Why I like the CFL, and you should, too

As my beloved Raptors wind down yet another lost season, and with the Leafs mercifully having been put out of their misery a few weeks ago, it’s time to turn my attention to the sports of summer.

Here in Toronto, that means Blue Jays baseball – it’s hard not to get excited about a team that could contend this year – as well as Toronto FC in Major League Soccer and the Argonauts in the Canadian Football League.

I realize that pro sports is mostly a business populated by multi-millionaire players and billionaire owners.

A left-wing Christian that I once profiled felt all pro sports are wastes of time and money, diversions from more important pursuits, and he was probably right.

Intellectually, I can understand this “bread, not circuses” attitude, and I don’t take any pro sport that I follow too seriously (although I did as a kid and as a teenager). But emotionally, I think there’s something fun and collectively healthy about bonding around a local sports team.

At the very least, it gives Torontonians something to talk about beyond the buffoonery of our dumb-as-wood conservative puffball of a mayor and his fumbling of the transit file.

It’s also a bit easier for a lefty like me to get behind smaller-scale teams such as TFC and especially the Argos, the latter being the poor cousin of the local pro sports scene.

Yet because Toronto FC is part of the sad-sack – yet highly profitable – MLSE empire, which also owns the Raptors and the Leafs, there’s an ersatz corporate quality to the TFC experience that feels a bit contrived, although it is fun to actually go to games. And the team’s slow start (to go along with it never having qualified for post-season play in its five-year existence) makes me less than optimistic about the 2012 season.

With the Argos, however, there’s something homey and even quaint about the CFL that brings out the underdog supporter in me. I feel the same way about the CFL as I used to feel about the upstart World Hockey Association as a little kid in the 1970s – it’s a bit of a renegade league, an afterthought, an orphan, particularly in the Toronto sports market.

I feel compelled to like it.

For one, CFLers are far from rich superstars (the 2012 salary cap is $4.35 million for a 42-man roster). Indeed, many have jobs in the off-season, or are in school preparing for a life after football, such as middle linebacker Jason Pottinger, a Whitby, Ont., native who’s working toward an MBA at York University when he’s not anchoring the Argo defence.

The CFL game is played on a wider and longer field than the American game, and the players are generally smaller. As NFLers have grown in size over the past 25 years – the average weight of linemen is well over 300 pounds – it has often seemed to me that there isn’t enough room on the field for all those huge players to move around safely (or as safely as can be expected in a game based on bone-crunching hits).

CFLers, while still rather imposing, are generally more human-sized. It’s not uncommon to see spark plugs such as 5-8, 170-pound Argo wide receiver and kick returner Chad Owens or the 5-6 Michael “Pinball” Clemons, the always-smiling former Argo running back and coach.

Then there are the Canadian player quotas – seven of 24 starters on a team must be so-called “non-imports,” and 20 of 42 roster spots are reserved for Canadians  – as well as unique rules, such as three downs and the strangely named rouge, the single point awarded for any kick received in the opposing team’s end zone that’s not run or kicked out.
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What could be more Canadian than a little protectionism and odd-ball proceduralism?

Then there’s the peculiarity of only eight teams. Yeah, the CFL is a bit small by modern big-league standards, but think about all the nostalgia for the “Original Six” in the pre-expansion NHL.

Of course, the league will eventually grow. Ottawa is slated to rejoin the CFL in 2013, and Quebec City and Atlantic Canada are practically crying out for teams. (Quebecers, who never truly embraced baseball, love the Canadian version of football, and some of the best Canadian university programs are at francophone schools.)

But the CFL was burned in the 1990s by its ill-fated foray into the U.S. market, and before Canadian expansion can happen, the league has to make sure the Argos are on firmer financial footings. At the moment, the Argos are owned by Senator David Braley,  who also owns the B.C. Lions, which means one guy owns a quarter of the league. (Another bizarre CFL fact. And so what if he’s an arch-conservative? Nothing’s perfect.)

The trade in which the Argos acquired quarterback Ricky Ray is pretty goofy as well. The team basically got one of the CFL’s best QBs in the prime of his career (he’s only 32) in exchange for what amounts to a bag of hammers. Conspiracy theorists are not-so-quietly saying that the league arranged to have one of its marquee players sent to the Argos in order to shore up the money-losing, attendance-challenged franchise ahead of it hosting the 100th Grey Cup. They also say it’s payback to Braley for agreeing to buy the team in Canada’s largest market when no one else would.

It’s all a bit rinky-dink – almost like professional wrestling – yet the games still have a big-league feel to them, and the football is always exciting.

The contrast adds to the CFL’s appeal.

I ask again: what could be more Canadian?

I’ve never seen a game out West, where the CFL is a very big deal, but I have seen one at old, decrepit Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton – a Labour Day classic a few years back between the Argos and the Tiger-Cats – and the atmosphere was electric. There were skydivers, fly-bys by Canadian Forces jets and raucous cheering in the stands. The Ticats are the only big-league game in a lunch-bucket, working class burgh, and they take their football mighty seriously in Steeltown.

The CFL is also affordable family entertainment. Buying tickets doesn’t require selling a kidney, which means my son and I can go to a couple of games a season without breaking a middle-class family budget.

I’ve been to three or four games over the past two years with my younger son, and we’ve bonded over the power of running back Cory Boyd and his redemptive story, and we’ve marvelled at the flashy quickness and toughness of Owens – a.k.a. the Flyin’ Hawaiian – the kind of speedy little guy who wouldn’t get a second look these days from an NFL team.

It all adds up to a fun sports experience.

(The Grey Cup is in Toronto this year, but as best as I can tell, the cheapest ticket is $150 a pop. I know that pales in comparison to the Super Bowl, but it’s starting to range into deep-pocket territory, so we may have to take a pass.)

The cry of “Arrrrrrgoooooooosssss!” was once a beloved chant in the local Toronto sports scene, before the NFL became so big-league that it eclipsed our own home-grown version of gridiron football.

Here’s hoping that our poor, beleaguered Argos can make a comeback this year, and maybe even be the hometown faves in this year’s big game.