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  #1201  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2017, 4:54 PM
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105GC Live: Fan State of the League

CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie (and the lovely Brodie) takes questions from fans in his first ever State of the League address.

Starts at about 2 minute mark
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  #1202  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2017, 6:30 PM
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Marc Trestman’s quiet football revolution
Bruce Arthur 3downnation November 24, 2017

OTTAWA — Marc Trestman is boring, or so the story goes. The Toronto Argonauts coach does not raise his voice, or use colourful language. Linebacker Marcus Ball, a natural leader, makes the music playlists at practice. Why him?

“ ’Cause he’s the only one who takes the time to find edited rap,” says receiver DeVier Posey. “No one else wants to do it, I don’t want to do it. I’m not making a playlist. ’Cause Trestman ain’t having no cuss words. I mean, he encourages us to pick up lint around our locker, (so) you know there’s no cussing.”

No, Marc Trestman is not exciting. Sure, he went to three Grey Cups in three years as the coach of the Montreal Alouettes, winning two; he has guided the Argos to the Grey Cup in his first year back, despite not being hired until March, and is now a two-time CFL coach of the year. He is known as a quiet man, a sober man, a man who demands maximum effort and edited music. Who does that?

“The music, that’s nothing to me,” says linebacker Terrance Plummer, one of more than 40 newcomers to the team this season. “It’s the way he taught us how to love. He taught us not to hate the other team, or worry about them. He’s taught us to love one another.”

Wait, what? He taught you . . . to love one another?

“That’s who he is,” says offensive lineman Chris Van Zeyl. “In a lot of ways, he’s a father figure to these guys. There’s a quote: ‘What you do for yourself dies with you; what you do for others lives on.’ There were a lot of quotes that we got in the early days, but that was the one that resonated.

“And I think that’s the way we’ve become. It’s not a new idea, but I think he’s accomplished it.”

There’s a lot of BS in coaching, like everywhere else, and one example is the idea that coaches at the pro level are invested in anything other than winning. Who believes otherwise? Who thinks of Marc Trestman, provider of dry bromides delivered in a low voice, as love?

“My goal as a coach and my purpose as a coach is to teach a player to be a better teammate, father, brother, husband, whatever it might be,” says Trestman. “That’s my purpose as a coach. I use football, and the science of football, as a toolbox to teach that. That’s why I do it. And if I didn’t have the ability to teach the science of football, I don’t think anybody would listen.

“Whatever you believe in, you have to relentlessly sell that every day. And you can’t worry if 40 players roll their eyes at you, when you know that 20 players are hearing you. You just need to figure out how to send that message relentlessly, so the 21st player will understand what you’re saying, and the next day, and the next day. It has to be every day. And the legitimacy comes with, this guy can help me master my craft.”

“All I know is, I write down what I hear and learn every day from that man,” says Ball, the team’s spiritual leader, and a veteran. “Every day.”

“To get to where I want to go, I have to make sure I’m on it with game plans, and alignments, and structure, and organization,” says Trestman. “It’s all got to work, or the other side of it doesn’t. So to do what fulfils me personally, I’ve got to make sure that when I show up every day, I’m prepared.

“My wife says that once you hit 60 you can say anything you want, and that’s how I feel. It may be boring, but that’s how I feel.”

It’s so old-fashioned sounding, in pro sports. But he implemented rules. Be on time, to the second, because being late inconveniences others. Pick up the tape or towels or jerseys around your locker, because otherwise someone will have to do it for you. No more boom boxes in the locker room, because not everyone might like your music. Tip the housekeepers at hotels, because they could use the help. They weren’t new ideas. But to a lot of players, it felt new.

“It’s a lot of consideration, it’s thinking about others. It’s more than yourself,” says Van Zeyl. “Please, thank you, all that stuff. It’s just common courtesy. (Even in the CFL) there’s entitlement, right? And to look past that entitlement. Just because you think you’re entitled to something, means that someone else is suffering at the other end.”

It really does sound like parenting, right? And that requires credibility, and Trestman, the mousy-looking 61-year-old with thinning hair who stands with a stoop, has it. Ball is the team’s designated speech-giver, a true badass, but when he hurt his ankle earlier this season he texted Trestman and asked him deliver a few of Ball’s words before a must-win against Winnipeg.

It could have been funny. Players laughed when Trestman introduced the idea. But Ball wrote a hell of a speech, about how much he missed the chance to be playing, how lucky they were. Trestman, the low-key football nerd, Ball’s polar opposite, delivered it.

“Trestman’s reading it, but you hear Marcus Ball through it, you know what I’m saying?” says Plummer. “It was a great moment in our year.”

“I mean, it’s not read with the same volume or passion that usually you would hear from Marcus, but you could feel the emotion in the speech,” says Van Zeyl. “This was something I’ll remember for years to come.”

“I read it in my voice, but I read it with the passion that he gave it,” says Trestman. “I couldn’t do it as well as him, but I did it the best I could.”

That’s Marc Trestman’s message, if you wanted to boil it down. Do your best, be your best. Classic, boring, dad stuff. And here they are, playing for a title, talking about love. Sometimes, the boring stuff works.
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  #1203  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2017, 6:42 PM
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CFL is becoming a 'business driven' league under Ambrosie

CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie held his State of the League address on Friday, and covered a variety of topics from moving up the start of the season to the handling of concussions. Dave Naylor and Farhan Lalji examine the key points, and explain the impact Ambrosie could have on the future of the league.
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  #1204  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2017, 7:00 PM
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On an online only edition of the CFL Insiders Dave Naylor and Farhan was talking about the CFL letting players under contract go down south and he stated "the BC Lions were fined for letting Adam Bighill go and is likely going down the same road with Jonathan Jennings" has anyone else heard about this or has any information on Jennings? Certainly came as news to me.
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  #1205  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2017, 5:49 AM
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Ambrosie on the right track, but he’s no CFL Superman yet
Mark Spector sportsnet.ca November 24, 2017

OTTAWA — To my ear, Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie says a lot of the right things. Like when he flat-out admits he doesn’t have an answer to your question, rather than try to fool you with a bunch of words that add up to nothing.

It requires honesty and confidence to say, “I don’t know,” three words that recent CFL poobahs were too insecure to utter. And in Ambrosie, the CFL has an every-day commissioner who can speak to the every-day Canadian who still loves three-down football.

But that can work both ways, like in his answer to the question of whether there is a link between concussions in football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE): “The answer is we don’t know.”

Really? Don’t we know?

He plunked down a thick folder full of paper, medical opinions we will assume, that he says are conflicted.

“There are football players who have had CTE,” he said. “I’m not standing in front of you blind to one side of the argument versus the other. I didn’t promise to only study the issue for the things I wanted to read and ignoring everything else.”

Look, there were two things at play here, at a Grey Cup Commissioner’s press conference that was fairly dominated by player health issues. A man whose bosses are facing crippling litigation over CTE can not stand up and build the opponent’s case publicly. Not if wants to keep the job.

It’s an impossible position to be in, and Ambrosie’s lengthy promise to follow the expert medical opinions was as fulsome and honest as he could be. And really, does the head of the CFL’s opinion on CTE matter anyhow? Isn’t this is the coal plant owner talking climate change?

He has already rid the CFL of full-contact practices, a tangible statement of his concern for players’ health. Why do we even ask him about concussions, when nothing short of switching to flag football over tackling could really impact the relationship between football and brain trauma?

Doctors’ opinions matter on this. Men who run or play a sport where head contact is unavoidable will never be objective on this topic, so does it really matter what they say?

“I wasn’t an expert (when he was an offensive lineman in the CFL), and I’m not an expert now,” he said. “As it relates to the human brain, it’s good to be humble. ‘Cause there is so much more we don’t know than what we do.”

I haven’t been to a Grey Cup as a journalist since 2011, and the first thing I notice is that — outside of CTE — many of the issues have not changed. Expansion to Atlantic Canada; the mixed up state of the B.C. Lions front office; medical bills for retired players; engaging a younger generation whose football tastes lean southward to the National Football League.

All of those issues were laid at the feet of recent poobahs like Jeffrey Orridge, Mark Cohon and Tom Wright, who most often responded with streams of corporate bafflegab that, boiled down, amounted to nothing more than a salad full of words unrelated to the actual question.

For the most part, Ambrosie offers up Italian sandwiches as answers. Something to chew on, in a version of English that the average Canadian Football League fan can grasp.

He has played in Western Finals at minus-23 degrees Celsius, and still beams at the memory of the J5V he and his brothers kicked around as kids growing up in Winnipeg.

“I’m walking through stadiums, meeting people,” he said Friday, “and every day I think, ‘I’ve never been more proud to be Canadian than at this point in my life.”

Here is a spin through Ambrosie’s thoughts on a league he has run for less than a year:

• On expansion to Halifax: It’s still a chicken and egg situation, with a stadium required before any team could be founded, but a franchise needing a promise to have any chance at getting a stadium built. Ambrosie says they’re actually pulling those two elements closer together, but that any new team has to be a revenue generator, not one that plays two seasons in Halifax before it starts draining CFL finances.

“There has to be added value for everyone. We’re going to put forward a model (to Atlantic ownership) that has to be good for everybody,” he said. “This is the final piece of the Canadian Football League puzzle that everyone would like to see.”

• On engaging new and younger fans: His example is, how do we get all those Toronto-based Saskatchewan Roughrider fans who attended the Eastern Final to go to Argos games on a regular basis?

His solutions include keeping scoring up and penalties down, and sticking with one coach’s challenge per game — his finest move a commissioner thus far. Media access needs to be better, and old, stodgy football men need to realize the importance of journalists spreading the quirky, interesting and beloved stories of the CFL over protecting against someone noticing their team working on a gadget play.

• The Johnny Manziels and Art Briles of the world can’t just walk through the CFL’s door when they’re ready to resume football. The CFL has to ask itself if it wants people with a history of violence against women to become part of the league, regardless of star power or football savvy.

• This league has always worked as nine separate entities, with separate ideas on business ideas, ticket sales, drafting, etc. It’s time to act as one team, and establish some league-wide practices to help beef up attendance.

OK, we’ve heard that last one before. If Ambrosie can bridge that gap by this time next year, he’ll truly be a CFL Superman.
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  #1206  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2017, 8:47 AM
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CFL boss Ambrosie tackles complex end game
Bruce Arthur 3downnation.com November 24, 2017

Randy Ambrosie was standing on the edge. It was a two-tiered stage and the chair he declined to use was close enough that during the entirety of his first address as commissioner on the state of the Canadian Football League, Ambrosie had to watch where, exactly, he stood.

Which is about right. Ambrosie was only hired in July, and already everybody loves him, or near enough. He has intellect and charm, and is smart enough to appear more unvarnished than he actually is. He was a CFL offensive lineman, he has a strong financial and executive background, and he’s from Winnipeg, rather than snooty ol’ Toronto. If the CFL wanted an ideal commissioner and Randy Ambrosie didn’t exist, it would have to invent him.

Which only means he faces stakes that are higher than that of his disappointing predecessor, Jeffrey Orridge. Even before his hourlong session with reporters, it was clear the 54-year-old Ambrosie wants to be a consequential commissioner. He said he wanted to make this league’s audience “two, three times bigger.” As chairman of the board Jim Lawson puts it, “He wants to make a difference.”

And maybe he can. Ambrosie was prepared and spoke without notes; he gave long answers that veered into filibusters, but unlike Orridge he didn’t come across as the least knowledgable person in the room. This being Ottawa, he took a selfie in front of the audience, “while we still like each other.”

But the job comes with minefields you can’t just joke away, and Ambrosie knows that. He has inherited a league with more stability than ever. New or refurbished stadiums in Regina, Ottawa, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Toronto, and even Vancouver; the actual possibility of a 10th team in Halifax, which with a credible ownership group and vaguely encouraging government only requires a business plan and the money for a football stadium. This isn’t 1996, where reporters sat in Hamilton hotel bars talking about the league was probably going to fold when the game ended, at the end of the week.

This is still football, though, and Ambrosie is still a football commissioner. And while his instincts have been good and his decisions popular — chasing away Art Briles, though 24 hours too late; tweaking replay and eliminated padded practice during the season — that means facing concussions, and player safety.

So far, he has dodged. On concussions and a link to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, Ambrosie said, “Cause and effect is unclear. It just simply is.” He talked about data, about studying and searching, about taking player safety seriously, about pledging to do the work. He had a defence: he pulled out the report from the fifth International Consensus Conference on Concussions in Sport, held in Berlin in 2016, which concluded the science has not established an unimpeachable and conclusive link between head trauma and CTE. The league sent vice-president of football operations and player safety, Kevin McDonald, to the conference. The league has tried to establish a good-faith effort on concussions; this isn’t the NFL. But it’s football.

“There are football players who have had CTE,” said Ambrosie. “That’s a fact … I’m not standing in front of you blind to one side of the argument versus the other. I didn’t promise to only study the issue for the things I wanted to read and ignoring everything else.”

OK, but let’s be honest: we’re all just trying to establish the number. Nobody thinks 100 per cent of football players will develop early-onset neurological disease. But nobody thinks it’s zero, either, or comparable to the examples Ambrosie offered: diving, hockey, gymnastics. The NFL estimated 30 per cent in its class-action settlement with players. The CFL can’t afford much of a settlement. So Ambrosie has to soft-shoe, and hope the league has done enough to establish it’s not a tobacco company.

So Ambrosie said more of the same, and nobody should be surprised.

But here is the difference, and here is the precipice upon which Ambrosie stands: what is he going to do? Over and over Friday, Ambrosie leaned hard on his own personal credibility. And that’s fair. He was a player, which should give him a chance to build bridges with the union, which was not enamoured of the previous administration. He has political capital with the owners, and David Braley and Robert Wetenhall — whose franchises in Vancouver and Montreal are, along with Toronto, primary weaknesses — aren’t the power brokers they once were.

Ambrosie has instincts and charisma and intelligence and ambition. He has a chance to move the league.

So how will it move? Ambrosie can talk about changing the schedule, improving relations between football operations men and fans and media, a new stadium in Calgary. Revenue-sharing may yet be on the table to help the league’s three big small markets. Convincing CFL owners to work collectively has always been a bucket of worms.

But the big stuff, the vision stuff: that’s where Ambrosie, and his CFL, will be defined. Walk around any Grey Cup and you see a lot of grey hair and familiar faces. He has to bring new Canadians to the game, and bring young people to the game. For a league that trades on its past, on entire future of the CFL is still to be written. You can’t get two to three times bigger without replacing your own fanbase first.

Beyond that, Randy Ambrosie wants to create a stronger football culture. He wants more fans, and more kids playing the game. That has to come with a real vision for safety, and for care. Ambrosie will always be charming and smart, but one day, if and when science cements a bridge between football and neurological damage, this league will have to show its work.

So where will he leverage his capital, his advantages, his gifts? That’s the precipice he stands on. Time and science marches onwards, and Randy Ambrosie wants to be a great and consequential football commissioner. And he will have to decide what that means.
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  #1207  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2017, 6:45 PM
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B.C. Lions' major problems start at the top in stagnant den
Ed Willes Vacouver Province November 24, 2017

At the annual state of the CFL presser Friday, newly minted commissioner Randy Ambrosie could rightly crow about recent developments that speak to the strength of the league’s brand.

TV ratings, long one of the load-bearing pillars in the CFL’s platform, took a bump in the playoffs this month after a decline in the regular season. This has something to do with the presence of the Toronto Argos in the East Division final and their resurgence is a massive boon to the venerable institution.

Ambrosie could also point to new or near-new stadia in Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa, facilities that give the league a shiny, modern image. That image is further reinforced by a series of progressive policies, including the banning of full-contact practices and a longer season that reduces the wear and tear on players.

So Ambrosie has enjoyed a solid campaign in his first year on the job. He registers as a man of action and whether it’s players’ health or officiating, he wants to confront the CFL’s issues head on.

But — and this wouldn’t be the CFL if there wasn’t a but — there is one problem area that Ambrosie wasn’t as keen to address at Grey Cup week, one zit on the otherwise clear complexion of the league that needs his attention.

It’s about the B.C. Lions. But, on the plus side, the Leos finally lead the CFL in something.

In his five months on the job, Ambrosie has scored some victories in attempting to drag the league into the 21st century. But, in the Lions and their obdurate owner David Braley, he confronts old-school CFL problems: a backward franchise that operates according to its own outdated practices and principles.

Ambrose was asked about this Friday, asked how the Lions could operate without a president for the 2017 season; asked, essentially, how the franchise in the league’s second-largest English-speaking market could be run so poorly.

His answer was vague. The problems posed by the Lions are not.

“You know David’s been one of the great stewards of our game and we all know that,” Ambrosie began with the predictable caveat. “If we ever do a Mount Rushmore equivalent of the CFL, David Braley has to be the first face on that mountain.”

I, personally, would pay to see that.

“I want David and I would encourage David and we will work with the B.C. Lions to do everything we can to help that team function at the highest level possible,” Ambrosie continued. “And that’s a conversation I have with every team. It’s not a B.C. Lions’ thing for me. It’s all teams. How do we help each team to maximize its opportunity in its market place?”

Here’s a suggestion: Try finding an owner and president who are willing to invest themselves in the franchise. It has to start there with the Lions.

The problem is Braley is making that difficult.

As the Commish pointed out, Braley has earned his exalted place in the CFL hierarchy. Beginning with the Lions in the mid-’90s, he’s stepped up countless times and written countless cheques to keep the league functioning.

CFL historians would also note that the last commissioner to cross Braley publicly — back in 2001 Mike Lysko called out the Lions at his presser — was fired within a year. The Hamilton-based industrialist still carries considerable clout in the league. He makes a better ally than enemy.

But the time has also passed when Braley’s involvement is good for the league and his ownership of the Lions has turned into a genuine thing. The absentee ownership and failure to appoint a president has created a massive void at the top of the organization. Wally Buono came back two years ago to coach the team, largely out of a sense of loyalty to Braley, but Buono thought he was done after this season.

The old Lion, who turns 68 in February, is now expected to clean up after Braley again. It’s been suggested he isn’t happy about this turn of events but Buono — who also faces back surgery this off-season — has been a CFL guy first, last and always. It’s likely he’ll return.

You can now ask if he’s the answer to the Lions’ many woes.

Part of the problem — a huge part of the problem, in fact — is Braley doesn’t see those many issues or the damage that has been done to the Lions’ brand. He gets the accounting in Hamilton. He sees the operation is still marginally profitable, largely because of the $4.5 million the Lions receive annually from the league’s fat TV contract.

So what’s all the fuss about?

If you attended Lions’ games this season, you know the answer there. Attendance fell to 19,858 per game in 2017, the seventh straight season it’s decreased since the team moved into The Dome in 2011.

Braley, as it happens, had an opportunity to sell the Lions to a local group this year. Despite his assertions there were three entities interested in buying the Leos, it came down to a consortium connected to The Waterboys who made an offer in the $15 million range.

That offer was rejected, but here’s the point: the Lions are losing value with each day, week and month Braley owns the team. Potential buyers can see the state of the franchise. They also know it will require work and investment to bring it back. This doesn’t exactly enhance the asking price.

Braley has also demonstrated he’s unwilling or unable to put in that work or make that investment. That leaves the Lions heading into another season with the same ownership, the same faces and the unrealistic hope that, somehow, things will be better.

Ambrosie says he wants to help the Lions. Unfortunately, he has little power over the thing that would help them the most.
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  #1208  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2017, 8:02 PM
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Hey Toronto! You have a really good team! Maybe check them out this weekend playing in your own province.
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  #1209  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2017, 11:27 PM
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Will Halifax join the CFL in 2020?

TSN Insiders Dave Naylor and Farhan Lalji discuss the excitement and bullish feeling surrounding the possibility of a CFL team being granted to Halifax:

http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/video/will-hal...n-2020~1270679
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  #1210  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 3:49 AM
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Five months into new job, fans seem pleased with Randy Ambrosie's efforts because he's listening
Ambrosie has pulled off a masterful bit of retail salesmanship. He has shown up at a lot of games, partied with fans, and generally made himself available to listen
Scott Stinson The National Post November 24, 2017

OTTAWA — In a convention centre a few blocks from Parliament Hill on Friday morning, a crowd of Canadian Football League fans, dressed in a riot of colours and with no lack of fireman helmets, waited for the chance to enter a room where Randy Ambrosie would give the annual commissioner’s town hall address.

A league official gave the sign that the doors were open, and the crowd started to shuffle in. As the procession moved, the distinct sound of several tinkling cowbells could be heard. Never has the phrase “herded like cattle” rung quite so true. These people take their CFL fanhood very seriously.

The first evidence that this particular group of fans has a lot of time for Ambrosie, a former Grey Cup winner himself and someone who has made no secret of his love for the league, came the moment he walked in the room. He received a standing ovation.

So, there is that. Although Ambrosie has only been on the job for five months, taking over after a long search that began when Jeffrey Orridge left abruptly after two years, he has pulled off a masterful bit of retail salesmanship. He has shown up at a lot of games, partied with fans, and generally made himself an available face of the league. He’s also responded to fan concerns, whether changing the replay rules mid-season or talking the Hamilton Tiger-Cats out of hiring Art Briles. He’s given fans reason to believe that they are listening to him.

So it is not that surprising that, over his hour-long town hall at the Shaw Centre, there were as many heartfelt expressions of gratitude as there were tough questions. One fellow even asked the commissioner to sign his Randy Ambrosie CFL player card; Ambrosie managed to not appear shocked that someone would still have such a thing. (He retired in 1993.)

Still, there were some questions, and Ambrosie managed to defang the most aggressive of them by doing something else that is quickly becoming a notable trait: admitting when he doesn’t know something. Asked when Hamilton would finally get a Grey Cup — they haven’t had one for 21 years — the commissioner could have said “soon” or “gosh, I hope by 2021” or something similarly hopeful. Instead, he said he hasn’t looked at the Grey Cup bid process yet. The 2018 game will be in Edmonton, and beyond that they haven’t thought about it. So, he doesn’t know. Ambrosie probably does know that Hamilton presents serious challenges related to hotel rooms, but he’s wise enough not to mention that yet. He said, reasonably, that the “business season” will take place when the football season ends. Business season starts Monday at 8 a.m., Ambrosie said. Then, considering the likely post-Grey Cup party schedule, he adjusted that plan to Tuesday at 8 a.m. Wise plan.

Asked if the CFL would consider moving the season up a month to end before winter sets in, Ambrosie said they should think about it, and he asked for a straw poll in the room. (It was about 40 per cent in support of the change.) Asked if ticket prices were too high, Ambrosie said he didn’t know and plans to find out. Asked if there was a way to improve the instant-replay process, the commissioner said he thinks there are opportunities to have fans watching the game understand what officials are seeing when they are making the calls. Maybe the scoreboard in-stadium could show how the replay officials came to their decision, he said. This is nothing short of revolutionary, when sports leagues generally want officiating explanations to be totally walled off from the paying public.

It was part of a recurring theme on Friday: fan makes statement, Ambrosie says it was worth considering.

If he keeps this up, the good vibes won’t end anytime soon.
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  #1211  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 3:53 AM
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This photo was wrongly posted in reference to the article above, but I liked it and thought it would look good here.

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  #1212  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 11:11 AM
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I'm guessing a team in Halifax would put an end to the Mickey Mouse crossover thing the CFL does?
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  #1213  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 4:26 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TownGuy View Post
I'm guessing a team in Halifax would put an end to the Mickey Mouse crossover thing the CFL does?
A better team getting a chance to qualify is Mickey Mouse? That's some pretty lame criticism, Mickey Mouse even.
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  #1214  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 4:45 PM
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I'd be surprised if it ended the crossover. The crossover already gets criticism for not being fair enough to traditionally better western teams, though I personally don't think it'd be good for the league to go to a single division and have 5/6 playoff teams be from the west. The crossover seems like the best possible compromise.
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  #1215  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 5:05 PM
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It defeats the point of the division though, why have it? Why were the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the "East Final"? They don't play in the east division, they aren't located in the east, they shouldn't be in the East Final. The BC Lions hypothetically winning the east is laughable.
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  #1216  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 5:19 PM
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Originally Posted by TownGuy View Post
It defeats the point of the division though, why have it? Why were the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the "East Final"? They don't play in the east division, they aren't located in the east, they shouldn't be in the East Final. The BC Lions hypothetically winning the east is laughable.
If we called it a "wild card" would that make you feel better?
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  #1217  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 5:33 PM
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TownGuy TownGuy is offline
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Wild card teams stay in their respective league or conference. The Blue Jays can't end up in the National League from a wild card.
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  #1218  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 5:42 PM
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VANRIDERFAN VANRIDERFAN is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TownGuy View Post
It defeats the point of the division though, why have it? Why were the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the "East Final"? They don't play in the east division, they aren't located in the east, they shouldn't be in the East Final. The BC Lions hypothetically winning the east is laughable.
Why is Dallas in the NFC East? Isn't that pretty laughable?

God I hate Canadians who find every little issue to shit on the CFL.
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  #1219  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 5:53 PM
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GlassCity GlassCity is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TownGuy View Post
Wild card teams stay in their respective league or conference. The Blue Jays can't end up in the National League from a wild card.
Luckily the CFL has divisions, not conferences

I still prefer the crossover over a single league-wide division. I guarantee if you got rid of it there'd be CFL bashers making fun of teams ranked 8th out of 9 in the league making the playoffs. Teams crossing over into the other 'half' of the league may not respect the purity of the "west" and "east" labels but it's a pragmatic solution to stay fair to the teams.

Either way, I don't get all these weird hangups people have. I've heard other people complain about the fact that one guy owns two teams in the league. Who cares? It's weird to me how much attention people pay to behind-the-scenes stuff like that in determining the worth of a sports league. Can't people just watch the game?
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  #1220  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2017, 6:21 PM
elly63 elly63 is offline
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Originally Posted by VANRIDERFAN View Post
God I hate Canadians who find every little issue to shit on the CFL.
Praise Allah!
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