STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – CONSPIRACY THEORIES – A lot of them have been correct over the last two years, so let’s throw another one out there: CFL ownership knows there isn’t enough money to play a season so they purposely sabotage it by offering a collective bargaining agreement that is so bad the players have no choice but to strike. The league goes down with a whimper and the owners get to blame the players for its demise.

2 – COST OF HAVING A LEAGUE – The level of your professionalism should reflect in the amount that you pay your players. The more you pay, the better your chances of attracting better athletes. There is a big misconception out there amongst owners and fans that because there isn’t a better option, the players are just going to accept a bad deal and play. While that’s true for some players, there are a lot who will simply decide to get on with life outside of football. It’s not unlike broadcasting, for example. Those at the top are paid very well and then everyone else is, pretty much, abused. Some take it because they love the industry and know nothing else. But many others walk away and choose a different line of work.  

3 – JUSTIFICATION – On one hand, you have a CFL that is deadset against paying players top dollar. They claim there is no money to do so even if they wanted to. Fair. But, whose problem is that? Not the players.  Not the fans. Figure it out. Don’t slap the players with wage cuts and then turn around and raise ticket prices on those going to the games. If you are going to cut wages and scale back operations, your ticket prices should reflect it. The message here is that you are putting a product on the field that is less than what I’m used to watching so I should pay less for it, not more. Sponsors don’t care what people are paying to watch, they only care about how many are actually watching. That’s where you go for price increases. If they won’t pay it, if your fans won’t pay it, and if your players won’t accept wage cuts and poor working conditions then I don’t have to tell you what you are left with.

4 – SOLUTION – For me, the solution remains splintering into two leagues, east and west. It cuts down on travel, it creates more jobs overall so even if you want to lower the Canadian content quota it works out well for those players, and probably also results in smaller crowds which then justifies the reasons for lower wages and lower ticket prices. In a sense, you are starting over. Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver in the west. Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, and London in the east. The season is 12 games (unbalanced), not 18. The west never plays the east unless it’s for the Grey Cup, but I could even be sold on two champions. Eventually, those who are strongest will survive and an amalgamation of sorts will take place and you can gradually increase salaries, ticket prices, sponsorships, etc. You create a business model where each team can survive based on 15,000 fans per game, set a corporate rate you can live with for sponsorships, be transparent with the players, and away you go.

5 – DOWNFALL IN THE WEST – Just me, just a theory, and perhaps has no merit but what I think has hurt the CFL in the stronger markets (Regina and Edmonton) has been organizations catering to people who don’t support them by becoming more woke. Don’t worry about those who are slagging your product that have no intention of ever supporting it. Sports, in general, has fallen victim to this. The CFL and its teams are not alone here. As teams and leagues fall more in line with what certain people want from them (less violence, more social justice awareness, political correctness, etc) you’d think they’d all be thriving because it’s what the majority want. Or is it? Look at the NHL games right now. How many fans are wearing masks?  Almost none, yet Scott Oake makes sure he has one on for the camera when he’s doing interviews. Do you think this influences fans in a positive way at this point? Michael Ball recently did an interview with a mainstream media outlet and he was 6–10 feet away from the person talking to him. Does that make you roll your eyes or does that make you feel like buying a ticket because safety is paramount for the viewing experience? Only you can answer that.

6 – CASH FLOW – The other big factor now is cash flow. I don’t believe a lot of fans have it and for a team like the Saskatchewan Roughriders to be successful, they need people from all over the province to support them. Gas is $2/litre. No matter what you drive, that’s double the cost from going to games in 2019. Do you have double the money at your disposal or is something else going to suffer if you decide to attend Rider games? Or are you sacrificing going to Rider games because you’ve decided you need to spend gas on other more essential trips? The trip costs more, the tickets cost more, the food costs more, and the players aren’t as good because they’ve been chased away because of a bad CBA. Don’t forget as expenses go up for us, the expenses are going up for the players too. You are going to pay them less in an environment where prices on everything have skyrocketed. It simply, doesn’t make sense for them to take this deal and it’s maybe just too expensive for Canada to have professional football. We showed we didn’t care for it anyway when it was gone in 2020. Nobody complained. Nobody advocated to play like the players and parents of those in the NCAA south of the border.

7 – RATTLERS – I just bought tickets to three different Saskatchewan Rattlers games. My seats are excellent and it will cost me $99 total. That’s less than a single NHL game and less than a single Rider game when comparing a similar seat for a CFL game. But, if you understand and appreciate the skill of the players in the CEBL, you quickly realize that one of these teams is underpriced or the other two are overpriced. Maybe all three are guilty of under/over pricing. A couple of players who played CEBL last summer made the NBA this year, so you are watching athletes who are on the cusp of making it to the pinnacle of their sport.

8 – OILERS/LEAFS – Saturday night, the Edmonton Oilers won game seven and got the monkey off their back. The Toronto Maple Leafs lost game seven but if you tune in to Sportsnet, you’d think they won the Cup despite repeated first round failures. If you watched the Oiler game you saw how Connor McDavid wasn’t going to be denied a win. He dominated in the biggest game of his life to date. He didn’t want to be answering more questions about first round exits. And he played like it. The Maple Leafs have several players who seem to be in the same conversations as McDavid as far as elite talent is concerned but I’ve yet to see any of them take over a series or a game and that’s what the team needs to make it to round two. 

9 – LEAFS TRADES – If the Toronto Maple Leafs were to fire Kyle Dubas and Sheldon Keefe would another team be on their doorstep ready to hire them? That should tell you a little bit about the management of the organization. In a way, the Leafs have done this backwards. They needed Dubas and Keefe to establish the talent base and then they needed Mike Babcock and Lou Lamoriello to take it to the next level. In a salary cap world, the best solution now is to break up the sweethearts with a trade that provides greater flexibility with the payroll. The Los Angeles Kings didn’t beat Edmonton but watching Sean Durzi and Carl Grundstrom, you have to wonder if the Leafs had these two players instead of Jake Muzzin would it have made a difference in their series with Tampa. I have always maintained the Leafs missed the boat when Ryan McDonagh was traded from the Rangers to the Lightning. It would have blocked a competing team from getting better and also filled a void on their own team at the same time all the while they had their top young talent on cheap contracts.  

10 – BLUE JAYS – Don’t panic.  Jose Berrios and Bo Bichette will turn it around and when they do, the team will go on a run.  I’m also not convinced the Yankees aren’t set for some sort of record correction in the coming weeks.  There’s no way they are this good.  Boston, on the other hand, is this bad.  So don’t worry about them.  

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)