There is a group of people who would like to see CFL football destroyed in Toronto. They’re a large group of football “fans” who claim that the CFL is “minor” league and refuse to support the Toronto Argonauts, clamouring instead for an NFL franchise.
Here is the latest report about Toronto’s chances for getting a team in the near future: virtually nil. The postponed Buffalo-New York Jet game confirms it.
You snobs came out of the closet when the Blue Jays won the World Series 20 years ago. The NFL was gaining popularity in southern Ontario. A significant number of Bills ticket holders were Canadians and the team even dedicated one of its home games as Canada Day.
Toronto had been experiencing dynamic growth since the 1950s when the Ontario Government forced a merger between Toronto and its surrounding regions – perhaps the most dynamic city growth in the world. But it happened quietly.
And when a certain group of local politicians realized that Toronto could now be favourably compared with cities like New York, London, Chicago, and so on, instead of places like Buffalo and Cincinnati, they wanted the world to salute Toronto as a “world class” city.
They saw how Montreal and Calgary got showered with attention when they hosted the Olympics, so a Blue Jays World Series victory was just what they were looking for.
In the aftermath of victory, with all that American media attention, you Toronto football fans changed your attitude toward the CFL. You suddenly considered it minor league and would not be caught dead attending Toronto Argonaut games. Not even the presence of star quarterbacks like Doug Flutie (good enough to play in the NFL) and Ricky Ray would change your minds.
You are the ones who, when I was on a televised sports phone-in show, would interrupt discussions about the CFL and ask who I liked “in real football”.
You are the ones who claim that only a Toronto NFL team will induce you to watch local professional football live again.
You are the ones who say that winning the big one in football means winning the Super Bowl, not the Grey Cup. That game used to be played almost annually in Toronto. Since you came out of the closet, it is seldom played there.
You are the ones who joined with the politicians in trying unsuccessfully to get a sports event like the Olympics or a World’s Fair in order to prove that Toronto is “world class”. Too bad you had to settle for the 2015 Pan American Games.
And your handiwork showed during the 2014 CFL season. Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, had the worst attendance in the CFL. Not one game cracked the 20,000 barrier. The highest attendance was for the last game of the season, mainly because of curiosity around seeing the reborn Ottawa team.
That hurt the Argonauts and the CFL, but it also hurt local merchants who can no longer make much money from Argonaut games. And the absence of the Grey Cup game from Toronto, a financial blockbuster, hurts the city’s economy. The CFL will not award its championship game to a city that belittles it.
You are also hampering CFL expansion. Kitchener and London are both nearly at ½ million population mark, and would be great rivals for Toronto and Hamilton, but the CFL is not going to expand in southern Ontario because of your poisonous attitude.
Don’t tell me the Rogers Center is the problem. You’ll go there for Blue Jay games, concerts, and other events.
So you applauded when greedy Ted Rogers and Ralph Wilson signed an agreement to play one exhibition and one regular season NFL game in Toronto. You thought it was the first step to getting an NFL team.
But then reality kicked in. The mighty NFL is even more arrogant than you are. When the NFL chooses a city for expansion, they expect unquestioning, mindless worship.
But when they announced ticket prices you balked at paying them and eventually they had to be revised. And when the games are played, you did not sell out the stadium and perhaps the majority of you cheered for the Bills’ opponent.
The Bills didn’t like that and postponed this year’s Toronto game. And when the snowstorm changed the location of the Jets game, Toronto was not even considered. It went to Michigan instead.
So the NFL is obviously not impressed with you. You are not mindless enough.
And you have lots of other serious drawbacks. The Rogers Centre is not big enough; you’re going to have to build a new stadium. If you won’t pay NFL ticket prices, there is no hope in the world that you snob football taxpayers are going to do that.
Canadian television viewers are not counted south of the border. Neither the NFL nor the American television networks want a “foreign” team like the Blue Jays in the league that can harm television ratings.
Meanwhile, the NFL’s attention is fixated on resolving the Los Angeles situation. They want at least one team in that city, preferably two, and until that is rectified they are not considering expansion elsewhere.
Furthermore, there are many more deserving American cities, like Portland, Birmingham, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio, who are prepared to be more mindless than you, who can be counted in American television ratings, who will be Los Angeles’s expansion partner when the NFL ever decides to expand. And even if they were to choose a city outside the United States, London, UK and the whole British Isles are a much bigger market and more mindless than you.
And the NFL is content to with what they have got right now: one pre-season and one regular season game in Toronto, and the chance to peddle NFL merchandise on the back of those games.
Nor does the NFL want to destroy the CFL. They show more respect for it than you do and appreciate its distinguished history. The bad attitude to the CFL comes from snobbish Canadians, not Americans.
And here’s another surprise for you snobs. The NFL also expects you to mindlessly support and worship the Argonauts. When you don’t support them, just as you didn’t support the Bills, it adds to the argument that the NFL is better off without you.
So snobs, your chance for an NFL team may have come and gone, certainly for the near future. It is quite clear what the NFL thinks of you by not giving you the Jets game in a warm, dry domed stadium. It can live without arrogant pipsqueaks like you.
Getting rid of the Argonauts and the CFL will not mean you are going to get an NFL team. Most likely it will mean that you will get nothing, maybe for decades, like Los Angeles.
So if you want to go to a professional football game, be prepared to wrinkle up your noses and watch the Argonauts and the CFL. It may not be “world class” but it is not that much of a drop in status either.
Yet in some ways it is a pity that you don’t get an NFL team. You are both so arrogant, that you probably deserve each other.
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