arash Madani, everything he says about the CFL is negative. Get him off the airwaves and the whole image of the CFL improves, thus more ticket sales.
Arash doesn’t do anything but report what’s actually going on.
Only after he figures how to put a negative spin on it.
Wrong. They report, and you choose to listen. I choose not to listen. When I do listen it’s honestly depressing because the CFL does this to themselves. At a certain point it’s like watching a slow dying alcoholic and all I say is, “If you have the cap off keep going and let me and everyone know how it turns out.” We have a great game. We have incredible athletes. We have a business entity that by all accounts is trying. I empathize, because I watch this unfold and I think to myself. If they went wholesale change i.e., Pro-Wrestling… Read more »