It’s 4:39 on a cloudy Wednesday in Toronto. I’ve just spent 25 minutes fighting with Air Canada about its wisdom of wanting to charge me $374 to change a flight that cost me only $148 in the first place, and that I could, as I was speaking, buy a ticket online, from its own website, on the very flight I wanted to change to for $225. Does anyone still wonder why that airline is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy (again)?
Needless to say, I’m spending a few more hours in T.O., and, having been savagely beaten by the Air Canada customer-relations juggernaut, I am in a mood to dispense some powerful wisdom. For instance, it’s not actually “cloudy” in Toronto right now. That’s just what the weather forecasts call it. It’s smog. Trust me. Where I come from, clouds don’t make your eyes burn. There are some neat things about Toronto, but air quality is not among them.
Still not feeling sated, I aimed my laptop over to the cfl.ca site, where I can often pass some quality time on its fan forums. And these few keystrokes quickly brought me back to the original purpose of this little screed, which was not, contrary to the tenor and content of the lead, to take (easy) potshots at Air Canada and Hogtown.
Rather, what began as a few loose thoughts in my head a few days ago was the notion that we (we, being cfl fans generally, and cfl.ca forum inhabitants more specifically) have this tendency to regard the NFL and all things connected thereto with an almost Harry Potter/Voldemort-ish loathing. It’s a goofy sentiment really, but it exists: if you are a true CFL fan, you have to hate the NFL. If the NFL does it, it can’t be good. But the irony of all of this is a great many CFL fans (me included) very much enjoy the NFL and all of its trappings. And what’s more important, from a CFL-fan perspective, is that there is a lot that can be learned from the NFL by those who market and promote the CFL. Certainly much more than can be gained by a curse and a spit whenever the league-who-shall-not-be-named is mentioned. My own list is expansive, and, as time goes by, I’ll share them all, I’m sure. For now, though, I offer this as part one:
Turning league happenings into events.
The NFL is the master of this concept. From pre-season - free agency, the draft, OTA’s, training camp, pre-season (like the Hall of Fame game) to opening night, to the US Thanksgiving Weekend, to the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl right through the draft again, everything that happens in the NFL is a BIG DEAL. And fans eat it up. I mean, my god, an entire cottage industry has sprung up around the NFL entry-draft, complete with round 1 prediction pools, pre-draft shows, televising the actual event, and every form of media-based analysis imaginable. All this, and we’re two months from camp, and 4 months from the start of the regular season. Talk about off-season attention. The NFL has an entire network devoted to ensuring that The Show never strays too far from the minds of its fans. And what does all of this mean? Well, for the diehard fans, there really isn’t that much of an “off-season” anymore - there’s just periods in between the.next.big.thing. And, for a serious football junkie, there’s nothing better.
To its credit, the CFL has gotten better in this regard, with its own draft being televised for the first time, and some greater attention paid to the preceding e-camp and pre-draft rankings on the league site. But this is a new phenomenon. I recall, less than a decade ago, when the CFL held its draft on a Tuesday morning, via a conference call among the league and the teams. It was a total non-event; I don’t think media could cover the thing even if someone wanted to.
But even with the improvement in the area of the entry draft, much more can be done. Imagine this: the CFL, given how most of the big signings are condensed into a short period immediately following the opening of the free agency period (February 15), is actually in a good position to turn their free agent day into something like July 1 is to the NHL. But what does the league do? It makes the free agency period open at…..wait for it……midnight. Yes, midnight. Could they pick a more obscure time, from a media and fan perspective? Make it noon or 6:00 pm, and you’ve suddenly got a whole news cycle to capture the goings-on, possibly even a TSN show leading up to the magic hour, and tracks each signing as it occurs, not unlike its hockey trade deadline coverage. I mean, why make it so hard?
And the preseason - yes, there are stories on the league site about the daily goings-on around the league, but they are sporadic, they tend to rely on the submissions from others, and the analysis is virtually non-existant. For every kid that comes up from somewhere to a city he’d never heard of before there is a story. Unless it gets poached from a local newspaper, it won’t get told by the CFL.
And lastly, before I fill up the internet on my first blog - I need to spend a moment on the pre-season coverage. I know there are valid economic reasons for not televising pre-season games. They are expensive to produce, and probably would not draw enough viewership on its own to justify the cost. And I agree with the assessment that no one wins by trying to broadcast something on the cheap, in poor quality.
But, in such cases it is absolutely essential that there are easy to find radio links to the radio broadcasts on the site, and the live scoring feature (which isn’t a bad way to follow the game) has to…HAS TO be running, and running properly. Last pre-season was an absolute abomination. Again, the NFL, every Sunday, somehow manages to keep up with about 12-15 games, in real time, while the CFL live scoring was so disgracefully bad I could have made the plays up and been about as accurate and timely. There is simply no excuse for not keeping up with a typed play-by-play description of One game.
Anyway…..enough for now. Next up, part 2: Fantasy, baby!
