TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Football League commissioner Mark Cohon believes all signs point to an NFL team being placed in Toronto. It’s the first time the league has taken such a definitive stance on the subject. “All of the tea leaves are indicating that it’s shifting,” Cohon said Friday.
. “You have guys like Ted Rogers and Larry Tanenbaum and Phil Lind, very powerful Canadians who are interested; you have an owner in Ralph Wilson in Buffalo who has said, ‘When I die, my estate will sell the franchise’; you have the Bills interested in marking Toronto as part of their territory, which I believe is indication that, ‘Hey this our territory, we don’t want another NFL team coming here.’
“So I think there’s all these things lining up as an indication that it could happen. So I’m not sticking my head in the sand. That would be the worst thing for the CFL commissioner to do. So I think there’s a real potential.”
Speaking at his first state of the league news conference, Cohon said an NFL team in Toronto would threaten the CFL in Southern Ontario, a key region for the league.
if i was the commish of the CFL, I would slowly try to get the CFLs style of play to match the NFLs and try to make a merger happen.
A CFL/NFL merger wouldn’t actually be a merger – it would be a corporate acquisition. The leagues simply aren’t on equal footing, money-wise. CFL owners don’t have the resources NFL ones do. But good lord i hope the Bills stay in Buffalo.
PS: I linked to you guys here: http://talleywhackers.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/bills-toronto-games-value/
If the tea leaves are right and I fear they are, that would be the end of live football in this area, unless, of course, you are going to be able to afford the prices Rogers or MLSE are going to charge. Average ticket prices of near $200? No Bills in Buffalo and eventually, no Argos or Ticats either. Since there is a choice now, the prices may even go higher.
Question: There are open source electronic health record systems (EHRs). OpenEMR is one, MirrorMed is another. They are free to use, have upgrades that are being shared by many, and will continue to be dynamically growing. And they have the best shot of being truly interoperable over the long term. And yet I haven’t heard a word about it around them in this story. Why not? THAT is the real scandal in my mind!
The NFL in Toronto a fiasco
So far there are 2 preseason games, and 3 regular season NFL games in Toronto. None of these games where full houses (less than 54,000). Worse, very few paid they tickets at full price. Tens of thousands where reduced tickets. Tens of thousands more, where free tickets. And still, not one full house in 5 games! Toronto region is where there are the most NFL fans in Canada.
Why Canadians didn’t come to see Peyton Manning and the Colts or Ricky Williams? Perhaps Canadians are better placed to compare the show offered by the two football leagues. The CFL is so much faster and exciting. The NFL resembles more baseball and the CFL more with hockey. You know, Canadians love hockey.
Evan with the Rogers telecommunications strong marketing and the Medias propaganda, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Some football fans need to step back from their usual perspective and judge by what they see.
It would be awesome if the 2 merged together. Then we’d have CFC (Canadian Football Conference). =) I would move some teams from AFC & NFC to CFC and fill the hole with additional teams from the cities like LA and LV, and possibly from Mexico. =) More fans for football. =)