Bills in Toronto should throw up red flags

by Chad Klassen
Love of Sports Correspondent

The NFL’s decision to play eight games in the next five seasons at Rogers Centre in Toronto should trigger alarms for those who reside in the Buffalo area and for Canadians who look to the Canadian Football League as one of few sources of national pride, something they can call their own.

If red flags haven’t been raised, or aren’t raised soon, there’s a problem with football fans on both sides of the border. Not only will the passionate fans in Buffalo be deprived of their hometown team they’ve cheered on every Sunday since 1960, but there’s no doubt the Canadian game will suffer big time financially and could possibly become defunct.

It’s clear Ralph Wilson and the rest of Bills ownership see a big pool of corporate money in Toronto.

That’s exactly where the CFL’s problems begin. Bush league in the minds of Americans and some Canadians who don’t care for the game, the league will be forced to scratch tooth and nail for all those corporate dollars that’ll presumably be re-committed to the Bills franchise, which is associated with one of the most powerful and smooth-running sporting leagues in North America.

Also, the tremendous coverage the CFL receives from TSN – Canada’s version of ESPN – would take a huge hit considering the lucrative television deal between the two parties would be pulled or, at the least, cut back. The production values, which are already upstaged by the NFL, would slip as well since the top play-by-play broadcasters at TSN would jump ship and be committed by the network to NFL coverage of the Toronto franchise.

And you’d have to think it’s in the realm of possibility that if these games in Toronto sell out and make the Bills millions of dollars (which is expect to happen), the franchise will permanently move up North.

I can say, though, with a straight face that the NFL coming to Toronto makes a lot more sense than the CFL’s failed expansion into U.S. during the mid-1990s with five American franchises that were complete flops. But the biggest difference between the two situations is the fact that there’s a huge contingent of NFL and NCAA college football supporters that keeps those two institutions almost untouchable, whereas the CFL is seen as an inferior brand of football and doesn’t have the same strength and widespread popularity to survive the influx of the NFL.

It’s clear there’s no competing when it comes to the head-to-head battles with the NFL for the spotlight, and saving the CFL from this kind of American invasion will require serious protectionist policies from the Canadian government.

In fact, Canadian Senator Larry Campbell proposed Bill C-238 in Parliament last month seeking to keep the NFL from playing regular season games north of the border.

While the whole concept of protecting the CFL has been ripped by the likes of ESPN’s Colin Cowherd, the CFL is a cultural icon that makes us feel proud to call ourselves Canadian.

To a lesser extent than hockey, I strongly believe the country needs the league to bring people together and we shouldn’t be punished based on Buffalo’s wish to move the franchise or Ted Rogers’ longtime dream of bringing an NFL team to Toronto - Canada’s “centre of the universe.”

Given the overwhelming influx of American popular culture, there are few things we can actually call our own, and more CFL fans, especially those who live in Saskatchewan and Winnipeg and die for the Roughriders and Bluebombers, respectively, should be aggressively voicing their opinions given that its the only game in town.

Knowing how passionately prairie folk feel about the CFL, with the god-like treatment of players on their home team, I can’t imagine the anger and frustration in the prairies and throughout most of the country, if the CFL was tampered with or even became extinct. For some diehard fans of the Canadian game, it’d be the equivalent of losing someone in the family and there will be those who lash out.

There will always be those who support the NFL, but Roger Goodell has to be careful in that he could alienate some of the Canadian audience that tunes into the NFL every week over the outrage that would be caused by the move to Toronto. But would it not be totally contrary to Goodell’s intentions to expand the popularity of the league internationally? 

Having grown up as a CFL fan, I hope the NFL and Goodell can put their financial interests aside, sit down with CFL commissioner Mark Cohon, and come to a reasonable agreement that’s best for both leagues, allowing Canadian football to continue its tradition and flourish as a niche for a handful of sports fans in Canada.